Ashtabula weekly telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1880-1886, 1880-03-12
DISTINGUISHING Minnesota.

Inc anticipated aCUlOn OF Jne COn-
mittee of Elections of the House of Rep
resentatives which is to put out General
Washburn, the Republican member of
Congress from Minnesota, and have the
House elect the notorious Donnelly in
his stead, who was spewed out by the
people of the district where he ran as a
candidate by more that three thousand
majority, would be an infamy of such
colossal proportions as to be without a
parallel in Congressional partisanship.
General Washburn was elected in 1873
by an absolute majority of three thou
sand and twelve votes over DOnnelly,
the Fiat candidate adopted by the Dem
ocrats. There never was fairer or
more honest election, and all pretenses
to the contrary thereto are false, and all
attempts to prove anything of the kind
have utterly failed.
But the impecunious Donnelly took it
into his head to get up bogus contest,
which would enable him to pass the
winter in Washington, and, possibly, to
procure the voting to him the usual sum
given to contesting candidates. 1t can
be asserted that he had no rational eX-
pectation of ever securing seat for
himself, for the reason that he had not
fully appreciated the utter desperation
of those members of the Subcommittee
on Elections to whom he had appealed.
If the whole Committee, and the House
afterward, shall sustain the action of
the Subcommittee, electing Donnelly,
it will be a fatal stab to popular govern
ment, and we undertake to say that no
man who is party to it will ever hear
the last of it during his political life.
Should the proposed iniquity be con-
summated, the most shameless and
hardened Democrat would hereafter be
compelled to hold his peace so far as
frauds in elections are concerned.
But the public must not be left in the
dark as to the object of this attack upon
the bulwark of popular government
and the honest suffrage of a free peo-
pie. The alleged reason, as stated by
our contemporary of the Times yester-
day morning and by other papers, that
| the Democratic party must steal the
Republican State of Minnesota in order
to give its vote to the Democratic can
didate for President in case there is no
choice by the people and the election
/ should go into the House of Represent
atives, is not the true reason in our
! Judgment. The contest is so shaping
itself that every intelligent person
must be aware that there will be but
two candidates who will get an Elector-
al vote, and the vote of no State will
be wanted in the House of Represent
atives to secure a Democratic Presi-
dent. Neither can it be that the Dem
ocrats want the House to turn out a
Republican and elect Democrat or
Greenbacker in order to 80 strengthen
their small majority" for that majori-
ty is now sufficiently large and i'm
pregnable. Neither can it possibly be
that it has any interest in so thorough
ly disreputable a man as Donnelly, a
mere soldier of fortune, fighting un-
der every flag, and whose presence in
Washington on such an errand is an
offense to public decency. Their sole
purpose is to familiarize the country
with their assaults upon the ballot and
popular rights in order to smooth their
way to steal the Government of the
country in the coming Presidential cleo
ton and convert it into Confeder-
acy by means of other frauds as uneX-
ampled as they will be prodigious.
Everything is now done in Congress
with a plan which has been well di.
gested and fixed upon by the boldesl
and most desperate men of the conn-
try, in order to get possession of the
Government through fraud and con
spiracy, and trample under foot the meI
whose valor, and bloJd, and patriotism
saved the Union from their deadly as
saults.
! The first object was to familiarize The
people toattacks upon Republican StatC
Governments, and the State Of Maine
was selected. In accordance with tn,
! programme, the State was to be delib
! erately stolen in the interest of the De
mocracy, and the voice of the people
throttled. The next object was to show
the unheard-of lengths TO which it coulC
!. go in National matters, and in this cast
! It took the shape of stealing in a mem
7 Der of Congress and trampling under
/ foot the win of the people as expressed
: by a majority Of 5000 votes. Whel
I they could show that they could throw
I out a member of Congress, elected b,
: such a majority, and have the matte
] acquiesced in, they would have no hesi
] tation in throwing out q State having
I 10000 or $4,000 majority for Republi
I can President.
; The case of General Washburn wa
taken as a sample of what they coul'
p do simply because his seat was con
tested There is not a seat of a singl
Republican member of the House whicl