The Portland daily press., 1880-09-07
MINoT'
Sectionalisn.

m. Y. Times.
In several recent Democratic conventions
the chairmen have ventured to congratulate
The members that they belonged to party
which was organized IN every State in the
Union. We do not believe that in most cases
the authors of this remarkable sentimedt really
know what is the significance of what they
appear to think is something to be very proud
of. Either they are too young to remember, or
else they do not think that their hearers will
remember when it was that boasts of this kind
originated in the Democratic party. But there
are men who do remember it with shame and
indignation. 1t was during that dark and dis
graceful period before the war when the Dem
ocratic party was the party of slavery, when
its leaders in the North bowed in mean SUBJ
mission to the dictates of Davis and Benjamin
and Slidell; when the terrible crime and evil
of slavery found no Democrat bold enough or
honest enough to raise his voice against it.
Then it was, when no man who did not belong
to this ignoble party could live in the slave
holding States, when the pistol and the bowie
knife were the simple weapons of Demo-
cratic supremacy in the South, that the
Democratic speakers and writer's in the North
glorying in their shame, ven tured to boast
that theirs only was the party of the Union, be-
cause in wide section of the Union theirs was
the only one allowed to exist. At that time
the crack OF the slave-driverS whip was heard
in every Democratic convention. A despotism
as absolute as that of Russia, and infinitely
more contemplate, reigned everywhere
throughout the South, and in the South and
everywhere in the North that the Democratic
party was found in numbers sufficient to yield
II foofiuo a froa
were as unknown south of Mason and Dixon's
line as in the heart of Persia, and in our
Northern cities they existed only where the
Democratic party was not strong enough to
put them down. They are yet young men
who can remembea when the man or woman
who dared in public to say slavery was wrong
add should be abolished was exposed TO insult
ond outrage in the City of New York, and in
many other cities to the peril of life. If there
were any manliness left in the Democratic
leaders; if they had learned never so poorly
the lesson of our great war; if they had any
real love for the principles of equity and JUS
tice which underlie our system of government,
they would blush to recall the time when their
party was the ablest tool of miserable, vul-
gar and disgusting tyranny
They would see, also, that their boast of to-
day is identical in meaning, in spirit and in
the circumstances which give rise to it with
that which the Democrats made twenty or
thirty years ago. Now, as then, there are
States in which none but Democrats can form
an active political organization. Now as then,
it is the white Democrats of the South, bent on
establishing their absolute mastery over the
communities in which they live, who suppress
all opposition, Now, as then, the rights OF
manhood and the more specific rights re cog
nized by the Constitution are violated without
Scruple by a faction of passionate men, for the
most part ignorant and unframed in the prac-
tice of the virtues of civil life. But the crime
against freedom which is involved in this state
of things fn-daU ic vy,or ofrikinu nd 1occ
excusable than 1t was quarter of a century
since. Then the Southern Democrats were
living with slavery. They had inherited it
and had not founded it. They saw no way of
knew not how to exist without it. 1t was the
basis OF Southern society. The defence of it
became the shibboleth by which the true friend
OF the South was recoanized. Free speech was
morally impossible where slavery existed, for
the property in slaves was property in sentient
beings with brains and hearts, capable of being
aroused to insurrection, and of overthrowing
not only the fabric of society of which they
formed the groundwork, but the home of every
member of that society. A tyranny as severe,
as inscriptions, as pervading, and as outra-
geous as slavery itself was oordition to the
existence Of the South as it then was.
But now slavery has been destroyed. The
slaves are free, and in the main are perfectly
orderly, quiet and respectful of the rights of
others. No insurrection, nor anything resem-
which malntained tyranny of the past MAIN
tains like tyranny now, though on smaller
scale, and the same party in the North which
boasted that 1t was allowed to exist in the
South when existence was purchased by silence
or subservien-y as to slavery, which makes
like boast now when an equally shameful
price is to be paid. And now, as then, with
peculiar impudence and sophistry, the party
which is suppressed in certain section because
It sustains the principles of the Constitution is
sneered at as sectional, while the party which
tamely acknowledges the gravest violation of
those principles in that section arrogates to
itself a national character. 1t is, per.
haps, not to be regretted that the old issue be-
tween this sort of sectionalism and this kind of
nationaiism is again raised. 1t would have
been better for the country if the costly lessons
of the war had been better learned, and there
had been no possibility of such gross perversion
of ideas. But since there is such perversion
actually displayed, the country win have an
other opportunity of deciding between the true
and the false, and the more the issue is pressed
by the Democrats the more sure and lasting
the decision will be. 't.ti