The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1881-12-02
The Home Protection Party.


in Washington, ID. O., recently.l
When the National Prohibition party
held its convention in Cleveland, q
year ago last spring, women were in.
vited TO attend as delegates. But
while admired the progressive spirit
thus indicated, it seemed to me clearly
my duty not togo. Always profoundly
interested in politics as the mightiest
force on earth except christianity, and
trained to be staunch Republican,
both my education and sympathies
were arrayed on Garfield's side. Be-
sides, labored under the hallucination
that the South secretly waited its OPP
portnnity to reopen the issues of the
war. During all that stormy summer
of the presidential campaign, 1 did not
hear Neal Dow's candidacy spoken of
with interest by the workers of the W.
G. T. u, and yet we all honored and
gloried in that brave father of the
Maine Law. In contrast to the apathy
with which we regarded the Third
Party movement, you will remember
the profound enthusiasm that greeted
General Garfield's name at our annual
meeting in Boston, and that, later on,
we hailed his election as an answered
prayer.
Dear sisters, since then, by yonr
commission, 1 have visited the southern
states, and met in every one of them
representatives and leaders of opinion.
l have seen their acceptance in good
fai tn ofthe issues of the war-a good
faith sufficiently attested by the great
loyalty they invariably manifested
toward President Garfield, in spite of
his army record, his radical utterances
in Congress, and the uncompromising
tone of his clear-cut inaugural. have
seen northern capital pouring into
those once disaffected states in un.
counted millions, and know there is
no stronger bridge across the "bloody
chasm" than this one woven out of
national coin and supported by the
iron-jointed cables of self-interest. I
have seen their legislatures making
state appropriations for the education
OF the freedmen, and helping to sus.
tain those colored schools whose New
England teachers they once despised.
have learned how ex-masters cheercd
to the echo the utterances of their
ex-slaves in the great Prohibition con-
vention of North Carolina, and nv
heart has glowed with the hope of a
real "home government for the
South, and color-line broken, mot by
bayonets nor repudiationists, but by
ballots from white hands and black for
prohibitory law. Seeing is believing,
ana on that sure basis l believe the
South is ready for a party along the
lines OF longitude; party that shall
wipe Mason land Dixon's line out of
the hearts as well as of the map, weld
the Anglo-Saxons of the New World
into one royal family, and give MS
really reunited States. With what
deep significance is this belief confirm
ed by the South's tender sympathy in
the last pathetic summer, and the I'M
broken group of states that so lately
Irs. IL
knelt around our fallen hero's grave!
But this new party cannot bear the
name of Republican or Democrat.
neither victor nor vanquished would
accept the old war-cry of a section.
Besides, "the party of moral ideas" has
ceased to have a distinctive policy
Was not its early motto Gree Terrific.
ryT We have realized it. Later did
il not declare that the Union must he
preserved and slavery abolished !?
both have been done. Did it not de.
mand negro enfranchisemen and a pas.
sage OF a bill of Civil Rights? Both
are accomplished facts, SO far as tbey
can be until education completes the
oesired work. Was the redemption of
our hnancial,p ledges ESSENTIAL TO good
iaiihF That noble record of the Re-
publican party cannot be erased. ri
We contemplate questions still unset
lied, as civil-service reform-botb
parties claim.to desireI lit: or a national
iuhd for southern education-each
ueem 1t necessary. Bnt when we
name The greatest issue now pending
on this or any conference.-the probibi.
tioh of the manufacture and sale of IN.
ioxicaiing liquors MS a drink-bebola
the Republicans of Maine, New Ham,
shire and Vermont vote for and the
Republicans of North Carolina. Ohio
and Illinois against 1t, while the DEM
ocrats OF Kansas oppose, and of North
Carolina favor It'll Now, / blame nei-
Their party tor this inconsistency; IL Ia
simply the hand writing on the wall
which tell that both are weighed In tbe
balance and found wanting. For thew
are formed of men who, while they
thought alike and fought alike on
many great questions, are hopelessly
divided, and ga house divided against
itself cannot stand" This is saving
nothing whatever against the house; il
is recognizing the law of gravitation,
that Is all. In 1868 slavery was the de-
termining factor in American politics.
In 1881 that final factor is the LIQUOR
traffic. Then, while the Prohibition
lists Of Maine marched to the front with
General Neal Dow, the Germans were
proud ITO fight NIT Sigel;" but to-day
the bayonets Of those two champions
and their followers no longer point one
way. General Sieel annroved IN.