Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1879-06-06

hand. The Portland Advertiser in whicl
Mr.. Rice's comments first appeared says
"Mr. Rices explanation is clear and con
vincing, and will be satisfactory to every
body whose judgment is not made up il
advance, without regard to the facts. ="
Going to Apply Gag-Law to North
ern Patriots.
The democratic doughface organs ART
tremendously indignant because most o
the orators on Memorial Day spoke in fit
ting terms of the rebellion and made the
true distinction in moral and political
sense between those who fought on the
rebel side and those who fought on the
Union side. Eulogies of jeff Davis and
the Lost Cause would probably have been
hailed with delight by these northern al
lies of the Confederate democracy. There
is nothing arouses their temper SO quickly
as remarks denunciatory of their 'south-
ern friends" who fought on the southern
side.
ne halllt vi tHls Ntth ~
nizes greatly over the bold and patriotic
tone of the Memorial orations generally,
and particularly over the one delivered in
this city by Rev. II. w. Tilden. Mr.. Til
den is worthy minister of the Gospel
beloved by his own parish and highly re-
spected outside of it by our citizens. He
was in the army during the war,
where he carried musket. as pri-
vate, having enlisted feeling that
duty to country and the cause of freedom
and humanity called him, and he has not
forgotten his experience in the army or
the principles which carried him there,
nor has he kept his eyes closed to the ex
listing state of affairs in Congress. His
comrades of the Grand Army invited him
to deliver the Grafton on Memorial Day,
not debating to him what he should or
should not say, trusting that a soldier who
had served through the war and is Il chris
tian gentleman and scholar, with no other
motive or purpose than to speak the truth,
would furnish such an GRAFTON as would be
fit and proper for the occasion. With the
Grafton those comrades were more than
pleased, and nothing was more gratifying
to them in it than the plain truths which
the orator uttered in regard to the distinc
ton which should be made between the
Union and rebel soldier, on account of the
issues involved, in favor of the former.
And the community at large outside OF the
faction which the Standard represents re-
gard it as one of the best Memorial ad-
dresses ever delivered in the city. 1t was
not one at which moderate democrats
certainly not those who sustained the war
could or would take offence.
But the old copperheadsm of the Maine
Standard resented the discrimination in
favor of Union soldiers against its rebel
friends 1t could not endure such honest.
sound and sensible talk 1t would never
do to have it told among the Confederate
chicftains at Washington that the
Standard failed to assail with abuse
an Grafton in this city disapprov-
ing of the Lost Cause and claiming
that the Union soldiers fought for the
right and the rebels for the wrong. The
Confederates rule the democratic party
and their cause must be defended bv
doughface democratic editors even to the
exalting of the Gray above the Blue.
And SO the Standard not only assails Mr..
Tilden's Grafton, but goes so far as to adj
vocate the application of gag-law by the
Withholding OF appropriations by the city
government for Decoration purposes. 1t
says:
This practice Of converting these Decora-
ton services, paid for by public money and
intended to be really in the nature of funeral
ceremonies, into partizan demonstrations has
gone as far as it should be allowed to 90. If
the day is to be prostituted to campaign pur-
poses for the benefit of the republican party,
the expenses should be paid from the party
campaign funds.
Those who heard or read the Grafton of
Mr.. Tilden will be able to judge how far
it was partizan. If it tells against the
democratic party to assert that the Union
cause was right and the Rebel wrong,
must speaker therefore withhold his OPP
inions of the right for fear somebody will
accuse him of being partizan? If the ut
terance of the living truth for which the
dead of the Union army sacrificed their
lives cannot be made without iniuring the
democratic party, then so much the worse
for the democratic party; it is not the
speaker who is wrong but the fault is with
the party which such utterances offend.
1t is old Copperheadism, disloyal, rebel
loving Copperheadism, that resents these
euogies of the Union dead. and would
withhold appropriations to sustain Decora-
| ton Day Just as the Confederates have
been threatening to withhold appropria-
tons from the government and starvc it
into submission to their terms
But the republicans in Congress were
not frightened by the threats of the Con-
iederates to starve the government, and