Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1871-12-01
Impending Crisis of the Democracy.
BY vIcE.PREsIDENT CoLFAx.

Death or defeat! Surrender or over,
throw! These are the unwelcome alter !
natives which now confront the once |
proud and powerful Democratic party of |
the nation. Last spring how jauntily !
their leading presses talked of Republican
disintegration; how boastingly they proph-
esied the overthrow of Republican domi |
nation; how oracularly they discussed, as
they have for so many years, of Republi- |
can violations of the Constitution, which
were at last to be rebuked by the uprising
of an indignant people. Anon the State.
elections began to be heard from; but their
rebuke fell on the Democracy instead, and
the New Departure became the theme of
their discussion. They might be willing,
they thought, to escape the odium of their
past course by accepting the measures they
had fought against so zcalously, if the peo-
pie would again intrust them with power.
But the elections went on; and with the
clearest possible voice they declared,
either on old platforms or new ones, on
the principles of '64 or '6S, even with the
resolutions of '98 attached or detached
the people would not have the Democracy
to rule over them.
The anthem of Republican victories
thus resOunding across a continent i'm a
year, too, when the victors themselves
/ scarcely expected such succession of tri-
umphs-has had chilling result or the
/ Democratic leaders, but recently so buoy
ant and elate. Their jubilant roosters re-
! fuse to crow. The pyramids of States
which were to insure the Democratic tri-
umph of 1879 have tumbled into ruins,
| Their bitter personal attacks on the Presi-
dent continue, regardless of their evident
lack of effect on all unprejudlced minds.
And the railing accusations against the
Republicans as Constitutional breakers are
kept up; for during ten years Democracy
has consisted in arguing that every meas
ure for the protection of the nation or the
individual was flagrantly unconstitutional
But the utter hopelessness of the party is
evinced by the discussions now going on
in its presses of the plan proposed by the
st. Louis Republican, one of the ablest
and boldest of their leading papers, that
the Democracy should make no national
nominations, but support Independent Re.
publicans for President and Vice-Presi-
dent And Senator Blair, their last candi-
date for the latter office, and one of the
frankest of their public men, declares to
a Southern audience that, "rather than go
back on my own principles (by agreeing
formally to the New Departure) | would
prefer to make a choice of Republicans,
and go for a man who should be nomin.
ated by the disaffecled Republicans" etc.
What a change is this that has come
DER the spirit of their dreams! The once
great and potential organization that has
for so many years governed this country
that in the days of its prime oyerthrew
every party that resisted its sway that
but recently was so full of hope and en-.
thusiasm, and so sanguine of its return
after its long exile, to national power, is
Iiccncotno hot 30,
Democrats at all at the Presidential elec,
ton of 1872 To nominate candidates OF
their own party, believers of their own
principles, is, as they see plainly, to GO
down to a foredoomed defeat. To aban'
don the field in advance is political death,
real or assumed. Such is the sad dilemma
affecting the Democratic mind.
There is reason for this decline and
fall of a once powerful party. 1t is writ
ten in its later history. Itself has been
its worst enemy. 1t has forced the people
to believe that it has still, as during the re-
bellion, a Southern and Northern face
That, as it then on the one side warred
! for the destruction of the nation, and or
J the other side warred on all the war meas
ures of the Government, SO now at the
South it inspires or palliates organized
outrage and assassination, and at the
North denounces every effort of the nation
to punish such horrid and unexamplet
rlmes as tyrannical and unconstitutional
r In the issues they have voluntarily made
Z on this question they have been smitter
: with political blindness-perhaps mlslet
? by the fact that some able Republicans
I doubted the wisdom of all the details ol
7 the Ku-KluX bill. But our opponents
7 could not have made themselves weaker
before the people at large than by the bit
ter denunciations which have been thu
9 staple of their canvassing speeches thi
, year. Their arguments, that the nation
had no right to enforce its constitution an(
b laws far the protection of its citizens
seemed exactly akin to their theory of tel
j years ago, that the nation had no right I,