Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1870-10-07
Always on the Wrong Side.

For the last twenty years it has SEEM
ed impossible for this Democratic organ.
ization, as a party, to get on the right
side OF any issue, new or old. When
border ruffians drove the people of Kan.
sss from the poll. aud by fraudulent votes
elected a pro slavery Legislature, and f.
nally sought to impose hateful consti'
tuition establishing slavery there on q
people who almost Unanimously denounc.
cd it, the Democratic party championed
this Wickedness. When the Dred Scott
decision, intended to make slavery ma
tional and all powerful, was proclaimed,
they cordially Endorsed it. All through
the war, every measure to strengthen the
nations arm and weaken the enemy 6,
whether conflscstioD, emancipation, or
colored soldiers, etc, was, in their opinion,
wrong or unconstitutional, tit only to
be denounced. When the war closed, and
The question came up whether the insur-
gent 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 to raise its
armies, or whether every effort should
be made, ON the contrary, to organize
them on basis of loyalty to the Union,
the Democratic party instinctively in
sisted upon the former. When tax bills
and draft laws became necessary to the
preservation of the national existence,
they warred upon all their details as
wicked and tyrsnnical. When the in
teTest on the national debt could only be
honestly lessened by showing the world
that cur national credit would be sa-
credly 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 lway sought to
poison the public mind against them,
When our greenbacks, whose ulti-
mate value they had formerly discred-
tied, were rising in value toward
gold, they clamored for Issues OF hun
Greds of thousands of millions more, to
verify their unful6illed prophecies of
evil about them. When President Grant
commenced paying off the debt with the
surplus revenues 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 q
bill to honestly reduce the interest on our
bonds, by mutual arrangement with our
creditors, or by paying OFF our bondswith
the proceeds of the new, they voted
eEoiAcb ~. w AASh Az PhcSSAl1 o AAAA w
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amend
inents, with penalties only against evil
.doers and ofenders, they resisted it with
yehemence and zeal, When it passed
laws for the restoration of rebel
States to representation in the Union,
the Democracy condemned their provis-
IONS and fought them to the bitter end.
When the law to guard the ballot.box at
national elections was passed, Furnishing
illegal voting, shameless repeating, and
fraudulent counting, they denounced it
and its penalties, as if the acts it punished
were not the wickedest of crimes against
free government and republican institu
tiohs. And, finally, when war broke
out in Europe that outraged the moral
sentiment. of the world, and without pro-.
vocation, Germany was compelled to arm
for the protection of the fatnerlapd from
iuvation and despoilnent, 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 leaders seem de-
termined that II shall ever be on the side
of wrong (Which appeals to the people
to-day to clothe them with national pow
er.-Fr0m Vice President CoJaI's Speech at
South Bend ....- ,.......