Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1884 — DEMOCRATS RESPONSIBLE FOR KNOW-NOTHINGISM. [ARTICLE]

DEMOCRATS RESPONSIBLE FOR KNOW-NOTHINGISM.

[John. Brennan in a speech at Indianapolis.] The slavery-holding States were the home of Know-Nothingism. O’Connell had excited the wrath of Sont ern slave-holders by spurning their offers of assistance and denouncing their 'institution of slavery; and the erv ot “Ireland for the Irish," which was the war cry of the-re-peal agitation, was paraphrase j in the South by the war whoop of "America for the Americans." Know-Nothingism was a Democratic biolt which seriously threatened to overthrow the regular Democratic organization. A majority of the Democratic leaders had sense enough to se; that this phase of fanaticism conld no't succeed, snd to provide for its own perpetuation the Democratic party of the period took sides against it; but it most found favor in the cities which were then and now most powerfully Democratic Places like Bt. Louis and Louisville ran red with Irish blood, and the malice of the mob tonnd vt nt in heartless excesses and cruelties. The Know-Nothing party was in the height of its power in 1835. it polled nearly half a million ot votes (473,465) for Fillmore in the slave-hold-ing States in 1856. At the same election John C. Fremont, the Republican candidate, received, less than one thousand two hundred votes (1,194) in all of the fifteen slave-holding States. There was practically no Republican party in the South in 1856, and in 1861 the vast KnowNothing army was absorbed bodily into the ranks of the Democratic party or the party of the rebellion, which in the South was one and the same thing. In 1860 the Democrats and Know-Nothings united in the State of New York, the Know-Nothing party receiving seven electors and their share of the joint ticket. Grover Cleveland was then a Democrat, residing in the State of New York; and if he voted at all he voted for these seven Know-Nothing electors; and the chances :fre that he voted. WAS BLAINE A KNOW-NOTHING? The slanderers might as well sav that he- assisted at the crucifixion of our Savior. He was an active Republican in 1855; supported Fremont in 1856, and fought for Lincoln in 1866. The State of Maine never polled quite 4,000 Know-Nothing votes, while the little State of Maryland gave Fillmore 470 0. No, Blaine was not a Know-Nothing. He is the son of a Catholic mother, and lie has declared in the terms that he would not for a thousand Presidencies say one unfriendly word against the religion of bis mother. I challenge the Democratic press, I defy the Democratic bosses, to produce a single line or single word that Blaine has ever spoken or written unfriendly to the race or religion of an Irishman. I will go farther. The Republican party lias been in power for a quarter ot a century, It his been guilty of its sins, and lam not its apologist; but I will defend it against the foul charges of w hich it has been unjustly aoeused. . ■ ' ----- I challenge the Democratic party press; I defy the party bosses; I appeal to the letter of history, and defy any man to show me au act upon any statute book enacted by Republicans infringing upon the rights of any man on account ot his race or religion. Its spirit and its purposes have bten utterly incompatible with the objects of Know-nothingism. If yon want .to find the flesh and bone and spirit of intolerance which animated Knownothingism in its palmy days, I commend yon to the Democratic party. In Mississippi they shoot a man to death for an opinion, in Indianapolis they seek to ruin his business for an opinion, in the State of Maine the Irish Know-nothings bum a high-souled Irishman in: effigy for the atrocious crime ot rising above their prejudices, and the Demo cratic State Convention of lowa hisses the name of Patrick Ford, the fearless editor of the /risk li'orld. Yon yourselves know well that right here in Indianapolis your Irish candidates on the Democratic ticket run behind their party vote. Quite recently, I am informed, an estimable young Irishman of this city was a candidate for City Clerk, and lie ran more than five hundred behind the party vote. Need I call your attention to Mayor Grace, of New York, who, on account of- his religion, ran 40,000 votes behind his Democratic party ticket, or to Senator Kernan, one of the most eminent men of the Irish race, who lost the Governorship of New York through Democratic defection on account of his religion? And yet you indulge in the stale delusion that the Democratic party is the guardian angel of the Irishman in America. Open the eyes that God has given you. See the world promenading past you. Seek knowledge for the purpose of being right. You have it in yonr hands to-day to be powerful and respectable in American politics, or to seek the graveyard and the gutter and to perish in them. See your German fellow-citizens. Do they beg anybody’s pardon for their opinions in politics? They are a selt-respecting people who change their'polities to guard their interests, while they at the same time vigorously insist, that the Irishman has nonight to do the same thing. They taunt you at the first manifestations of awakening manhood. You take it in abject submission and crawl away like a youthful spaniel freshly convicted ot p ;tty larceny. Shame on you! Where is the courage of your race? Friends have warned me that I would be stoned in Indianapolis for telling vou the truth I said I would face the music and abide the consequences. “TheLdooded the martyr is the seed of the church.” lam one of you—bone of yonr bone, flesh of your flesh —every fiber of my body, every pulse of my heart. I ask yon to be men, tnipking men; no longer the slaves of unmanly prejudices or miserable delusions. Yon have hugged this Know-Nothing humbug for a quarter of a century. Give it a decent burial. Let the dead past bury its dead. Act, act in the living present. Hearts within and God o'erhead.