Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1879-09-08
state Rights-The Battle of 1880
Begun,


Stripped of all guise, the tive great parties
of the country are again ranged on eth
er side of the line of demarkation of the pow
ers of the national government and the
States. Wherein now differs the issue from
that made up in 1861? Then the democratic
party demanded of President Lincoln that he
should perjure himself IN his official oath, or
they would overthrow the government by
armed force. Lincoln answered in his inau-
gural: ''Iou have no oath registered in
heaven to destroy the government, while
have the most solemn one to preserve, pro-
tect and defend it, This demand was re-
ferred to the last dread court of arbitrament.
where for four years, in the white heat of
fearful war, the great argument proceeded.
until at last, at Appomattox. the verdict was
delivered to the matchless soldier whose
marshaling of the Union forces had brought
rebel traitors to submission and avenged an
outraged nation. That verdict was that the
constitution of the United States was not a
compact entered into by the States, but was
ordained and established by the people of the
United States, for themselves and their pos
terity; that no State or combination of States
can nullify the constitution; that the Union
is family of States, Independent of each
other for local concerns, but united under
one government for the management of COM
mon interests and the preservation of the
general peace-a plan to borrow the language
of another. ''most hopeful for combining the
homc-bred blessings of small State with the
stability and power of a great empire" In
short, that verdict was that the nationality
proclaimed by our fathers shall stand until
justice, domestic tranquility, the common de-
fence, the general welfare and the blessings
of liberty shall, in Gods own good time. I'M
der the stars and stripes, be the lasting heri-
tagc of all who may be jewellers upon the face
of this entire continent.
In this year of grace this same democratic
party which sought to coerce President Lin
coin from his official duty has demanded of
President Hayes that he should purjure HIM
self in his official oath, that he should sur
render perogative given him by the consi-
tuition, so that Congress alone might become
the law making power, and that the party
might, by Congressional enactment strip the
government of the power to protect its citi-
zens to enforce its laws for the preservation
of the peace and for the security of the bal
lot-box, to the end that the palladium of our
liberties might be a prey to fraud and vio-
lence in the South and swinding repeaters in
the North. This revolutionary demand was
accompanied by the menace that, the Presi-
dent refusing. the whole machinery of the
government should be brought to stand-still
by Withholding the supplies which constitute
its very life-currents
From the decision of President Hayes. as
from that of Lincoln, the democratic party
takes its appeal, not this time to the wager of
battle, for the insurrectionary States, the
great factor of the party, have not yet forgot
ten the tramp of the armed legiOns of the
Union, who bore upon their banners into the
heart of its strongholds the death warrant of
slavery, nor the old inspiring notes of "Glory
Hallelujah." rung out by those legions as
they swept by the gallows of John Brown,
carrying the day-star of the morning of lib
erty to those who sat in the night of bondage.
The appeal is now taken to the ballot box,
which itself is made the brunt OF the assault
of the democratic party, because through its
position alone lies its only hope of success.
make no apology for putting the perilous
national issue now joined above all State is
sues. The republican party believes, first of
all things, in the absolute supremacy of the
Constitution and the laws of the nation. We
are thus early, by the action of the demo-
cratic party of the last session of Congress,
forced upon the first line of the Presidential
canvass of next year. The rebuke of that
revolutionary action by a majority of the
people of this State, speaking through their
ballOt-bOxes in November next, will be the
assurance of the complete overthrow of this
new attempt to subvert the Constitution. The
democratic party lacks now only the Execu-
tive department to control the government
The Congress has already passed to the abso-
lutte rule of that overnastering Southern Sec
ton of the party which, by more than two
thirds majority, chosen always for its con-
spicuous fidelity to the rebellion, dictates the
action of its Northern followers. tits of this
democratic party am speaking to-day, which
] Ito all nhaka &c
ern or Southern responsibility for the initia-
ton of any given measure of governmental
policy, can alone control and does fix the final
impress and give it effect. This ascendency
in the house of representatives has been
gained by clutching the increase of represen-
tation given BY the fourteenth article of
! amendment to the Constitution. meanwhile
exhausting the catalogue of crimes to defraud
the class who form the basis of that increase
of the benefit which should accrue to them.
and by thus arrogating to themselves double
the legislative power to which they are enti-
tied, curtailing the just influence of other
States in the making of laws and the admin
istration of the government. In the insO-
lence of power thus gained, the democratic
party becomes defiant in its denial of the
right of the government to defend itself by
regulating the national elections or by enforc-
ing its statutes for the protection of its citi-
zens, either by the military or even the civil
authority. 1t denies the government any
participation in the control of proceedings
which affect the ''common defence and the
general welfare" Anarchy may reign SUI
preme on the day of an election involving
the interests of the whole people, but the
government has no power to subdue it. De-
nying with deadly determination, as just now
at Yazoo, even the right Of candidacy to one
differing from the dominant majority, this
solid South asserts its rights in a carnival of
rifles shOt-gu masks. red shirts and tissue
ballots to elect its own Congress, which shall
enact the laws-revenue, commercial finan-
cial and others-a1iecting and binding the
persons and property of the whole country.
Such is the party, which intrenched in Con-
gress and solid South, proclaims its pur-
pose to turn back the finger on the dial, and
to reverse the legislation Of the nation for