Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1878 — DEMOCRATIC MALIGNITY. [ARTICLE]

DEMOCRATIC MALIGNITY.

Horace E. James, consul st Turks Islands aud editor ot tbo Rknsselakk Union, • » • evidently Ims nu eye to money. Two years ago Thk Union offered to sell out Calkins to the democrats for |8(X). This wus considered too high a price and refused. This yeag Calkins lias bought its friendship witli a petty consulship to Turks Islands.... Horace sold himself clieap this year on uccouut ot hunt times, and we liave no doubt but tliat lie will be in the market again before tlie campaign is over and will offer himself cheap to . any one ready to .buy him; but we can assure Horace that lie ueod not look to Senator Winterbotham for a bid. That gentleman is it practical business man and too good a judge of material to waste bis money ou a man who lias no influence among those who know'him. Horace has sold out once too often to be of any service to any one. and we advise him to stick to Calkins and keep his grip on the consulship, so tliat it ho cannot winter through at homo he can remove to tlie island.-, where lie can live on baked turtles’ eggs the year round, and get drunk with the natives on tirosli without expense to himself or his benefactor Calkins.— Val/Mi-altu JtMtenyar. To the charge that "two years ago The Union offered to sell out Calkins to tlie democrats for $800,” a positive, unequivocal, emphatic deuial is made. It is false in general and false in detail. A demand is hereby made upon Mr. Ziimuerman, editor of the Valparaiso Afewenffcr, to state explicitly the time when such a proposal was made, the place where it was made, the names of the democrats to whom it was made, and the name of the man who made it. He muse relate the circumstances of this infamous transaction in fullest detail. If thin is not done he appears to tlie public a wanton liar, a malicious slanderer, a villainous traducer of character. The wrong has been deliberately infiieted, the offense is wanton and malicious, the assault is unprovoked; there is no paliation, no mitigation, no apology for it.

The insinuation that Horace E. Janies is addicted to drunkenness is as false and slanderous as the charge of corruption; as cowardly; as contemptible. The most vindictive enemy he may have in Jasper county, where lie has lived twenty-five years, would not make such a statement expecting it to ho believed by any man, woman or child who has knowledge of his habits. What motive prompts Mr. Zimmerman, editor of the Valparaiso Jfcnscngcr, to invent and publish such a false insinuation against a person whom he never saw half a dozen times, who never drank with him, who never tempted him to drink, who is a private citizen, who is not,a candidate for office, who never spoke an unkind word about him, with whom he lias no quarrel, may not be known but may be surmised when it is considered that Mr. James is a republican and that Mr. Zimmerman’s paper is i ib« ~ctohJpion, of a. uub is currently reported has, within two weeks past, broadly hinted to democrats in Rensselaer that he iiad money to buy an election to congress, and the disposition to use it for that purpose. -Mr. Zimmerman, editor of the Valparaiso may, as his language suggests, have personal knowledge of Mr. Winterbotham’s practical business habits; he may know, as he claims, what material that gentleman has decided to invest his money in. and whom he has concluded it will not be safe to insult or tempt with his corruption fund; this there is no disposition to dispute; but certainly it is not wise to reveal these plana so early in the campaignp better wait until he has secured a nomination. A lesson in this peculiarly democratic method of electioneering is furnished by the experiehce of that great prototype of this class of politicians, Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, which men of transcendent business qualities might easily learnIt has been saidJn these columns that nothing is too mean, too disreputable, too false, too contemptible for democrats to adopt to secure their aims. When the democratic party resolved to perpetuate the crime of slavery democrats did not hesitate to strike at the life of the government. They deliberately plunged the nation into civiljwar, with its attendant horrors—its bloodshed, its cruelties, its Waste, its enormous debt under which the people still groan. By this war men were separated from their families, children were taken from aged aud dependent parents, the youth of promise were cut off when life, full of happiness and Iqve and hope and fame and honor, was dawning as ap entrancing vision. Democratic madness and democratic treuson filled the land with mourning. The wailing of widows uud vrpbutis, as they gathered

in homes made cheerless by a demo* cratic rebellion, was heard in every hamlet: and sorrow, like a pull, rested upon the hearts of the people. In those troublous days when patriots rallied to the defense of the constitution, laws, liberties and free institutions their fathers iiad left to them as a precious Inheritance, on the one hand democrats assaulted them with sword and cannon and muskets, and on the other hand democrats ass'aiied them with falsehood, reproach an<i calumny. To be a Unionist was to be a “Lincoln dog,” or a ‘‘Lincoln hireling.” To enlist under the stars and stripes was to be catalogued as from “the lower, uneducated class of community,” whose deatli upon the battle Held, in the malarious camp, in the cheerless hospital; in the horrid prison pen, fur from friends, home* and loved ones, was not to be lamented and deplored, but to be counted a blessing to society. The democratic press denounced every prominent loyalist for a villain, every efficient army commander for a robber, every private soldier for a thief. Governor Morton was traduced with a malignity that intensified with the years; the democracy scowled upon him as lie lay upon his deathbed, and cursed his lifeless cluy in its grave. President Lincoln was ridiculed, reviled and assassin-, ated by democrats. General Grant was slandered by democrats while lie was hi the Held, maligned by them throughout the eight years of bis presidency, and to-day is an object of their revengeful, bitter, unrelenting hatred. Nor did democrats find satiety in the abuse .of loyal statesmen and soldiers. Their base tongues wagged foul slander against the de-

