The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-09-01
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER l, 1869.
DEAD AND LIVE ISSUES.

DbhD dND LII ' III 100 u mo.
The Democracy are profoundly agitated by the
question whether they shall adhere to dead
issues or seek to gain power by vigorous
discussion of live ones. The difference in
their ranks on this subject is nearly as wide
as the difference between two distinct party
organizations; and as it is now mani
tested in nearly every section of the
country, the quarrel is decidedly interest
ing and important. In Pennsylvania
sort of compromise was effected. The
dead-issue men constructed the platform and
pledged the party to go on fighting for State
rights and against the ratification of the fif
teenth amendment in the most approved old
fashioned style; while Packer, seeing, with
Yankee shrewdness, the folly of contest of
this description, wholly ignored the platform,
and invited support solely on account of his
professed desire to purge the State government
of imbecility, extravaganza and corruption.
In Ohio another attempt was made to carry
water on both shoulders. The dead-issue
men made platform embodying their ideas,
and placed upon it live-issue candidate,
General Rosecrans, but he, instead of follow
ing Packers example of accepting the nomi-
nation and splitting on the platform, declined
the nomination, and made a declaration of
principles directly opposite to those which
the Ohio Democracy are now attempting to
maintain under the leadership of Pendleton.
He warned the party against the leadership
of fossils, and plainly intimated that if they
were not forced to the background, it would
not only fail to regain power but richly de-
serve defeat. In Massachusetts,, as the pros
pect is desperate in any event, John Quincy
Adams has been permitted to conduct the
campaign on the live issue plan without op-
position, and he politely informs those who
adhere to the old system of ope-
rations that they are as foolish
as General Lee would be in marshalling Rebel
troops on the battlefield of Antetam to fight
over the old struggle, when no possible good
to a dead cause could result from his stupid
proceedings. In New York, the quarrel be-
tween the Bemontonians and the Tweedites
for the Craftsmanship of the Democratic
National Committee, while it involves various
personal issues, also hinges, to a con-
siderable extent, on the live and dead issue
controversy The World, which would gladly
infuse common sense into the councils of its
party. defends Belmont, while Pomeroy's
New York Democrat, which seeks to per-
petuate the quarrels in which the Rebels and
the Democracy have been SO badly defeated,
insists that Tweed shall lead the forces
of the party on to a new Appomattox.
Even in Kentucky the Louisville COUl3er-
J0u2Udl mindful of the necessities
of the hour, advocates an advanced
policy, for which it is denounced by its rural
contemporaries, and in other Southern States
the shrewd Democratic leaders find great diff
ficulty in forcing their stubborn adherents to
prepare to ''accept the situation cordially,
when their revengeful feelings prompt them
to keep on butting their heads against a stone
wall forever. The fight is really
between mind and matter. Both
factions desire the triumph of
the Democratic party but the dead issue men
have not yet fully comprehended the impera-
tive necessity of an abandonment of repudia-
ton, secession, and antagonism to the fiji
teenth amendment. They think, with Shy
lock, that they might as well lose life as the
means whereby they live, and that no defeat
can be more dreadful in its consequences than
a voluntary surrender of their favorite prin-
ciples. They cannot realize that Democracy,
as they understand it, is dead past all hope
of resurrection, and that the organization can
only gain strength by seeking it in fresh fields
and pastures new.