New-York tribune., 1879-03-12
Tie NEXT CAMPAIGN

A
contest for the Presidency is to be fought
and decided on this side of the Potomac.
The Democratic party has taken good care
that there shall be no controversy over that
matter at the South. There are some millions
of Republicans in the Southern States. and
they have in many places a clear majority of
the legal voters. But that is nothing. They
are not to be allowed to imperil the comfort
of their betters by voting any Radical
tickets or if they do deposit the ballots, there
is TO be no nonsense about the counting. We
have seen how the South managed the last
election and it will manage the more impOr-
tant campaign of 1880 i'll the same way.
There really seems to be not much more lib
erty for niSgers and niger suffrage in the
South to-day than there was under the reigns
of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. The
South is safe and solid for the Democratic
party.
Under these circumstances it would seem to
be the obvious policy of the party to pay
some attention to the drift of sentiment III
the North, and persuade the people of the
lOyal States if possible, that it is not now the
riotous and dangerous OrganiZation-enemy of
the public peace, the public credit, fair elec-
tions, and equal rights-which it has always
proved itself in times of trial. How is it be-
having9 Nothing has made o more painful
impression in political affairs in many years
than the developments of Southern hostility
to free ballot. Two years ago there was gen.
eral sympathy all over the North with the victims
of carpet-bag misgOvernment"; but when the
white man recovered power the first use he
made of 1t was to put summary stop TO free
elections, and, taking down his rifle, to treat
every Republican meeting as "nigger
rising" Public opinion then changed
almost in an instant, for the North
felt instinctivey that the protection of
the ballot was the most pressing duty of the
American citizen, and that fraud and violence
at the polls constituted not merely local wrong
but National peril. Yet in defiance of this
strong sentiment, the Democratic party de-
liberately sets about removing from the stat
ute books all the Federal laws which defend
the freedom of honest voting and the integ
rity of the count, and to accomplish this dis
graceful purpose it does not scruple to resort
to revolutionary means.
Fatuous to the very end! The Democratic
party never yet, since 1t drove the Nation
into "a civil war, found itself in a fair posi-
ton for victory that it did not throw away
its chance by some act of egreglous folly. We
can await its performances ut the extra ses-
sion with serene confidence in its inexhausti-
ble capacity for laundering, its inviDcibe
propensity always to do bad thing at the
very worst possible time. After its attacks
upon the public and private credit, its per-
sstent disturbance of business, its trucking
TO what remains of disloyal feeling in the
Confederacy, there was nothing more it could
do to make itself OdIous at the North except
to bring back the old methods OF false natu-
ralizing. registering, voting, and counting
which it practlsed so long under Tweed, and
McCunn, and the other Democratic leaders of
ten years ago aud for the accomplishment of
this enterprise it selects the very time when
public opinion, in the only States the Democ-
racy needs to gain, is unusually sensitive on
the subject OF honest elections. Now watch
the result.