The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-07-01
Reconstruction and Restoration of the De.
mOcratic Party-V0ice Of New York.

mOcratic Party-VOice Of New York.
From The ~. Y Herald.
The approaching Democratic Convention
will be the most important general council of
the party since that of Charleston, in 1860,
when the national organization of that day on
the slavery question was broken up and scat
tered to the winds. That Convention was one
of Democratic disruption and dissolution; this
is appointed for the task of Democratic recon-
struction and restoration. In 1860 the party,
having fallen behind the progressive ideas of
the age, was thrown aside and went down; in
1868, after eight long years of penance in
sackcloth and ashes, of fasting, humiliation
and prayer, in rising to its feet again, it has
fair prospect, on the living issues of the day,
of regaining the White House and another
lease of power. brief glance behind US will
enable us to understand the battle before us.
We know nothing of what is to come, and in
all human affairs we can only provide for the
future from the teachings of the past.
There was but one political party, we may
say, although many factions existed in the
country, under Washington's administration.
The old Republican party, which blossomed as
an opposition party under the elder Adams,
came into power in 1900 with Jefferson. 1t
was the tree upon which the later Democratic
party was engrafted under General Jackson.
The Virginia State rights resolutions of "'9S
and 1897 were the groundwork of the old Re-
largely due to the leading Jeffersonian politi-
clans of New York. In 1924 the old Federal
party having been entirely wiped out, the
dividing lines between it and the Republican
party also disappeared, and so the peo-
pie at that day were described as
FALL Republicans and all Federalists. The
consequences were, first, a Presidential scrub
ford, and Clay; second, failure to elect by
the people; and, third, the election of Adams
by the House of Representatives by a coali-
tion with Clay. Against this coalition of what
John Randolph styled ''the Puritan and the
Blackleg" the Democratic party under jack
son was organized, as the lineal successor of
the old republican party against the elder
Adams. In 1928, Jacksons first election, New
York gave him her vote by only some five
thousand majority; but from that day for
twenty years the organization and the policy
of the Democratic party and its Presidential
nominations were mainly controlled by Martin
Van Buren, and his associates of the Albany
Regency, speaking for the Empire State.
We come now to a very important epoch
the Presidential election of lS48. In that con-
test (Martin Van Buren,, against his preten-
sions to a second term, having been for the
second time overslaughed in the regular De-
mOcratic convention by the Southern oligarchy,
because they disliked him on the slavery ques-
tion) there was regular split of the New York
Democracy. Van Buren, having resolved to
be trihed with DO longer, boldly took the field
as an independent candidate. He was nomi-
mated by the famous Buffalo Free Soil Con-
vention, of which the present Chief Justice
/ Chase was the ruling spirit, and the result was
the defeat of Cass, the regular Democratic
nominee, and the election of Taylor. This was
in lS4S, and upon this very Van Buren,. Chase
| free soil platiorm-'no further extension of
| slavery"-Seward became the great apostle of
the Republican party, organized six years later,
and upon this identical platform Abraham
Lincoln was first elected in 1860
Here the remarkable fact appears that Sal
mon p. Chase, of all living men, is entitled to
the distinction of the founder of the Republ-
can party in providing the platform and in
opening the way for its advancement to the
possession of the Government. But the main
thing to be remembered is this, that this
breaking up of the old Southern slaveholding
oligarchy and of the Democratic party as it
was began with Van Buren,, the right hand
man of Jackson, and with the elite of the jack
sonian democracy of New York. The vote OF
New York in lS4S was-
For Lewis Cass, regular Democrat ........."lll3 38
For NJ arun Van Buren, iree soil Den....."l2O,5lO
Total Democratic and Free Soil vote 234 82S
For Zachary Taylor. ,6OS
Majority against Taylor. ...... So. ........ Id. .22i
But Taylor's plurality gave him the elec-
toral vote of New York and elected him. In
! 1914 the boot was on the other leg; for Henry
Clay was then defeated by the diversion OF
some fifteen thousand New York Wing
AbOlitionists over TO Birney, when, If they had
lsvoted the Clay ticket, they would have given
e