The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1882-09-29
country, to decry the whole party or.

country, to decry the whole party or
ganization. If it could be clearly
shown, which it cannot be, that the
record of the Democratic party, or
that the policy proposed by the fu-
sion or Greenback organizations, is
better for the interest of the people
than that of the Republican party
or if the platforms Of these--poltical
parties were broader and wiser than
those to which the Republican party
stands pledged or if one might, judg-
ing from their past history, reasona-
bly, suppose that the country under
the administration Of either or both
of them conformity woula be more
prosperous and freer from corruption
than it is now, there would be some
reason in demanding the sweeRing
changes call for in certain quarters.
But what are the great facts in the twen-
ty-two years record of the Republi-
can party, that have so successfully
challenged and still challenge the adj
miration and party feality of the
great masses of mel, an overwhel-
ming majority of the American peo-
pie if we could have honest elections in
the late confederated states, who to-
day endorse the Republican policy
and vote the Republican ticket.
Coming into power when the coun-
try was being plunged into the great
est civil war the world has ever seen,
when the National Treasury was en-
tirely depleted and the public credit
nearly ruined, the Republican party
raised and equipped the most mag
nihcent army of modern times which
in due time bought to its knees a
people who had fought valiently, and
manfully, and well in hopeless cause
and this in face of the fact, that again
and again the Democratic party in
the North through its papers and its
platforms, declare the war failure.
After the close of the war there was
enacted by this same Republican par
~ the measures of reconstruction,
and while, perhaps, they were not the
best that could have been devised, or
such as with the experience of seven
teen years to guide us would to-day
be enacted, yet laws that then were
thought to be such as would bring
about in the shortest possible time an
era of good feeling between the North
and the South. Then measures were
at once taken to provide for paying
off the debt in the shortest reason
able time, an immense public debt
created to carry on the war for the
salvation of the Union, and to put on
a sound basis once again the curren.
cy of the country. In both these
projects the Republican party has
succeeded beyond the most sanguine
expectation of any man or any set of
men, and to such an extent as to
startle the nations of continental Eu-
rope. Without the loss of single
dollar, or depression of a single in
dustry, and almost unbeknown to the
great mass of the people, SO silently
and successfully did the laws operate,
specie payments were restored, and
the continued prosperity of the bus
mess and the productive industries
of the country secured. And though
they have been hindered at most every
step, and their policy hooted by the
opposition of all shades, yet in the
seventeen years last past the Repub-
lican party has reduced the public
debt over thousand million dollars,
besides meeting the ordinary and ex-
traodinary expenditures for the pro-
motion of the interests of the pro-
ducing classes, paying hundreds of
millions for pensions, ard every dol
lar of the current expenses of the
government, and even now are pay
ing $Ia5,ooo, 900 year of the Ma
tional debt.
Contrast this with the condition o!
things under Democratic rule. In
1860, at the close of twenty years of
Democratic rt,le. the United States