American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1880-11-27
What Has the Country Gained


| on the causes of the defeat of General
| Hancock. 1t is sufficient to-day to
| point out some of them.
The tariff issue which the Repub-
lean orators and journalists, without
knowing or caring what it meant,
| imagined would be useful to them as a
| means of frightening business men
| equally ignorant, to II great extent SUI
perseded the sectional issue in the
manufacturing districts of the Eastern
States. But taking the country
through, it is evident that 1.-the solid
South was still the bugbear upon
| which the Republicans most success
fully relied. Their appeal was to Sec
| tional hate and fear-to hatred of a
section which had been fairly beaten
in battle, and to fear OF a section which
Senator Conkling, the most conspicu-
Gus advocate of the Republican cause,
devoted his speech to showing is too
weak to be in any way formidable !!
That Americans should have been
moved to vote for candidate like Gar
field by appeal of this kind does not
speak well either for their magma
nimity or for their intelligence.
The cry of :. the solid South is the
more curious since, practically, the
sectional :" issue is not an issue at all
in a political sense. A political issue is
raised when one party proposes policy
OF a system of laws which the other
party opposes, or when one party pro-
poses the repeal of legislation by which
the other party stands. What issue of
that kind was raised by the Republican
campaign orators? The laws providing
for the Federal control of elections win
undoubtedly be repealed by the Demo-
fcf . i,
to repeal them, but these laws are not
sectional They are simply devices to
enable the party in control of the Ad-
mInistration to swindle the opposition
in communities in which the opposition
has majority of voters. This is per-
fectly well understood, and. except
publicly, is not denied. These laws
are simply part of the party machine
and have nothing to do with the pur-
poses which parties are organized to
promote. They will be used against
the East or the West, just as they have
been used against the South, whenever
the occasion arises. One would have
imagined, to hear the Republican
speakers talk, that they seriously pro-
posed to do something about the South,
but they do not. The logical conse-
quence of their position is that the re-
construction laws should be revived and
the South remanded to a condition OF
tuteIage and of government by Major
Generals, such as it was subjected to in
1867. But in point of fact no measure
looking to that end has been advocated
or SO much as introduced by any Republi
can in Congress Or elsewhere. The col
lapse of the reconstruction laws in 1877
was final and complete. Mr.. Hayes
Withdrew the troops from the South
with the acquieScence of the whole of
his own party, the leaders of which
were alieaated, not by that action in
which he plainly had no alternative
but by the spasmodic and somewhat
ridiculous attacks he made upon their
own power. General Grant would
equally have been compelled to with
draw the troops. The failure of Repub-
lean reconstruction was confessed in
1877. If Grant means through Garfield
to try the experiment again in 1881 he
has kept his intention secret, and his
secret has been as well guarded as the
conspiracy of the South and the Demo-
Gratis of the North to pay the ''rebel
claims" If it were really proposed to
revive the Reconstruction acts the prop
osition would of course be infamous as
infamous as Mr.. Conkling's plea that
the North ought to side with the Re-
publican party by reason of the poverty
to which the Republican party had re-
duced the South. Nobody disputes that
the South has been more prosperous,
more orderly and more valuable to the
Union since the failure of the Republi-
can reconstruction was confessed and
the attempt at reconstruction abandoned
than it was when every Southern white
man was compelled to be politician in
order to protect himself from being
plundered by the negroes and carpet
baggers whom the Republican party
had setover him, and when negroes and
carpet-baggers represented the South
ern States in Washington.
The attempt to disturb this order and
to check this prosperity by a revival OF
outrage which the whole country
would resent. But was it any the less
outrageous, was 1t not rather more
outrageous, to make sectional cam
paign without an object? Yet no Re-
publican orator and no Republican
journal between June and November
proposed q single object to be attained
as the result of an agitation in itself
mischievous. Ask the first Republican
you meet why he voted for Gar
field. and the chances are nine in
ten that he will tell you he meant to
rebuke the spirit of the South. He will
admit, if he is an intelligent and hon.
est man. that the candidate of his party
is tainted, and that it went against his
grain to vote for him. But If you ask
him what General Garfield can do to
rebuke the assumed spirit of the Solid
South, such a Republican will own that
Garfield can do nothing. 1t is not even
the acts of the Southern people to
which the stalwarts have objected for
the freshest political murder !
charged by the stalwarts upon ut
South is at least three years old the 6
to the supposed northumberland :
South. "Woe be to u.s." 9eneyer it
Hancock wrote to Pease. .;e power of i
shall come to pass thatilitary, is per- I
the Magistrate, civil mere opinions i
mitted to deal witkople." Now that '
or feelings of tbs elected he cannot {
General Garfdo again what Hayes has
lhteriere tGhe virtual consent OF all {
oone wlsThere is in fact 10 way in t
partie the General Government can S
WV do anything whatever toward the i
tactical settlement, or rather the Prac-
cal unsettlement, of the southern
uestion, and the sectional agitation &
as therefore been carried on Tor It's !
wn sake and for the sake OF the he,
ublican placemen who have succeeded
4 keeping their places by means OF IL.
or their sake the country has been IN ;
lied to divide against itself and to
low into fresh flame the embers of the
var, which would long ago have died
ut if left alOne.-N. Y. World.