The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-09-28

tTampling down mpossibilities in reoreatiuo I
the Government, in conducting the eraatest |
war of the century, and in liberatine four mill |
lions of slaves, and so forth, belongs to the |
loyal masses Of the people Of the loyal States.
In 1861 there was hardly a show of organized
opposition in the North to Mr.. Lincoin's ad-
ministration; the rank and file Of the Demo-
cratic party, with the Republicans. were
merged into the great Union war party. Our
leading Union generals, regulars and volun-
teers, were drawn from the old Democratic.
party; and Tammany Hall was as active as anv
Union league club in mastering regiments of
volunteers for the war. From the terrible dis
asters OF the Union armies in 1862 the Demo-
cratic party, in New York, for example took
bold ground for "a more vigorous prosecution
OF the war, " and the result was the election of
Horatio Seymour as Governor by ten thousand
majority. Pennsylvania also turned right
about face, and had the Democracy held fast to
that war platform they would doubtless have
been charged with the duties of carrying
through the war and the work of restoration.
Down to the fall elections of 1862, at all events,
the Republican party, charged with the con-
duct of the war, had failed, in the Judgment of
the people, to give a satisfactory report of
profit and loss.
But from that point the ''peace at any
price" follies and blunders of the Democratic
COpperhead leaders, and Abraham Lincoln's
emancipation proclamation and the victories
of Grant, and the great triumph at Gettys-
burg, brought over the loyal masses of the
North into an active support of the Republican
party against the Democratic Copperhead cry
that the war for the Union was failure, and
that we must have peace at any price. So it
was that the loyal masses of the North, with
lavish offerings of men, money, means, and
facilities of all kinds never before known in
the history of any people, carried through
the Administration, Congress, and the Repub-
% Of Ixo1
States and the abolition of slavery. And yet,
under Republican management, the war was
the most extravagant in its expenditures and
the most wasteful in men, money, and mate
rails of any war since the Florida war of Van
| Buren, in which forty millions of money were
| squandered in reducing less than thousand
| Seminole warriors.
The truth is that as the vital elements of
| the Republican party were drawn from the
| old Democratic party, so have the spoils and
plunder prOolivities of the one been transferred
| from the other. But what says Mr.. Conkling
He paints the Republican party as an angel of
light embarrassed in its path to the millen-
| mum, chiefly by Andrew Johnson, an angel of
\ darkness. All our present troubles are by
: Mr.. Conkling strapped upon the back of this
/ convenient scapegOat, Andrew Johnson. There
! is, however, another side to this picture The
| Republican party has been faithless to its
| pledges and to the will of the people. 1t pre-
sented to the people last year as its platform
of reconstruction the pending Constitutional
amendment leaving it to the respective States
to choose between suffrage and representation
on the one hand, and a restricted suffrage,
with corresponding loss of representation, on
the other. That platform, by overwhelming
majolities, was approved from Maine to Cali
fornia. Why was it, thus endorsed by the
people, abandoned by Congress Because the
party in power thought it had secured the
power to do anything, and because it thought
that with the establishment of negro su-
| premacy in the South, in addition to an over
shadowing moneyed oligarchy in the North,
its reign of power would be indefinitely
| extended.
Upon these great and momentous issues the
people in these coming Northern elections
will have to decide. Mr.. Conklng brings
forward Andrew Johnson as his stalking horse;
but these are the dangers which are behind
him, negro supremacy in the South, in the
place of the old slayeholding' 'oligarchy, and a
despotio moneyed monopoly in the North, com
pared with which the old United States Bank
and Andrew Jackson and Van Buren's pet
banks were mere bagatelles as agents of cor
ruption, imitation, and revulsion. Mr.. Conk-
ling's fancy sketch of the Republican party
will not do. They will have to meet this test
of their own delinquencies before the people,
and hence Andrew Johnson as a scapegoat will
no longer avail them.