The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1870-10-07
THE BLUNDERING DEMOCRACY.

For the last twenty years il has SEEM
ed impossible for the Democratic orr
ganization, as party, to get on the
right side of any issne, new or old.
When border ruffians drove the people
of Kansas from the polls, and by fraud
ulent votes elected a pro-slavery Legis-
lature, and finally sought to impose
hateful constitution establishing siav-
ery there on a people who almost unan-
imously denounced it, the Democratic
party championed this wickedness.
When the bred Scott decision, intend
ed to make slavery national and all
powerful, was proclaimed, they cordial
Nv Endorsed it. All through the war,
every measure to strengthen the ma
toms arm and weaken the enemy's,
whether confiscation, emancipation, or
coiored soldiers, etc., was, In their opln-
ion, wrong or unconstitutional, tit only
to be denounced. When the war closed,
and the question came up whether the
insurgent states should be restored to
the rule of the very men who had used
their executive, legislative and judicial
powers to organize the rebellion and
raise its armies, or whether every effort
should be made, on the contrary, to or
ganize them on basis of loyalty to the
Union, the Democratic party instinct
lively insisted on the former. When
tax bills and draft laws became necessa-
ry to the preservation of the national
existence, they warred upon all their
details as wicked and tyrannical. When
the interest on the national debt could
only be honestly lessened by showing
the world that our national credit would
be sacredly maintained at the highest
point by all parties, their speakers and
presses denounced those who had lent
us the money as if they were swindlers,
and in every possible way sought to
poison the public mind against them.
When our greenbacks, whose ultimate
value they had formerly discredlted,
were rising in value toward gold, they
| clamored for issues of hundreds or
thousands of millions more, to verify
their unfulfilled prophesies of evil
about them. When President Grant
commenced paying off the debt with
the surplus revenue that his honest and
efficient officers had collected, they de-
nounced his buying the bonds at their
current value in the market of the
world When Republican Congress
passed bill reducing taxation SSO,OOO,-
| 600, they registered their votes, as par
ty, against it. When the same party
passed bill to honestly reduce the in
| terest on our bonds, by mutual ar
rangement with our creditors, or by
paving off our old bonds with the pro-
ceeds of the new, they voted against it.
When it passed bill to enforce the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments,
with penalties only against evildoers
and offenders, they resisted it with ve-
hemence and zeal. When it passed
laws for the restoration of rebel States
to representation in the Union, the De-
mocracy condemned their provisions
and fought them to the bitter end.
| When law to guard the ballot-box at
national elections was passed, punish
ing illegal voting, shameless repeating,
and fraudulent counting, they denoun-
ced it and its penalties, as if the acts il
punished were not the wickedest of
crimes against free government and re-
| publican institutions. And, finally,
| when a war broke out in Europe that
outraged the moral sentiment of the
world, and without provOcation, Ger
many was compelled to arm for the pro-
lection of the fatherland from invasion
and despoilment, their leading organs,
as distinctly as in the other cases have
cited, took the wrong side. 1t is this
party-a party of reaction, of parti san
opposition-whose leaders seem deter
mined that it shall ever be on the side
of wrong-which appeals to the people
to-day to clothe them with national
power.-From a Speech at South Bend,
Ind, by Vice-President ColfaX.