The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1883-05-24

To the people of Ohio the time for deci-
sion, and not alone for decision, but for
decisive action has come. The old politi-
cal questions that have divided parties
for generation are being left behind by
our advancing life. The question of the
hour, the question that will not down at
any bidding, thatawill continue to plague
the political time servers until it is grant
ed that of Prohibition of the liquor traffic.
This is the question that will be the Gen.
tral fact of American politics for gen.
Grafton to come. To every man, every
woman in America, now is the time to
decide, before the chance of choice goes
forever by. The issue is upon US, we can
not elude it if we will.
For half a century slavery and the
questions growing out of it have domi-
mated all our political, and largely our so
cial and religious life. The struggle cul-
minated in four years of civil war Four
hundred thousand young men, as brave
and true as ever trod freedoms soil, took
their muskets and followed Thomas and
Grant and Sherman, to return to their
waiting homes no more, 1900 of our
starved heroes sleep among the scrub
pines of Andersonville; another 14OOO Of
them on the heights of Arlington; $500
on that green slope at Gettysburg, in the
tangle of the Wilderness, among the cane
brakes of the Chatahooche, in the soil of
every State they rest, who gave their
lives, that the nation might live; but
while the nation lived the slave crime,
cursed by God and civilized humanity
went to its doom. 100000 of slaves were
citizens. $4,O0O,OOO.OOO of property" in
the souls and bodies of men, in the honor
and purity of woman, was gone, but out
of the wreck and chaos of war came
stronger nation, a higher civilization.
The men who, when the cause of liberty
was struggling, dared to side with Truth
against Falsehood, and to share the storm
of hate and derision, are already amply
vindicated. The abolition fanatics of the
4O's, mobbed and hooted, the Garrisons,
and Mays and Whittier's are the vener-
ated heroes of to-day.
If there is one lesson fully proved by
5000 years of history, it is that it is always
safe to be on the side of Right. "Earth's
fanatics make Heavens saints" and
earth's worshiped heroes. The martyrs
of one century, often of one decade, are
the admired great of the next one. The
men and women who took sides when the
lines were forming on the question of sla-
very have found their places. History is
a merciless iconoclast, but its decisions
are, as rule, impartially just. AS Kings
ley puts it of the characters in his story
of Hypatius, the men the slavery agita-
tion threw to the surface have each gone
to their own place. Another crisis press
es on US. We of to-day must choose our
sides, and while that choice will not affect
the decision of the greatest question that
ever has come before the American peo-
pie, it will inevitably decide the future of
each of us. One word to the young men
OF to-day: be on the side of Right, and
rest assured your future will be safe.
Slavery died with Appomattox, and the
men who gave the slave his freedom gave
him citizenship. For eighteen years the
issues of the war have dominated our po-
litical life. One party has lived to main
tain the results of the war, the other has
struggled as far as possible to undo those
results. 1876 came and the Republicans
deliberately allowed the citizenship they
had given the freedmen to be taken from
them by force and fraud. When the Re-
publican party, under the lead Of the
worthless Hayes, permitted the right of
suffrage in half the nation to be destroyed,
it lost its right to live, and from that
hour to the present has only been held
together by the power of official spoils.
Now the party that carried us through
the war, that has made us nation, hon
ored and respected the planet over, is in
the last stages of dissolution. A handful
of hungry place hunters, bowling "Re-
FORM" recognizing Blaine as their chief
and Garfield as their patron saint, have
deliberately choked the life out of an Or
ganization they could no longer rule, and
which has made them all they are. When
the epitaph that will soon be demanded
for the Republican party is written, it
can truly be nothing more than this ::
"Died of hypocrisy and moral and po-
litical cowardice."
To us yet on the bitter side of life, who
have never known any other political
faith, it is saddening to stand by the side
of the grave of great party, whose vic
tories we have regarded as personal tri-
umphs, and whose defeats we have
mourned as personal losses. Freedom
did not die when Sydney died." when
Faithful fell Hopeful started from his
ashes, and because handful of angry
spOilsmen have wrecked the party they
failed to rule, the country is not going
to the dogs. We can stand four years of
Bourbon rule. 1t will be costly expert
ment. but nations, like individuals, buy
their experience dearly. Of course moth
ing is to be expected from them. The
Democratic party is like Lots wife, leav-
ing SodOm, but with all her hopes and
desires centered there and her eyes turn
ed steadily backward.
Parties are not ends, but means. There
is no question that thinking people in
America are discussing to-day that does
not cut old party lines. The tariff, free
ship, railroad control, and last and great
est, Prohibition, alike cut across old divi-
sions. The Democratic party will be
much the same as party in the year 5000
as to-day. 1t has ever been, will ever be,
the allied foe of all advancement. The
party of progress cannot live on dead
ideas. When it ceases to keep step with
the spirit of the time, it's era of useful
ness is over. That the Republican party
has done this, is one of the plainest facts
of the hour Torn in fractions, beaten,
prostrate, hopelessly demoralized in every
state, all indications now are that after
the coming presidential election it will
finally go to pieces.
AS the Republican party falls to pieces
it's elements, set free, will seek new COM
binations, and as the slavery issue came
to the front when the Whig party died,
so the Prohibition issue is now coming to
Noolooth,C OH cf IL