Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1876 — Democrats as “ Reformers.” [ARTICLE]

Democrats as “ Reformers.”

[Extract from Senator Morton's Becent Speech at Indianapolis.] The very word “reform” becomes odious when it is used as a mask to conceal the repulsive features of men who have cham- £ toned every great abuse in the past; who ave been unfaithful to their country; who have blundered continually; who have brought upon the country its chief misfortunes, and whose names are indissolubly connected with the greatest political crimes of the age. Think of it, the leaders qf the rebellion, the Ku-klux and White Leaguers, the organizers of murder, the plundering hacks and humbugs that have come down to us from twenty years of Democratic misrule before the war, the broken-down' fugitives from the Republican party who had been kicked out for incapacity and fraud, and, in short, all the authors of the great misfortunes that have fallen upon our country for the last quarter of a century, uniting together and shouting themselves hoarse with the cry of reform. With such men plunder is the purpose aud reform the pretense. They are as incapable of yeform as they are of making reparation and atonement to the country for the innumerable crimes they have committed. Many of them are bankrupt from the rebellion, lank, starving, tierce and ravenous as famished wolves, and at the first opportunity will bury themselves in the public treasure as the vulture does its head in the newly found carcase. These relics of the rebellion, these lingering remains of the Sons of Liberty, these connecting links with former generations of frauds, robberies and shams, these putrescent reminiscences of slavery, congregated at St. Louis and dubbed themselves reformers. Remember that they are the men who brought the war upon the country, who -have buried half a million of soldiers, who have piled up billions of debt, and who have peopled the land with widows and orphans. What think you of such reformers I With them we may say of reform as was once said of patriotism, that it is the last refuge of scoundrels. What think ye when the wrecker of railroads, who has amassed his millions taken from ruined stockholders, when the land-grant statesman, the voter of subsidies, are put forward as the champions of reform and the protectors of the people! It would be another illustration of the fable of the wolves who procured themselves to be elected guardians of the sheep whom they afterward devoured. It is a Democratic idea that the relics and debris of a rebellion, the pardoned traitors of an inhuman civil war who were reared in the lap of slavery; that the graduates from the high-schools of the Ku-klux and White Leaguers, tbe administrators and defenders of Andersonville and Saulisbury, and the alumni of Tammany Hall constitute the true reformers of the day. To the Democratic mind the education furnished in these institutions gives the highest guarantee for reform and integri y in office. Every profession in favor of civil service reform by the Democratic party is utterly hypocritical, foliould it come into power every Republican officer will at once be turned out, and it is for this the battle is being fought. Tilden and Hendricks as Governors have had the power to introduce this reform into their States, but their administrations have been remorselessly partisan. If they were in earnest in their professions on that subject they could stop it any day, and show their faith by their works. We arc asked to forget their history and to accept as an atouemtnt for the past the promise that they "vill become great reformers in the future. They remind us of the fable of the two old rats, who, after having laid waste the cheese-room and the pantry, asked admission to the new kitchen upon the ground that they were reformed rats who wished to change their business, and knew how to keep out other animals of the same character. Gov. Tilden is an inveterate bachelor of sixty-six, a life-long Democrat, and has been for twenty years a leader in his party and closely identified with all of its most infamous measures. Trained in the school of New York politics, a graduate of Tammany Hall, a disciple of the resolutions of ’9B, an ardent sympathizer with the rebellion, he completely filled the character known during the war as the Copperhead. Mr. Kelly and other leading Democrats, before the nomination, earnestly described Mr. Tilden as a railroad Wrecker, a character well known in New York and London, who deals in broken-down railroads, and puts them on their feet again, in which process the original stock and bondholders lose their entire investment and the assets pass chiefly into tbe wrecker’s hands. They described him as a lawyer who seldom appeared in court, and boldly affirmed that he had thus made a fortune of from six to ten m llions of dollars. When ships are cast upon a rock-bound coast the wreckers come down upon them, olten murdering the surviving mariners and always robbing them of every valuable thing. It is well known that John Morrissey, the prize-fighter and world-renowned gambler, was Tilden’s champion at St. Louis, and had more to do with his nomination than any other dozen men, and that Morrissey’s gilded gambling hell w»s the Tilden headquarters at Saratoga last summer and will be th s. To me it seems highly improbable that a man who has for thirty .years been the associate and counsel of the stock gamblers of Wall street, who for many years lived with Tweed in sworn fraternity in Tammany Hall and was his co-op -rator in the foul politics of New York, and who has wrecked so man j railroads, can be a conscien ious and patriotic man. If the published, and so far as I know the uncontradicted accounts of his manipulation of the Chicago & Fond du Lac, the Galena & Chicago, Kenosha & Rockford, Grand Rapids, Harlem Extension, the Penin-, su'ar of Michigan, and other railroads that might be named, are true, he and a small ring with whom he operated have under the forms of law taken from the companies and stockholders millions of dollars. It seems impossible to distinguish the Continental Improvement Compafiy, of whieh he was the originator from the Credit Mobilier and the evidence of O&keB

Ames before the Congressional Committee In 1878, reveals Mr. Tilden as the original adviser and counsel of that uotoilous and deadly ins ltutiun known as the Credit Mobilier. It is asking too much of human credulity to believe that a man who has thus lived snd flourished, and grown rich and gray, caa have the nplrlt of a true refo'raer or be governed by any other motive than the lust of power. Tilden and Hundricks were both members of the Chicago Convention in 1801, held in the midst of the last great struggle with the rebel army, when It was apparent that tbe rebellion was doomed unless rescued from the North, and uni'ed in framing that treasonable declara'ion that tlie war was a failure and ought to be abandoned. That declaration made at the time and under the circumstances was a political crime of the first magnitude, and in any other country in ihc world struggling with armed traitors would have been punished as high treason.