The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1876-02-03
BLAINE, THE RESURREc7I0NIST

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infamous in itself, and the record of it
will stand as the crowning shame Of the
party which brought it on, 1t was its last
and fullest confession of criminal failure,
in the use of the largest measure of pow
er ever given to political party in this
country. After more than ten years of
absulute sway, in time Of profound
peace, this party selects its most con-
spicuous member in Congress to tell us
in his most dramatic style, that the
bloody chasn' still yawns at our feet, not
only unbridged but unbridgeable.
Partly because of this very failure, the
people voted that party down in 1874
the present House was chosen with
view to something better, and Mr.. Speak
er Blaine was required to descend from
the chair to a place in the ranks of
small minority. But they are Bourbons
all. They know nothing and they learn
nothing. In triumph and disaster, in
power and out, they are the same. We
have heard much about dead issues but
these issues which Mr. Blaine has disin-
tered, are not only dead, but utterly and
horribly offensive.
OF the shock and disgust which their
reproduction above ground at this time
of day will certainly produce, the resur-
rectionist himselfmust take the response
bility. No doubt he thinks he has a use
for them. He intends to bind to them
the carcass of the Republican party, as
to a body of death, so that when the
people again determine to bury dead is
sues, they will find it necessary to bury
the Republican party also, if they desire
to keep the issues down. This may not
be precisely what Mr.. Blaine expects,
but it is precisely what he will accom-
plish and if he had employed all the
remarkable talents he is supposed to
possess in devising method of running
the Republican party, he could not more
perfectly have adapted the means to the
end.
But it should be remembered that in
precipitating this needless and acrimoni-
GUS debate, Mr.. Blaine was not serving
the Republican party, He was merely
serving Blaine. He was seeking nomi-
nation, not looking to the success of
party. He thought it was time for him
to out-Morton Morton and out-Grant
Grant. They had made much of imagi-
nary Ku-Klux and White Leaguers, and
a host of phantoms, which it sui ed their
convenience to conjure up before cleo
tions. There was absolutely ly nothing left
for poor Mr.. Blaine to operate upon but
Andersonville; and although the keep
ers and the prisoners and the witnesses,
and indeed the entire issue, are dead and
gone, he laid hold of it with the infinite
zeal of struggling candidate, who is de-
termined to do large business on a very
small capital. Accordingly, so far as lies
in the power of Blaine, the Republican
party is marshalled, literally speaking,
behind the skeletons of the dead past, as
if to go into the Presidential canvass on
the deadest of all dead issues. That such
procession as this tends naturally to
the sepulchre, there is no manner of
doubt and we entertain lively faith
that the disgusted people of the United
States will this year provides grave large
and deep enough to contain the whole
of them forever
Mr.. Blaine's device is not of the kind
to win. 1t is shallow, mean and base;
and in comparison with it, the bloody
shirt, the outrage mill, and Poker Jacks
scalawag and carpet. bag convention, rise
into responsibility. The people will have
none of it, They propose to 60 about
the business of the day-to restore order
and peace in the country, to revive their
commerce and industries, to reform their
currency, and wrest their Government
from the hands of the unworthy and
the corrupt. They only laughed at Poker
Jack. They refused to howl with Nor
ton; they declined to curse with Will
liams and they will not burrow with
Blaine. If his recent political crime
and the opening of that terrible and
bloody book is nothing less than crime
-sha | have any effect beyond damaging
Blaine it will be to bring the canyass of
1876 back to the issues of l874-to the
radical measures of reconstruction, to
Grants corrupt dealings with the South,
to carpet baggery, bayonet elections, law
less seizures of States-issues upon which
the popular judgment was clearly pro-
nounced when a Democratic House was
chosen to supersede Mr.. Blaine's late
majority.
But Mr.. Blaine, being fairly the
bone business, was not content with the
CHASTITY spoils of the Andersonville
bitches. 1t will be observed that every
one of the "historic cruelties" cited by
him were cruelties inflicted by Roman
Catholics. He eagerly explored the
vaults of the Inquisition, fondly traced
the ravages of Alva, and hung gloating
over the massacre of st. Bartholomew.
That must have been a moment of SUI
preme triumph to the learned politician.
He had not only placed his skeleton far
in advance of Mr.. Morton's bloody shirt,
but he was just then about two lengths
ahead of Grant and his Anti Catholic !
development. These chronicles of the
darker ages were sealed to the unedu-
Gated soldier, and the studious Blaine
was not slow to improve his advantage.
But, on the whole, the spectacle is not
dJGTdCJlN6-GlllSO VI u I6Ckl6SS u6uldBOBu6
blowing the embers of dying sectional
passions, and armed with a glowing
brand to burn his mothers church. He
might have remembered his grandfather
Ephraim, the pious beef contractor of
the revolutionary war; he might have re-
membered the long line of ancestors
who have fallen asleep in the faith
against which he agitates; he might have
remembered his mother; home, and bap-
tism, or even those maiden aunts who,
with the Sisters of Charity, still prosecute
their selfimposed mission of healing
and mercy under the ecclesiastical au-
thority which he affects to dread he
might have remembered any or all of
these; but if he did, they were dismissed |
as trifes which his vaulting ambition
.u.nl,ll not hrnnE In thn rrI,lc.n. =. rt r.; G, |