Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 October 1892 — CLEVELAND’S LATEST LETTER. [ARTICLE]

CLEVELAND’S LATEST LETTER.

Mr. Cleveland’s itch of scribbling has broken out again. His friends. have warned him to keep off the epistolary reef, and his opponents have guyed him about it, but all to no purpose. On the slightest excuse he falls to quill driving. His .latest published missive must have been written just as he leave the Bay of confederate Gray Gables; for the jungle of the Tammany tiger. It was Addressed to Clark Howells, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, He seems to be disturbed lest he should fail to carry the electoral vote of Gedrgia. Nothing could be more absurd. Wheh General Weaver and Mrs. Lease retired from the State because they could not en joy free speech the carrfpaign virtually ended.

Mr. Cleveland seems to be troubled because stories were circulated by Congressman Watson and others which, if true, would show that the ex-President is not quite so mossy and rock ribbed in his Democratic prejudices as the regulation mossbacks of the South. He makes haste to deny these stories, anxious, apparently, to be credited with all the prejudices and meannesses chargeable to the worst element of the South. His wife did not stay away from the unveiling of the Lee monument because for fear of having to be polite to the daughter of Jeff Davis, and as for Frederick Douglass the courtesies extended to him were purely official. 1 If there is one thing more than all else that Grover Cleveland need not borrow trouble about it is the alienation of the vote of Georgia or any other Southern State because bis Bourbonism is not sufficiently pronounced. If he had done nothing else than make his pension veto record that would be enough. He fairly reveled in the delight of slap-, ping old soldiers, their widows, and orphans in the face. Nor is that record forgotten North or South. It is too conspicuous for that- But even if it were not what can the South do about it? That summer home may or may not have been called Gray instead of Red, White or Blue Gables out of deference to the Confederate color, but certain it is that the old Johnnie Reb element cannot fail to take him in preference to either General Harrison or Gen. Weaver, both of whom drew the sword of victorious battle against the Confederacy. If Mr. Cleveland loses any Southern electoral votes it will not be becauae the moss of his Bourbonism was not thick and long enough. His danger lies in quite a different direction.

But apart from his individual record and sympathies the Democrats of the South could not falter in his support. The record of his party and the character of his platform must have removed all doubt. What if bis wife did not like to pool her honors with the daughter of Jeff Davis, he himself stands on a platform which borrowed its chief plank from nullification and secession. Protection is unconstitutional, said Calhoun aud South Carolina in 1832, Davis and the South in 1860, and Cleveland and the Democracy in 1892. The Chicago platform of last June rendered wholly unnecssaay any such letter as Grover Cleveland's to Clark Howell’s, jr., especially when that platform is read in the light of Cleveland’s pension record.