Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1880-11-13
what Has the Country Gained ?
New York World.

The country will have tim
enough, and we fear reason enough
to reflect on the causes of the defea
of General Hancock. 1t is suffieien
to-day to point out some of the NOR
obvious and general of these causes
The tariff issue which the repub
lican orators and journalists, with
out knowing or caring what
meant, imagined would be useful t,
them as a means of frightening bust
men equally ignorant, to great ex
tent superseded the sectional issu,
in the manufacturing districts of tn,
eastern states. But taking the coun
try through it is evident that ssthe
solid South" was still the bugbeal
upon which the republicans mos
successfully relied. Their appea.
was to sectional hate and fear-tc
hatred of a section which had beer
fairly beaten in battle, and to feaI
of a section which Senator Conk-
ling, the most conspicuous advocate
of the republican cause, devoted his
speeches to showing is too weak to
be in any way formidablel That
Americans should have been moved
to vote for a candidate like Garfield
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 tissue" is not an issue
at all in a political sense. A politi-
cal issue is raised when one party
proposes a policy or a system of laws
which the other party opposes, or
when one party proposes the repeal
of legislation by which the other
party stands. What issue of that
kind was raisen by the republican
campaign orators? The laws pro-
viding for the Federal control of
elections will undoubtedly be re-
peaied by the democrats if the
Democrats ever have power to re-
peal them, but these laws are not
sectional. They are simply devices
to enable the party in control of the
administration to swindle the OPP
position in communities in which
the opposition has a majority of
voters. This is perfectly we'll un-
derstood, and, except publicly, is
not denied. These laws are simply
part of the party machine and have
nothing to do with the purposes
which parties are organized to pro-
mote. 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 hsve imagined, to hear the
republican speakers talk, that they
seriously proposed to do something
about the South, but they do not.
The logical consequence of their po-
sition is that the reconstruction laws
should be revived and the South re-
manded to condition of tutelage
and of government by maior-gen-
erals, such as it was subjected to in
1867. But in point of fact no meas
ure looking to that end has been adj
vocated or so much as introduced by
any republican in congress or else
where. The collapse of the recon-
struction laws in 1877 was final and
complete. Mr.. Hayes withdrew the
troops from the South with the ac-
quiescence of the whole of his own
party, the leaders of which were
alienated, not by that action, as to
which he plainly had no Alternative,
but by the spasmOdic and some
what ridiculous attacks he made
upon their own power. General
Grant would equally have been COM |
PEELED to withdraw the troops. The
failure of republican reconstruction
was confessed in 1877. If Grant !
means through Garfield to try the
experiment again in 1881 he has
kept his intention a secret, and his
secret has been as well guarded as
the conspiracy of the South and the |
democrats Of the North to pay the |
''rebel claims" If it were really |
proposed to revive the reconstruc-
tion acts the proposition would of
course be infamous-as infamous as |
Mr.. COnkling's plea that the North |
ought to side with the republican |
party by reason of the poverty to |
which the republican party had re-
duced the South. Nobody disputes |
that the South has been more pros |
porous, more orderly and more Valu- !
able to the Union since the failure of |
the republican reconstruction was
confessed and the attempt at recon- |
struction 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 car
pet-baggers whom the republican !
party had set over him, and when |
negros and carpet -baggers represent
ed the southern states in Washing |
ton.
The attempt to disturb this order
and to check this prosperity by a re-
vival of the reconstruction laws |
would be an outrage which the |
whole country would resent. But
was it any the less outrageous, was
it not rather more outrageous, to |
make a sectional campaign without |
an object? Yet no republican orator
and no republican journal between
June and November proposed
single object to be attained as the re-
suit of an agitation in itself mis-
chievOus. Ask the first republican
you meet why he voted yesterday
for Garfield, 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
and honest man, that the
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 object
the freshest political mur-
der" charged by the stalwarts upon
the South is at least three years old
but to the supposed sentiment"
of the South. "Woe be to u.s." as
General Hancock wrote to Pease,
whenever it shall come to pass that
the power of the magistrate, civil
or military, is permitted to deal
with the mere opinions or feelings
of the people," Now that General
Garfield is elected he cannot inter-
fere to undo again what Hayes has
done with the virtual consent of all
parties. There is in fact no way in
which the general government can
now do anything whatever towards
the practical settlement, or rather |
the practical unsettlement, of the |
southern question, and the sectional
agitation has therefore been carried |
on for its own sake and for the sake |
of the republican placemen who
cr,aaoo1nI in Lvnavafgc. flaoir 1