Spirit of Jefferson. [volume] (Charles Town, Va. [W. Va.]) 1844-1948, 1884-02-19
MISCELLANEOUS.
For the Spirit of JeiTcrsonl
Republican Campaign of 1884,

| NSPuDIICaH campaign OF S6f.
The Baltimore San, of the 10th
ult., gives the action of the so-calIed
Republican caucus, held by the rep
rescntative men of that party in Con-
gress. That the Republican Senators
and Representatives should organize
for the approaching campaign, is
nothing strange or unusual. AL
though, the Senators and Represent
atives of the people were not made
Senators and Representatives at any
time, nor under any set of circum-
stances, for the purpose of organizing
campaigns to make Presidents; and
this is also true of both parties
Senators and Representatives as in
dicidudls, have all the rights of other
citizens, but for prudential and mod
est reasons, should leave president
making to the sovereign people; or,
if they wish to take part, it should be
in the assemblies of non-delcgated
citizens. These representative SER
wants of the citizen, as officials, have
no functional powers in moulding
sentiment for sovereign control, and
are usurpers when they attempt it.
But, what they declare in their
resolutions is the chief grounds of OBJ
lection. No citizen, however humble,
has legal or moral right to slander
his neighbors, and whenever qvar-
made Senators declare falsehood,
and palm it off as an organic declara-
tion to build party platform on, it
proves rOttenness scarcely even
suspected of the Republican Senators
and Representatives, and surely is q
great draught on the credulitv and
Ignorance of their partizan voters
What commentary we have in these
resolutions on the loud-mouthed pre-
tentions of these cultured (?) de-
famcrs of the Southern people. Does
any sane man III the United States
believe, who has the opportunity to
know the truth, that the sO-called Re-
publicans in the South, either white
or black, are struggling to exercise
the vital and fundamental right of free
suffrage in popular elections" They
do struggle sometimes, as in the last
popular election in Virginia, but it is
to hold power deceptively obtained,
or to gain power by fraud, as has
been done in the South from the time
of what was called reconstruction,
until the last election. DO not most,
if not all of those 125 slandcrers of
the South, know that every funda-
mental right of the citizen was dis
regarded by the tyrants who admin
istcrcd the State governments in the
South, from the reconstruction to the
time when the majority of her voting
citizens reYivified the DcmOcracY.-
No one knows better than this self
same Hoar, that every legal voter in
every Southern State was disfran-
chised by the Abolition party; and
that every Southern scalawag and
mcnial male over 21 years of age in
the South, were enfranchised for the
unjust and un-Republican reason of
becoming voters, according to Con-
gressional dictation, under their
forced reconstruction acts, by which
the rights Of every legal voter was
annuledS which is sample of the So
called Republican idea of free ballot
and fair count.
And now, the National Republican
Caucus verify the strange experience
that is often witnessed in the chief
of the lcwd-denOuncing most what
they themselves practice, all of which
these political Pharisees were guilty
of in their usurpations in the South
ern States. Every truthful man in
the South will bear me witness in af-
firming, that fair elections have OBJ
tained in the South since Democrats
hn s.i-
men of the South have managed their
own business without military moles-
tation from these sympathetic Repub-
| licans, who are now shedding man
, ufactured tears over imaginary
wrongs, and their coadjutors also, the
kcen-scented carpet-baggers.
How contemptabIy insulting the
language of the second resolution to
all Southern people, even to the dis
! appointed sore-heads, whom ':rcpub-
licides" are angling after. It may
seem, to them, strange that the ne
grOes of the South, for whose pros
pective votes the Abolition party
caused so much shed blood and SO
much destruction of property, should
alter all desert them. Yet it is owing
to the fact that the enfranchised freed.
man discovered, by sad experience,
| that his vote was all that the so-called
2 Republican party wanted with him.
+ If the Fratricide party were deserv,
ing of sympathy, Southern citizens
e might commiserate them for the de,
e sertion of their cause by the more de.
serving of the negro voters. But
+. patriots will remember, that freedom
to the negro does not mean, as Re,