The New York herald., 1875-09-20
The Southern Democrats In the National
Convention.

nals are busy with calculations regarding the
influences likely to affect the Republican
National Convention next year, and among
the speculations one statement figures promi-
nently-that 'the South" will come up to
the Convention prepared to vote in a solid
body. This would be only for the Southern
republicans to pursue the political strategy
which has enabled them during the last four
years to control the republican majority in
! Congress. 1t has been a singular spectacle
In Washington to see a handful of men,
mostly political adventurers, with no solid
4 influence in their States, with constantly
diminishing political power there, and una
bic last year TO carry more than two out
of the twelve Southern States-to see this
handful Of Southern republicans control the
great body of their fellow partisans in Con-
! gress by merely presenting solid and un-
broken front of opposition to all reforms
which would affect them, united with an
unhesitating and unquestioning support of
all the pet schemes of their Northern
friends" In the republican caucuses last
winter every proposed reform was choked by
the opposition of the Southern men and
these were the leaders, the speakers, the
actors, the eonquerors, in every caucus or
other meeting for private consultation held
by the republicans during the winter. They
succeeded not more by their misrepresenta-
tions of Southern affairs and their appeals for
support, than by their superserviceable zeal
in abetting the schemes of their Northern
allies, which enabled them readily to divide
Al,
will pursue similar tactics in the next
National Convention and thus control, if
they can, its policy, if not its nomi-
nations there can be little doubt; though
the fact that they will come up as the repre-
sentatives of States which they cannot carry,
and all but two of which are sure to go dem
! ocratic, will doubtless weaken their power.
| We are surprised, however, that it has not
occurred to the spectators in the political
future that the Southern democrats may in
their turn come up into the National Demo-
cratic Convention prepared to act together and
to cast solid vote. They will, Of course, be
numerically as strong in the Democratic as the
Southern republicans will be in the Republ-
can Convention. Morally they will be inf
nitely stronger for they will be the repre-
sentatives in their Convention of great body
of strongly democratic States of popula-
ton which will swell the democratic vote,
and without whose help no democrat can
hope to be elected. The Southern republi-
cans, on the contrary, will appear in their
Convention as the representatives of rotten
boroughs or of hopeless minorities.
IL
the South should exercise great and even
preponderating influence in the next Demo-
cratic Convention. 1t is the more likely to do
50 because the Northern democratic party is
divided upon some of the most important
issues of the day, and because in the last two
national conventions the South has felt that
it was slaughtered by the mismanagement of
its Northern allies, in whose hands it unre-
servedly placed its fortunes. In 1868 and
1872 the Southern democrats came into the
Convention as the representatives Of republi-
can States, as men who could not carry their
States for their party; and they were natu-
rally modest To-day all this is changed
and it would be surprising, and argue less
political tact and ambition than Southern
changed circumstances, they should once
more commit their political fortunes unre-
servedly to their Northern allies.
But supposing, what is thus probable,
that the Southern members acting in a body
will be able to control the Democratic Con-
vention-it becomes matter of great inter
est to inquire how they are likely to use
Al. T L.. IL. Il
in the first place, that they will not desire
the nomination of Southern man to either
place on the ticket The imprudence of
doing this is universally agreed upon in the
South But, holding the balance of power,
and being strong enough if they act together
TO nominate such men as they select, they |
will be able TO survey the whole field and,
what is of great importance they can if they
please prevent the nomination of unfit men.
AS to platform: the Southern democrats
adhere more strictly and generally than their
Northern allies to the old traditions Of their
party They are generally free traders or
revenue reformers They have had bitter
experience Of the monstrous and intolerable
evils Of a redundant and irredeemable cur
rency, and their industrial and commercial
condition makes resumption of specie pay
ments much less complicated affair TO them
than to some Northern communities; they
have fewer debts and a much smaller debtor
class than we. Of course they hold to local
self-government Wherever they have ruled
in their own States-notably in Georgis-they
have shown themselves honest and economi-
cal administrators; the finances of Georgia
are to-day in better condition than those
Of most Northern States. As to civil service
reform, they are probably as favorable to it
as any class of Northern politicians in either
party.
1 C,,pDoca then the Gon4b sbo7,1d corna M