Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1879-10-09
SOLDIERS AT THE POLLS,

SOLDIERS AT THE POLLS.
Never has there been any use of sol
diers at the polls by any but Demo-
critic administration, save in a rebel dis
trict in time of war. After the Kansas
settlers had become strong enough to
protect their elections from the Missouri
border ruf1ians, then the United States
troops interfered to protect the rutfians.
That is the only instance in which Unit
ed States troops have been used at the
polls in a time and place of peace. In
the election of 1864, Confederate soldiers
were coming into Kentucky in citizens
clothes to vote. Our troops then hold
ing military occupation of the State
ordered this to cease, and we suppose
prevented it in some degree. Not to do
it would be unprincipled folly. Not
even Democrat can have the face to
say to the voters that our troops should
have let the Confederate soldiers come
in and capture Kentucky in this way.
True, the interference made no change
in the result, but honesty and public
decency required it to be made.
But that was in state of war, and can
no more be repeated than the war can.
All the Democratic talk of soldiers at
polls is wide of the mark Furthermore,
after that affair the Republican Congress
passed an act fOrbidding the presence of
troops at or near the places of election,
except to keep the peace. The army of
United States, therefore, stands in the
same relation to the election laws and
the preservation of the peace at the polls
that it does to all other laws; that is to
say, it stands behind the civil authority
as the ultimate recourse to put down re-
sistance to the execution of law, and to
suppress riots and instructions which
become too formidable for the civil Of
ficers. 1t stands in the same attitude
behind the civil powers iii the election
laws as behind the revenue laws. The
only issue between Democrats and Re-
publicans in this matter Of rOops at the
polls is that Democrats demand that the
election laws shall be made exceptional
by taking away all power to enforce
them against violence.
The circumstances are such that the
use of troops at the polls is impracti-
cable. 1t is impossible to protect the
elections in the South against the armed
force which holds those States. But as
the guilty are never easy in their con-
sciences. they want to procure immunity
for this armed possession by abolishing
the law. Practically there is no way by
which the army can be used to liberate
the Southern people from this reign of
force, nor to protect the right to vote.
The talk that the election of a soldier to
be President would bring in such protec-
tion is idle. Whoever shall be President
can proceed only by lawful ways, and
there is no lawful or possible way of u.s.
ing the army to protect the Southern
voters against rule of force which con-
trolls the States, and puts on the forms
of law, and has immunity in the courts.
The only practicable way to create
peace and law in the Confederate States
is to show by our elections that pre-
pondering part of the Northern people
q tn6 nd hot 10
impossible for their usurpation to seize
the national government. We see that
when their confederates are able to
divide the Northern people, so as to give
the Northern Democrats the hope of
getting the ascendency in the national
government, they show that they are
still unreconstructed rebels; but that
when the North shows an undivided
front, they take on professions of having
accepted the results of the war, and of
a desire to protect all classes in their
rights. A great Republican gain in the
Northern elections will make a change
in the attitude of the South. This is the
way to bring peace and free elections to
the South. Every Democratic vote in
the North is vote to perpetutate and
intensity that despotism of violence and
barbarism in theSouth which has abolish
ed personal rights, and which threatens
to this great republic the shameful
downfall of having its entire govern
ment seized by force which has trampl-
ed upon elections.-Cin. Gazette.