senseless wives and daughters of the patriots serving their country, and perverted the title soldier’s widow, which should have enlisted warmest sympathy, into a synonym for harlot. It is not strange that men who cherished treason are brutal towards the weak; it is not strange that they deal in cowardly innuendo and slander the innocent; It is not strange that they attempt to corrupt the people. It is not strange that men who act with a party whose conventions ure swayed with money, whose nominations are bought and sold as merchantable commodities—a party whose candidates buy their nominations and buy their election to office—whose nuAtoual leader oilers SIOO,OOO for the vote of is not strange that editors who know these crimes are committed, who defend them, and* who become willing accessories to them—it is not strange that such men suspect the integrity of others. Defending wrong, men weaken their perception of right- Consenting to crime, they become criminal. Advocating the democratic party, they are demoralized.

- It is said by the Michigan City .Enterprise that Senator Winterbothani, who aspires to the democratic nomination for congress, "goes the whole “figure for a sound currency and “throwß'fiat’ to the dogs, he believes "in greenbacks convertible into goid “and silver at the will of the holder—“a sound republican currency. He “follows the doctrines of the demo'‘cratic fathers, which Mr. Weir does "not preach. Tliat St. Louis speech “had a gold and silver ring to it that “will secure its author the nomi nation,, "if tlie rock-rooted, rnountuhi-liut-“tressedand unchangeable democracy -"prove true to titWlirlrnelples’.*’ One tiling may be stated as about settled: It to that Mr. Winterbotham will be nominated at Valparaiso; and if Mr. Weir accepts tlie nomination which will probably be tendered to him at Wanatah to-day, it will be with the understanding between himself and Mr. Winterbotham that lie is to run and make speeches in the district with his expenses paid by Winterbotham as a capper to seduce republican votes from Calkijjs w.liile Winterbotham leads tlie democracy straight through the field- Iu other words, there to strong grounds for the suspicion that Weir will take the emoluments of the congressional office while Winter botliam tries to get the honor. This is probably what the latter meant intimated to Jasper county democrats that he was prepared to buy his way into congress-

Republicans are cautioned not to invent and circulate campaign Iles, after the manner of democrats, about the candidates on the democratic county ticket. Don’t circulate the report that Ezra C. Nowels is a cripr pled soldier; don’t say that he was wounded in the Dodd raid, that he shot himself through the hand with a big horse pistol, for he didn’t. It was another man who was crippledJn that unfortunate manner. Ezra may have been there all the same looking for gentlemen of culture from the higher walks of life, or he may have taken them a barrel of coal oil or a case of boots to prevent th<? extortions of the middle man, but Ezra wasn’t wounded, and republicans oughtn’t report such a campaign slander on him. Flat money Is nothing. Nothing is worth nothing. To pay n debt with worthless money is repudiation-

When the ballots are counted peat October it will be discovered that f«w< very few, republicans have voted for the members of an Independent national greenback labor reform ticket who are pledged to bus tai it at the county seat a democratic newspaper whose columns are filled week after week with scurrilous, wntitdn, mnHclous personal aftnekif of men for no earthly provocation other thafc Be-* cause they aye republicans. Charley II Price, deiHocratic candidate for county clerk, will discover this ahd be sad that his organ had not mors sense, A little leaven leaveileth the whold lump, and the nomination of Hospital Steward Charles P. Hopkins on the democratic county ticket for surveyor maketh said ticket a soldiers* ticket by the sanction, approval and seal of those peculiar fnciidta of so’P diers, the democracy. , , „ ....—„.„a Don’t brother Miller think he may possibly be counting bis chickene several days before they are hntclred when he promises to give the' patron-* age of the recorder's office to sustain the democratic “organ” attbe towrrty seat? John Lee i» said to have congfdh' sional aspirations. Coflfroth has peremptorily declined the democratic nomination in the ninth district, ojitl Mr. Lee is said to be willing to acwpfr it. ■ , If the democratic candidate isn’6 elected treasurer of Jasper county,'! and he never will be,perhaps he might start a pie bakery out in the far away state of Kansas and make -