The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1856-11-15
personal Abuse.

The Chicago Press, Tribune, and many
other fusion papers, since the result of the
election has been made known, are consoling
themselves over zone peculiarly of the late
contest" for which they claim vast
amount Of credit for fusionism. They claim
that throughout the whole political canvass
the fusion press and orators abstained wholly
from personal abuse of the democratic can
didates. while on the other hand, the de-
mocrats habitualiy 'indulged in personaii-
ties, the grossness of which are unparalleled
in political annals" tEF .tsi II
Whether their object in giving so much
prominence at this time to this popularity Of
the canvass, is to illustrate, from the result,
the bad policy of again exercising such
singular forbearance towards their oppo-
nents, is not very clearly stated, although
such seems to be the corollary intended.
1t is an ungratcful business, in their pre-
sent trbulation, to deprive our opponents of
any little consolation they can gather, but
in reference to this ''peculiarity," for which
so much credit is claimed, We must sa; that
it is about the mos. impudent thing 81 t,..
season. The ChicseJ Tribune and Press,
espscc.-ny, that from the very commence
! mcnt Of the contest to its close, scarcely al
lowed day to pass in which they did not
heap upon Judge Douglas, who was not a
candidate, and upon Col. Richardson, our
candidate for governor, their columns of the
most filthy abuse that ever disgraced a
newspaper, should be the last in the world
to boast of their abstinence from personali-
ty. Judge Douglas was characterized as
unprincpled, INSCRIPTIONS, fetid mass of
political corrupton-crawling on his belly to
the south-was drunkard, an awful liar,
( &c, &c, &c. Such to the end Of the
BLACKBOARD vocabulary, were the mild cpl
thets with which the readers of these papers
were daily RECALLED. Col Richardson was, if
possible, still more brutally destined with
this kind of abuse. He was a gambler, q
drunkard, 4 liar, &C., &c. Col. Hamilton
was cheat and rObber. John Hogan was
everything that was bad, and so on, to the
end Of the list OF prominent democratic ora
tors and candidates.
The truth is, if credit for forbearance from
personality can be claimed by either party
in the late contest, it belongs rather to the
democrats than their opponents. The can
didates of the fusioEists, from Fremont
down, were mostly renegade democrats-a
class Of trimming, trading politicians that
are too apt, in their private relations, to be
as tricky and unreliable as in their political
relations, and therefore peculiarly exposed
to personal" assaults. That comparatively
ew such assaults, however, were INDUCED in
by the democratic journals, is fact of which
we challenge successful contradiction. We
freely admit, however, that gross personal
ity" infinitely too much, and disg raceful as
such things always are, was INDUCED by pa
pers of al parties, and until the world is We
~ greatly reformed, we fear such things
will continue to be. The aim of respectable
journals should be to discountenance the
whole business and bring it into disrepute,
not to provoke new outbreak by unmerited
charges on the one hand and hypocritcal as.
symptoms OF purity on the other, SO palpa-
bly, ridiculous and unfounded.