Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1872-03-17
THE 'PossUM POLICY.

The policy of the Democratic party now,
is what we call the play dead or postum
policy. These words just about express
the purpose of the party. We have good
authority for saying so. The New York
World in recent editorial bold advocated
it in these words, and we invite serious at
tention to them:
Do We then, favor the so-called passive pol
icy2 Not at all; we oppose it now, as we have
opposed it always. When the proper time
comes, the Democratic organization will take
very active and very aggressive part in the en-
suing Presidential election. It will hold its ma
tionRl convention as usual. It will nominate It's
ticket in the usual form. By means Of the ma
tional convention it will hold its party together
as q united organizations, and come into the
contest an unbroken and disciplined host. The
Democratic party will be kept equally well IN
hand whether it gives battle early or late.
Is this the kind of contest the friends
of honest government, of civil liberty, of
law and order propose to participate in,
simply because Schurz and Upton, or
Summer, through personal hatred
to Grant, invite them to it? Are
sensible men to be led into such
trick, such deep plot to
Uu1u J1IC ONOA W Ol1O lA4GhOO VI
the kuklux and of Tammany
In reply to the Worlds bold disclosure,
the New York Post, heretofore inclined to
Liberal Republicanism, denounces this
'possum policy as a contemplate fraud and
trick. 1t then says of the New Hampshire
election: ''It is to the Democrats as a
party that New Hampshire speaks. 1t tells
them that as long as they maintain party
organization, which has been prostituted
for twenty years to every base design of
demagogues, from Buchanan's scheme to
subject Kansas to slavery down to Pendle-
toms plan for reputation, they can find
no favor with the people. AS long as the
main issue is kept before the country,
whether or not a set of political tricksters
who hold a powerful organization for sale
to any demagogue in exchange for power
shall he trusted will the national govern
ment, the people will vote them down.
The old Democratic organization must be
pulverized before the people will regard it
as safe to abandon the Republican party !;
the party whose primary work was to put
down its bargaining, and to restore princi-
piles to their place in politics. Only when
the traditional conspiracy which calls it.
self the Democratic party disappears, with
all its inveterate trickeries, from the poll
teal world, will the honest people who
have been so long kept busy contending
against its immortality be able to turn their
attention entirely to newer but less mo-
mentOus issues.
"There is no moral life in political par
ty which contains at once Pendleton and
Seymour, Hoffman and Blair, Tilden and
Tweed, Hancock and Jefferson Davis,
Chase and Alexander H. Stephens, Hen
bricks, and Sweeney. The organization
which keeps such men together is fraud
upon its face f; it has not single principle
of union, and if they join in convention
upon one platform and one set of candi-
dates, it is obvious that they are merely
blinded by common desire for power, to
all that ought to be the essential elements
Of a political canvass"