Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1871-12-22
The Democratic Party.

| In speaking OF the DemOcrauc party
we necessarily use name which includes
many persons of whom what we say OF
the party itself cannot be truly affirmed.
| When we say, for instance, that the Dem
ocratic policy was inhuman, we do not
mean, nor reasonably imply, that every
individual member of that party is cruel
as, when we speak OF the ambitious and
dangerous political purposes of the Roman
Church, we do not, in any just sense, ac-
cuse all adherents of that Church of hos
tility to our institutions. A party is, in
some points, but by no means entirely,
| like an army. 1t has general movement,
to which every soldier must conform, and
the general direction of its march is de-
termined by circumstances which the sim
gle soldier cannot control, and to which
he must submit. In country like ours
the active political forces are organized in
two bodies, and it is the tendency and
spirit of each which are criticised when
the name is mentioned.
Many persons call themselves Demo
Gratis because they approve the democrat
ic principle. But the history OF the Dem
ocratic party shows little regard for the
principle. For generation the organiza-
tion known by that name was a body
whose chief policy was the protection,
extension, and perpetuity of human slave
ry, The central fact in the history of the
party is not that il advocated revenue
tariff, opposed the United States Bank,
and was Jealous of the limits of govern
ment, but that it cherished slavery and
caused the civil war; The democratic
principle is fair play for all men. The
Democratic policy was slavery. 1t is folly
to try to escape this truth by saying that
the North foisted slavery upon the coun-
| try, and that the Constitution guaranteed
the right of property in man. If all this
| had been admitted, the Democratic policy
would logically have been the restriction
of slavery in every way, drawing line of
! fire around it, rs General Dix said that,
! like the scorpion, it might sting itself to
death. This would have been, assuming
that nothing more could have been done,
the natural policy of real democratic
party--of party that really sought fair
play. But this was precisely the policy
that the party rejected, because it was con
trolled by the slave-masters and it was
precisely the policy which the party bit
terly opposed as unfraternal when it ap-
peared as the Republican policy.
This organized apology for slavery, and
justification of it, and passionate hatred
of its opponents, are the chief roots of
our political decentralization. Nor will
any Democrat who knows the facts deny
that his party is strongest to-day in those
parts of the country where there is the
most ignorance, and where the cruel faith
and feeling of the time when slavery was
supreme survive. He would not assert
that the Ku-Klux, for instance, are Re
publicans; nor that they intimidate Dem
ocrats from the polls. The truth is that
the Democratic party does not now re.
present, and never has represented, the
democratic idea. Assuming that the Re.
publicans are as corrupt, and that in the
dishonesty of administration they have
bettered the Democratic example, il
nevertheless remains true that the Repub
lican is the only party in our history
which has ever asserted and put in prac
tice the democratic principle of equa
human rights.
And the latest hostility to that princi
pie survives, organized, in the Democratic
party. We are told to let by-gones be by
cones. We are reminded that the veal
1871 is not the year 1860. We are asked
if there is to be no end of the old battles
and if we really suppose that the Demo
Gratis wish to restore slavery. We arr
pointed to the Republican corruption ant
Capitalization. The reply is simple
granting it all, is the Democratic
party as we know it. and as it shows itsel
every day, more likely to protect and de
fend liberty, or to administer the govern
mcnt more honestly Certainly we dc
not suppose that all good men are in thu
Republican party, nor that Democra
may not be honest and patriotic. But w
certainly say that those men sustain
party to which the most dangerous classes
in the country belong, and whose policy
were the party successful, would be di
rectcd-as it always has been, as it wa
in its last National Convention-by tn,
more positive and mischievous of its lead
ers. The return of that party to poweI
would be the menace of incaculabe evils
because it would intrust the administra
ton of the government, under changed
Constitution, to those who hate thu
: changes and resisted them, and who hav,
stigmatized them as revolutionary ant
void. If there were even promise o
greater purity of administration simply
it might be some mitigation of the natu
, raj alarm at the prospect of Democrat,
ascendancy. But the traditions, the spir
it, the composition, the theories, the de
| claratiOns, the arts of the party summon
every citizen who does not think that
change of name is a change of things t.
/ work faithfully until the party which wa
J the body-guard of human slavery in thi
! republic is not only utterly defeated, bu
isbanded.-HdIper's Weekly.