The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1866-04-03
what the Democratic Party has Cost
f.t M the Country. t3s


The national debt, the whole cost of
the war, its vast slaughter of men and
destruction of property, and the taxes
it has entailed, are the return the peo-
pie have received for their confidence in
the Democratic party. From its inyen-
ton to its attempted execution, seces-
sion was purely Democratic. The mem
bers of a Democratic administration
conspired the plot to precipitate the re-
bellion. A Democratic administration
disarned the government before seces-
sion, and gave it immunity by the dec
laration that the government had no
constitutional power to defend itself.
A Democratic administration trans
ferred the public arms to the control of
defenseless before them. The leaders
of the democratic party were the lead
ers of the rebellion, and they still con-
tinued the leaders ofthe whole party.
The rebellion made no division in the
party. The same leaders continued to
exercise the same control. Their con-
federates in the North maintained that
the government had no constitutional
power to put down rebellion. They
opposed every measure to raise troops
for the national defense, and to provide
means to pay them. They opposed the
arming of the Northern States for their
defense. They sought to divide the
NOElut
terms. They continually declaimed
that every act of defense against rebel
lion was a violation of the constitution.
They boasted their consistent adherence
to their resolution never 10 vote man
or dollar to putGown rebellion. They
labored to magnify and protract the
war, with the deliberate design that its
burdens should break down the gov
ernment. stsy,,,lsLyf
They strovo to discourage volunteer
ing, and to stir up disaffaction, and to
organize sedition. They denounced the
draft as unconstitutional, and melted
forcible resistance to it. They organ
lied conspiracies to oprecipitate revolt in
the North, and to bring in savage
Southern army to ravage and lay waste
the country. They melted the barbar-
GUS treatment of our soldiers in the
South, and the spirit of murder against
all our public men. They met in gen.
eral convention and resolved that the
war to restore the Union had failed,
and should stop. Their aid and encour-
agement, and the hopes they held out,
kept the rebellion alive long. after its
cause was hopeless, and multiplied. the
cost of the war. They served their
Southern party leaders all through the
war, and now when the rebel military
power has submitted, and is ready TO
ratify the death ofsecession and slavery,
the Northern Democratic party seeks to
revive these issues, and to renew the
conflict. a-rt z1snaE1 900 a t'se
Let democratic journals and orators
howl over the debt and taxes their war
has brought. They but magnify their
own sins. Every dollar Of debt is q
democratic legacy. Every tax is dem
ocratfc gift. Every government stamp
is a democratic sticking plaster Every
person IN the United States drinks
in democracy in his tea, his coffee and
his whiskey, and in the sugar where
with he sweetens them. Each ingredi-
ent pays its quota for the cost of demo-
cracy to the country. The smoker in
physicked by democracy. The laborer
gives about one hours labor every day
TO pay for democracy. The capitalist
pays one tenth of his income for the
cost of the democratic party. Every
transfer of property is saddled with the
democratic burden. Before he IS be-
gotten the child is subject to the demo-
cratic tax. From the cradle to the grave
he never is free from it. The funeral
mourning must firstEpay the penalty of
democratic rule, and portion of that
which he leaves Behind must go into
this democratic vortex.
Generation after generation will car
nv this democratic burden from birth
to death. Like the original divine
curse, it will be felt in the sweat of the
brow of the laborer and in the travail
of woman, and in swallowing,u up por-
tion of the earth's productions for all
time. But for the democratic party
our people would hardly have known
the nature of taxation. But for it the
hundreds of thousands of young men
whose bones are strewn over the South
would now be productive laborerS and
the support and comfort of families
now desolate. No one will attempt
to deBy all this Indictment. No one
will pretend that the democratic party
had any cause for rebellion; Yet IT mas
the effrontery to cry over the burdens
of taxation. And as the father of the
democratic party, when he had stripped
job of family and possessions, charged
it to his own sins, and sought to draw
him from his integrity, so his democrat
ic sons now come forward with equal
effrontery and charge their doings up
howl over their affiietions, and seek to
seduce them from their integrity, to
elect to power the party that has brought
all thesewoes upon the land, 81 81.
THE Chicago Tribune beseeches Gen.
Grant not to go to Europe at present.
It fears that great emergency may
come upon the country during his ab;
sence, and It tdares not trust Gen. Shere
man in such case with the control of
the army. The emergency is to come,
according to the Tribune, in this way,
and, the, joke,is that the Tribune is rs
serious as any deacon in its Prophesyk
ing: Congress will pass the civil
rights bill, or some other bill, over the
Presidents veto; the President will
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