The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-01-14
JUsTIFYINe THE BLOoDsHED.

A writer IN the News, OF this city, VINO mas
travelled extensively in the South in the last
few years, with good opportunities of observa-
tons, admits the general slaughter of negroes,
but j~ustifies it by saying that the Almighty
could no doubt have made a white race that
would submit to be governed by negroes, but
He never has. This may be true; and the
problem which perplexes the people of the
South may be solved only at the end of de-
cades of blood and violence. But does it fol-
low that that particular portion Of the white
race should be put at the head of the national
government 1t may be that under our form
of government the nation has no right to in
quire into the methods of any particular State,
and that rapine and blood may prevail without
national interference, unless it be in Japan, or
India, or Ireland. But should it be a passport
to power in the nation, that the white race
keep the colored people under subsection
by shotguns and ropes9 But that
writer wholly overlooks an important factor
in this matter of shooting. 1t is not negroes
only that are maltreated. It is not even
''carpet-baggers, as they call all immigrants
who dare to speak and vote against these men,
but native-born citizens, white men, men who
have never voted any other than the Demo-
cratic ticket; men who have heretofore gone
with the multitude OIL negro Cummings, but
who, for cause, have chosen to break away
from them and encourage others to do the
same, and true men, born and educated on the
soil, who have never been murderers, are shot
as relentlessly as the negroes themselves,
whenever they choose to break away from
that type of Democracy which is in f~raternal
relations with what they are pleased to call the
national Democracy-that Democracy which
is now in the majority in the House of Repre-
sentatives, wholly through these shotgun
methods, and which is plotting to elect a
President of their own faith and order,
through this Democratic machinery.
Who, in the light of past events, does not
lay the responsibility of this alarming state of
affairs largely at the door of the Democratic
party7 There would have been no war but
for the encouragement the rebels received
from the Democratic party in the North. That
party boosted of its power in the solid South
made solid by this same species of terrorism.
A Republican was not allowed to live in any
House of Representatives, in 1861, Horace
Heffren declared that if any attempt was made
to coerce the South it should be done over his
dead body-a threat that he attempted to make
good in his connection with the Knights of
the Golden Circle, and for which he was hon
ored by the Democratic party of Indiana to
the very day of his death. Every step taken
by the government was opposed by the Demo
cratic party until, at its national conven-
ton in 1864, it declared the war a failure
and proposed terms of surrender to the
rebels. But for such encouragement
Fort Sumter would never have been fred
upon. Long after that, and throughout the
whole course of the war, the backbone of the
rebellion was in Democratic sympathy at the
North. Just so to-day. If the bloody meth
DDS now used in the South did not find friends
in the Democratic party in the North, they
would cease Immediately. 1t is wholly for
the purpose of carrying a solid South for the
Democratic candidate that they exist at all,
and it is because by such a vote the Demo-
cratic party hopes to win that these things
are encouraged by the party here. Be it so.
IF the Almighty has in reserve some phial of
wrath not yet poured out, this combination
may nave a temporary success; but we can
conceive of no national sin yet unatoned for
that should call down upon this nation such a
calamity as the restoration of the Democratic
party to power, with these bloody wretches
the controlling spirits of the party.