The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1879-08-28
A National Question.

We have been reminded that the
principle of State rights has been in
voked for the protection of liberty more
than once, and that our statement of the
contrary was too sweeping, as it GER
tainly was. The fact, however, remains
that the distinctive State-rights party
was the party of slavery and disunion,
and that the cry is now raised again by
those who count upon fraud and vio-
lence to carry elections, and upon SO
great a scale that it is matter of Ns-
tional Importance. The Springfield Re-
publican thinks that to call attention to
an immense electoral wrong, which in
wolves possible civil convulsions, is to
show an anxious desire to help the stall
wart plan of sectional campaign. If
the statement of such wrong be un-
true, the Republican very properly dep
recates its repetition. But if it be true,
it ought to be emphasized, whether it
helps the stalwart plan or any other.
A sectional campaign resulting from
be one for which the North would
be in no sense responsible. Such cam
paign arising from such a cause would
be deplorable. But it would be much
more deplorable if sensible men, seeing
ouSA . oAtAoeA0Afs Ch0uAA PAoy ghoo ~ oAN
not exist, because to recognize it, and
to deal with it by an appeal to the coun-
try, might be called q stalwart pro-
gramme. That such is the situation is
incontestable, and it is not to be dis
missed with the remark that there are
always irregularities at the polls. We
quoted last week from letter addressed
to us by Southern Union man, in
which he says that he gives money to
stuff the ballot-boxes, and that he does
it in self-defense. Sir George Camp
bell, in his White and Black in the
United States, says that he was in the
South during the elections of 1873. He
describes the cheating in detail as prac-
ticed in South Carolina. There
was no concealment. and no pre-
tense that anything but fraud
was intended; and he states that
there was matter enough within his
own knowledge to have vitiated such
elections in Englsnd d hundred times
over. The result was, he adds, that
South Carolina returns q solid Demo-
cratic representation to the next Con-
gress." The question raised by such
elections Sir George frankly admits to
be whether the amendment of the
United States Constitution securing
equal electoral rights to the blacks is
really to be enforced, or whether it may
be set aside in practice by the action of
individual States is, in fact, the set
Element at the end of the war to be
maintained or surrenderedP"
Sir George is not stalwart shaker of
bloody shirts, but an exceedingly sensi-
BILE and shrewd observer, who sees the
situation without party spirit or Sec
tional prejudice. and his testimony is of
the highest value. 1t is precisely the
situation that he describes which keeps
alive the sectional aspect of politics,
and which renews the discussion of
State rights. The Louisville Courier
Journal, with the amusing turbulence
of the old ire-eating epoch, remarks in
effect that the condition-of-the-negro
question is not National question.
But even that journal will not deny that
q party majority in Congress or q party
President secured by an elaborate, open
and general system of fraud is matter
in which even voting mud-sills may
interest themselves. The
puerility of the effort to set off against
the suppression of the colored vote the
influence of large proprietors in North
ern and Western States over their la
borers is merely contemplate. In
stances Of sporadic cheating and.unfair
influence at the polls are always possi-
BILE. But does any well-informed man
allege that in any other than certain
Southern States there is deliberate coer-
cion of the vote of an immense voting
classp In the election of 1874 that emi-
nent Louisiana politician John Slidell,
by his Plaquemine frauds, secured
a Democratic majority of go in
parish in which the whole Demo-