Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1877-07-14
From the Bangor Wing and Courier.
The State Convention,

We publish to-day the call for the Republican
State Convention to assemble at Augusta on
Thursday, August 9th, at IL A. NJ. 1t is the TWEEN
ty-second annual call that has been issued to the
Republicans of Maine since the establishment as a
National Party, and the eighteenth that has borne
the signature of our distinguished Chairman of
the State Committee. To those calls and TO the
voice of the conventions they assembled, the peo-
pie of Maine have responded in an unbroken sue
cession of glorious victories which have placed
our noble State proudly in the vanguard of the
great party of humanity and progress Through
all these years the republican party of Name has
been true to the principles which gave it birth,
and its victories have signalized its staunchness
of purpose and unwavering devotion to the right.
1t has stood the severes tests encountered by
any political organization, and throughout long
and costly and bloody war; it steadily upheld the
banner of the Union and faced the horrors of bat
tle-feld and prison-pen rather than abate one lot
one title OF the doctrines on which the secur-
ity aud perpetuity of our National life depends.
Its principles are vital to-day, and events are
daily enforcing the necessity of their uncompro-
missing maintenance. The evils which threatened
the Republic at our Partys birth, are looming up
again in such threatening guise that neither at
tempts at self-deusion nor the desire to have done
with issues that should have been buried in the
grave of the Rebellion, can hide them from our
sight No man can fail to see the startling in
roads that have already been made upon the guar
antees established at the close OF the war; Scarcely
more than decade has passed since the National
triumph was hailed as the pledge of National SUI
premacy equal political rights and full protec ton
TO every citizen of the Union. and already all
these sacred pledges have been set at nausht, and
where the slave holding Confederacy reared
its armed front from 1861 to 1865, we now find
"Soid South" clinging to all the heresies OF old,
denying the paramount authority OF the National
Government, with lawless minorities Selling des-
potic control of the States, and the rights OF
American citizenship hideously Knocked by mas
sacres and assassinations that have become the
established political methods of that section.
We see the leaders of the Rebellion controlling
one branch of the National Congress, debating
the legislation of the country, defe ending the dog
and the atrocities OF the Rebellion, arbitrarily
Gripping the public service, abolishing diplomatic
aud consular representation abroad and wreaking
then vengeance upon the National Army and Navy
by refusing to provide for their pay or subsistence.
And in and through all this the avowed purpose of
reestabllshing Southern domination in the Gov
eminent, with lavish indemnify for the losses of
war to be taken from the Treasury of the United
States, in the shape OF subsidies, internal i'm
provements and Southern war claims.
The man who stubDornly shuts his eyes to these
facts is an idiot, and he who seeing them permits
his own good nature to set them at naught, is
passively aiding the designs which threaten our
National future.
We believe the intelligent Republicans OF Maine
uation. They neither suspicious, vndictive nor
intolerant, but they are not wont to permit truth
and justice TO be obscured by plausible phrases
and they will not abandon or surrender the trust
that has been confded to them by the patriots who
preserved the republic. The Republican Party
Of Maine has ever been a party of principle and
1t would not consent to sacrifice principle for pol
icy, even with prospect OF advantage, and when
policy means compromise and surrender, the
Pine Tree State should push her grand old Battle
Flag to the front.
We need not stop to discuss whether the present
condition of things is attributable to deliberate
compromising with wrong or to good intentions
misdirected. Personal considerations are insig-
nitcant in the face of National danger. That the
Government and the loyal people have been placed
in the false attitude of humiliating subservience
to the lawlessness and arrogance that were but
recently organized in rebellion, is too obvions to
be questioned. 1t is for the Republicans Of Maine
to look to their duty as inspired by their past re-
cord and the palpabe and imperative demands of
the present and future.