Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1875-03-05
Murder as a Power In Politics.


Murders of passion affect the peace,
the &ell-ordering of society; but they
do not touch the source of its life. Com.
binations for robbery and plunder, with
the design to commit murder as an Incl.
dent or as a means, are more dangerous
to the public peace, and the criminals
are Justly considered the enemies of the
human race; but even they do not at
tempt through their criminal acts the
destruction of the State itself. 1t is the
essence of a republican government
that the citizens shall have entire free
dom OF thought and action in political
affairs. The least restraint upon the
humblest citizen as upon the highest is
an otfense to the body.politic. What
then shall be said of an order, and how
shall it be characterized, that by intimi-
dation, manning, stealthy murder and
open assassination seeks to obtain pow
er for a class; of an order that seeks
through these means to change the char
acter of the Government by corrupting
it at it's source? Thus with them the
chiefest of personal and social crimes are
also the chiefest of political crimes.
AS murder for the destruction of the
State is higher, grosser crime than
murder which is the result of personal
passion and as organizations which
propose murder as means of changing,
overthrowing or corrupting the Govern
ment at its source are fouler than those
which contemplate murder as Il possible
means of robbery and plundcr, so the
deeds which have been committed in the
South by the Ku-Klux and kindred organ
izations must ever be denounced as the
basest and most dangerous of the crimes
recorded In the annals of mankind. Nor
is there any excuse in the suggestion or
statement that the members OF this or
ganization make no war upon the Gov
ernment of the United States. They make
war upon citizens of the Ulited States,
and they make war upon the States
which are integral parts of the United
States.
They know the power of the States,
and we too know the power of the States
These same men organized the rebellion
of 1861 through the existence and power
of the rebel States, and one of our chief
means of suppressing the rebellion was
found in the existence and power of the
loyal States.
Do we need further instruction upon
this point? Is not the concerted attempt
of the rebel leaders to place every South
ern State in rebel hands a warning to the
people of the North? Their policy is
plain, their course is clear. First, either
by fraud or violence, they secure control
OF those States in the South which, if
left to themselves, would be Republican
and then within the National Govern
ment they use its power for their own
purposes, or failing in that they again
attempt its overthrow.
Within the Government they can
effectually undermine and ultimately de-
stroy it. A government without credit
is contemplate in peace and wholly
powerless in war. At the commence
ment of the rebellion our debt did not
exceed hundred million dollars, but we
are now embarrassed by debt of two
thousand million. An Administration in
the hands of the South could easily aug
ment this debt to twenty-five hundred
or three thousand million dollars in
four years. Meager sources of revenue,
negligence and profligacy in it's col
lection, extravaganza of expenditure,
the return of the cotton tax,
and the payment of cotton claims
and war claims would work out the
problem within single Presidential
term. To every country vast public
debt is public calamity to be tolerated
and endured only as pestilence and
famine are tolerated and endured; but
to us our vast public debt is now a pub
lie national danger. The great error of
our politics, both as regards the continu-
ance of power in the hands of the Repub-
lican party and the preservation of the
Government itself, was the reduction of
our revenue.
But this unlawful conspiracy in the
South, now apparently directed against
negroes and the much-abused class of
Northern men known as carpet-baggers,
is in truth conspiracy against the Gov
ernment of the United States; and il is
not too much to say that it has in its
hands the means of accomplishing its
object unless the North again offers the
united resistance it offered during the
war. The Democratic party, which
challenges the Judgment Of the country
for support, is in its organization a
tyrant. 1t never respects individual
opinion; it never recognizes individual
will. 1t is indifferent topersonal wrongs
1t questions, it disputes, it denies the
authority of the General Government,
but it admits, adorns, dignites, crowns
local rule. This is the ethical, the pclit-
ical basis on which the conspiracy in the
South rests, and resting on this basis it
has the power to destroy the National
Government. Canyon offer to the enemies
of the negro, to the enemies ofthe Nation
al Government, TO the friends of secession,
a more acceptable basis in politics than
thisY And this is what the Democratic
party ofiers,-Senator B0utUelps Speech on
Louisiana Affairs.
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