The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1879-01-23
columbus Sunday Herald.l
The Banquet Speeches.

Nothing will strike the reader more
forcibly in perusing the speeches deliver
ed at the recent Democratic banquet in
| this city, than the numerous and con-
| tlnued illusions they make to the Demo-
cratic party as an upholder of the peo-
pies sovereignty, as the protector of all
races and conditions alike, as the special
lover of the American Union, as the
champion of Individual rights, as the
| friend of the lowly and the poor, and so
on for quantity. Take nineteenth of the
verbiage gotten off last w Wednesday night,
and a reader thereof ignorant of the
history, character, associations and pur
poses of the party for which they spoke,
would suppose that he was perusing the
sentiments of men and the declarations
of party which had always stood like
rock in defense of the Republic, which
was covered all over with scars acquired
IN battling for the slave, which had been
the first to strike off fetters from human
limbs, which had welcomed equal suf-
trage for all classes of men, which had
taken the poor and the unfortunate by
the hand when others stunned them,
which had always scorned to see the la
borer robbed of his hire, and which to-
day is the warmest upholder of the
rights of labor and the frmest enemy of
those who oppress their fellow men.
And what would be the amazement
and horror of the reader, to learn sud-
denly that these men and this party are
the old Democratic organization which,
talsifying its name, has never struck
blow for human equality anywhere,
which based its power for forty years
upon the accursed institution of human
slavery, which rioted in the groans and
tears and chains and stolen labor of four
millions of human beings, which utterly
suppressed free speech and free thought
in one-halt of the Republic before the
war, which founded and upheld the
meanest and most selfishly cruel aristoc-
racy the world has ever beheld, which
threw one-half its weight against the
Union in wicked attempt to rend it
asunder by force of arms, which with the
other half persistently as an organization
sought to thwart the efforts of the Gov
ernment to save itself from destruction,
which made the name of the colored
man very synonym for its brutal ieer-
ing, hatred and contempt, which fought
with hellish persistency against eyery
effort to clothe him with civil rights or
place the ballot in his hands, which has
ever sought to crush the white labor of
America by subjecting it to the ruinous
competition of Europe, which even to-
day numbers two thirds of its represent
atives in Congress from that section of
the country where treason broke into
open rebellion, and where the rights of
the poor, the humble and the lowly are
trampled remorselessly under foot
Such was and is the party whose Rep
resentatives, last Wednesday night, got
off their flaming speeches in favor of
union of labor, of equality and
of human rights. Gentlemen it will
never do. You may be patriots now
but the past course of your party was
unpatriotic, and you and the people |
love with justice and equal rights; but |
your party has heretofore trampled both |
beneath its feet; and even today it |
dares not as party protest against that
wretched barbarism in the South which
has practically snatched the ballot from
the hands of a whole people and stained
the fairest portions of the land with in
nocent blood.
1t is this utter contradiction between
your principles and your practices that
have kept you in minority for twenty
years, and lost you control of every
State save one in the free and intelligent
North. If you are friends of the Union
now, then manfully acknowledge your
errors of the past. If you are friends of
the poor and lowly now. then hasten to
repudiate your party's long alliance with
human bondage, and turn your faces
against its treacherous and bloody allies
N the South. Unless you do this, even
hose Who would gladly be with you on
certain issues, will forever stand aloof.
Unless you do this, people will either
hlnk you have lost the power to dis
,riminate between right and wrong, or
hat your aims like your professions, are
lypocritical and false; and whether they
hink the one or. the other, they will
pew you from their mouths and forever
'ar against you the gateway to political
,ower