The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-10-05

gine Company
"IF WILLIAM Il. SEWARD SHOULD
BE ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE
UNITED STATES, l WOULD BE IN
FAVOR OF A DISSOLUTION OF THE
UNION, and, moreover, the South
would be justified in dissolving the
Union in case Of such an event"
The Democratic Party-Its Record and
Its Proposed Policy.
Tue effort which is being made to seduce Re
publicans into the support of the Democratic
party makes it proper that the record OF that
party should be carefully considered. If it is
to be entrusted with political power, we want
to know what use it will make of the trust
Whittier will it lead us? We can only judge
Of the future by the past and, judging by the
past, we certainly can find very little encour-
agement for trusting to Democratic leadership.
For thirty years preceding the Rebellion the
Democratic party had almost uninterrupted
control of the Government. How was that
power used2 Was it employed to build up
and strengthen and consolidate the Union, to
GRITTY the principles Of free government and
to extend the area of free institutions; to de-
Velop true nationality of sentiment and pa
triotiO devotion to the great Republic itself, as
thenoblest and dearest inheritance bequeathed
to us by the great and good men of former
timesY By no means. On the contrary, its power
was used to further the ambitious and sectional
schemes of the slave oligarchy-to extend the
most sacred safeguards of civil hberty-to
oster State pride at the expense of devotion
to the Constitution and the Union, and to pre-
pare the way for the final catastrophe of the
Rebellion--a catastrophe which, in the inten-
tions of its leaders, involved nothing less than
the total overthrow of free institutions on this
continent, and the erection of a vast slave
empire on their ruins The Rebellion of 1861
was but the natural sequence, the necessary
outgrowth, of the principles and policy of the
Democratic party. The period between 1850
and 1860 will stand as the darkest era in Anne
rican history. 1t covers the suppression of
the right of petition in the House of Represen-
tatives the violation of the mails by the slave
oligarchy, the passage of the infamous Fugi-
tive Slave bill, the repeal of the Missouri COM
promise restriction, the Kansas outrages and
the attempt to force the proslavery LecOmp-
ton Constitution upon a protesting people,
and the prostitution of the Supreme Court
L. EIo eIo, 4ha falca hiSfOry
and the false law of the Dred Scott decision,
These are the monuments erected along the
pathway of the Democratic party. These are
its credentials its certificates of character, its
recommendations to public confidence and
favor.
But the later record of this party is still
more atrociOus. The Rebellion of 1960-61
was nothing more or less than the Rebellion of
the Democratic party. The Rebel leaders
were the leaders of the Democratic party, and
its supporters, both North and South, were
Democrats alone. A Democratic President
played into their hands; and the Government
was passed over to the Republicans with
eleven States in open rebellion; a hostile Con-
federacy fully organized; armies in the field,
armed and equipped with munitions stolen
from the United States; ships, forts, and
arsenals treacherously delivered up to the
traitors; and the whole fabric of the Govern
ment apparently trembling to its fall. This
was the pass to which thirty years of Demo
cratic rule had brought US
During the long and bitter struggle that
followed, the Democratic party was the open,
notorious, and avowed sympathizer with the
Rebellion; and the latest recorded utterance of
a Democratic National Convention is that the
war for the Union was ''failure' and dis
grace. The Union was saved the Rebellion
was suppressed, and the authority of the
nation was restored, in spite of all that the
Democratic party could do to the contrary.
This is the record of the party that now
asks the people to entrust it with power
Could any demand be more absurd and impu-
dent 2 What Give party power that has
shown only fatal capacity for using it to
evil ends that has already nearly ruined the
country, plunged us into civil war, heaped uI
a mountain load of debt, and sacrificed upor
gre bloody altar of wicked rebellion hal
ilIion of precious human lives 2 The idel
madness and national suicide.
The suppression of the Rebellion has left u
"a great work of reconstruction, the mos
Important problem by far that ever engages
Ed, ..o,,4;o,, of the American people. Wha