Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-10-01
Aallcaster tntellge11rer.
FRIDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 1, 1880.

FRIDAY EVENING. OCTOBER /. 1880.
ssThe Solid South.''
One of the chief arguments used by the
Republican orators and newspaper Or
gans to enthuse the people of the North
ern states in the interest of General Gar
field, and to continue the Republican
party in power, is the cry of solid
South for Hancock for president. 1t is
true the South is solid for the Democrat
ic candidate, as we'll as for those old
principles of constitutional government
which have their origin in and spring out
of those eternal rights of man implanted
by the Creator in the human breast, and
have existed antecedentiy to all forms of
social regulation. At the close of the
war, when the South lay PROSTATE, the
Republican..party conceived that the great
Democratic principle of free self-govern-
ment was dead in both sections of the
country. 1t was then the common boast
of leading Republicans everywhere, that
the grand old Democratic party was
forever crushed. But as time passed on
and the passions and prejudices engen-
dered by the civil war yielded to reason,
the Democracy gained point by point
everywhere until both houses of Congress
passed under its control. Fanatics, and
men of a single idea, whose mental COM
prehcnsion cannot see beyond their own
party, stood amazed and wondered how
the Republican party should ever lose its
hold on the governmental power of the
country. But in the mass Of all
the population of the country
there is a large percentage of
people who do their own thinking
independent of the teachings of political
orators and political newspapers, and
upon rejecting upon the nature of our
system of free government, and the prin-
ciples embodied in our federal constitu-
tion, this thinking class were not long in
abandoning the Republican party, and
enrolling themselves under the banner
Of the Democratic party. as the only
party i'm the country in whose hands and
under whose teachings the constitution,
that glorious bond of union between the
people of all the states, would be safe. In
all communities in the North, as well as
in the South: intelligence, wealth, in
dustry and business enterprise, exercise
a controlling influence. The planter of
cotton, rice and tobacco fields in the
South, employing hundreds of colored
men, is not required to do any more to
control the votes of his employees, in
favor of what he believes to be to best
interests of himself and of them, than is
done by the owners of cotton mills,
woolen mills, furnaces, rolling mills, or
any other business requiring large num-
bers of persons to carry them on, to con-
troll the votes of the employees in favor
of what they affect to believe to be their
own and employees interest. 1t is this
that makes the South solidly Democratic.
1t is fair argument used with the masses
of the colorcd population that induces
them to vote Democratic. 1t is the
means that every Republican in the
North uses to have his employees
to vote the Republican ticket.
For a Southern employer to do this is
called bulldozing'' by Northern Re-
publicans, but for !, Northern Republi-
can employer to do it no name has yet
been found in the vocabulary of political
orators and organs. There is an old say
ing that there are none so blind rs those
who refuse to sec,:' but the name is legion
of those who can see the mote in a
brothers eye, but fail TO see the beam in
their own If it be wrong for the
people OF every Southern state to give
their solid electoral vote for Hancock and
Democratic principles of government,
why is i: that the Republicans are labor
ing with ss,ch zeal to make for themselves
a solid North : Two wrongs reyer make
a right. IL Republican orators and
newspapers were candid, frank and honest
in what they complain of Il solid Demo-
cratic South. they should find some other
reasons for supporting their candidate
than calling upon their followers to adopt
solid North. But their appeals in this
are not to the reason and judgment of
men, but to passion and prejudice whose
fires have long since died out 1t is but
feeble attempt to keep palive the feelings
of strife and hate between two sections
of one common country, who both be-
lieve and act and feel that sentiment of
harmony whose keynote General Grant
struck twelve years, when he said: i" Let
us have Deace =
WITH characteristic desingenuousness
our local contemporaries distOrt an cpl
sode of Wednesday nights Democratic
mass meeting in their reports of that
event. They uniformly ignore the fire.
quent bursts of applause that interrupt
ed the speakers, with the exception
Of the ripple of merriment that pass
ed over the house when Mr.. McCaa
designated himself as the last high
private left of Longstreet's corps"
The Ne'c Era and Examiner, either
through the stupidity or malignity of
their reporters, would convey to their
readers the impression that the au-
dience applauded Mr.. McCaa be-
cause he said he had been a rebel, while
the truth of the matter was, as any one
with an ounce of sense could see, the