New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1880-11-22
4 DEfD PdRTY.

The Democrats who are discussing the future
of their party overlook the preliminary que>-
ton whether the party is to have any future
New ideas, new issues, and new leadership
might in some degree change its relations to
public opinion, of course. But to what end
should ANYBODY take the trouble to recon-
struct party so defeated and disgraced Is
it possible that intelligent Democrats can find
no worthier object for their exertons Is
this WORKOUT, leaky, pest-ridden and filthy
hulk the best craft that men can get, to put
to sea in for another vOyage9 If so, they are
to be pitied.
Not many men realize how far the Demo-
cratic party has separated itself from public
sympathy and confidence. Men see thai it
has polIed q very large vote that change
of comparatively few votes III certain States
would have enabled it to elect a President
and that it seemed to them not unlikely to
succeed rs late as September last. They do
not realize how tremendous are the forces
which that party has now arrayed against
itself, to insure its overthrow in any
real emergency. When the Democratic
party became the defender of human
slavery that fact alone made it difficult
thencefOrth for that party to win majority
in any free State. Nor is the difficulty lessened
as we get further away from the institution
of slavery, which, with all its crimes, its
horrors and its blundcrs, was deeply rooted in
customs and laws When the party resisted
the war for suppression of rebellion, it created
another powerful and permanent obstacle to
It's success Every boy that grows up with a
love of country, a pride in its great deeds
and a keen desire for its unity and glory,
finds it hard to vote a Democratic ticket
Opposition to colored enfranchisement was
another step which set firmly and forever
against the Democratic party another power
full and rapidly growing part of the popula-
tion Next came hostility to specie resump-
ton: course which has forever alienated
from the party the vast financial, industrial
and material interests of the country Hence
FORTH whenever there seems to be danger that
this same old Democratic party may succeed.
its record from 1873 to 1880 will be revived,
and then will come tremendous uprising of
those who care for honest money, public faith.
good wages, material progress and business
prosperity.
As if all this were not enough, the Demo-
cratic party has made itself the foe of free
and honest elections. It's conduct of elections
at the South will now be fully disclosed.
Ever since the plan of fraudulent voting and
false counting was generally adopted in that
section Democratic methods have been hidden
from the light 10y Democratic majoriies In
Congress- and by false reports that the
colored people willingly voted with that
party in great numbers. The anxiety of the
property-owners to get control of their local
re
excuse for the resort 10 many questionable
measures. Now it will be known how far,
with no such excuse whatever, the Democrats
of the South have trampled upon the right of
free and honest suffrage, and the disclosure
will produce q most profound impression.
With it will be taken the attempt to buy
electoral votes in 1876, the attempt to steal
the State of Maine in 1879, and the resort to
revolutionary measures and threats in order
to get the election laws repealed, and finally
all the details of the infamous campaign of
SANDER, forgery and perjury which has just
closed. 1t Is not possible that all these things
can fail to convince upright, honest, truth
loving and freedom loving men that the Dem
ocratic party has become dangerous to free
institutions.
After each gigantic blunder and crime,
Democratic leaders have tried to disavow the
business, AID consoled themselves with the
hope that the thing would soon be forgotten.
But the Nation absolutely refuses to drink
the waters of Lethe for Democratic cOnve-
nience. Twenty-Five years have not made free
States of the Northwest forget the attempt to
fasten slavery upon Kansas by fraud and
bloodshed. Twenty years have not dulled the
public ear to the crack of the slave-whip or
the bay OF the bloodhound. After sixteen