The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-07-26
TEE VALUE OF poLITIoAL ISLANDER.


Voters up to the age of twenty-five, young
men who are participating for the first timein
national campaign, need to investigate calm
" and choose well in deciding to which party
and to what political influence they will give
their vote. They should not allow themselves
to be swerved by any issues or pleas not ger
name to the real questions Of the campaign.
Nor should they let the slanderous stories
against this or that candidate blind
them to the fact that this dis
reputable method of political war
fare is not new one. Older men recollect
that Lincoln was assailed with all manner of
personal abuse; he was denounced as boor
tyrant a vulgar ignoramus, the teller of
smutty stories and the enemy Of his country.
General Grant fresh from the honors of war
above all his fellows, was likewise slandered
and vilifed in the most desperate and SANDER
GUS manner. The moment that Governor
Hayes became the Republican nominee
all his fine record as a soldier and as
the Governor of Ohio was forgot
ten or covered by the slime of
Islander too pitiful to be accepted by any
honest man, except when blinded by prejudice
born of the heat and hatred Of desperate
and conscienceless campaign. And when the
heroic Garfield was named, these same in
famous tactics were pursued, with bitterness
and vindictiyeness that knew no mercy until
the assassin's bullet laid him low, and an ad-
piring world watched over his sufferings
with wonderful sympathy, and mar
yelled at his great fortitude in
those long and dreary days of
supremest agony. And now the same men
and the same party that slandered Lincoln to
his death, that assailed the record Of General
Grant, and pictured him as the pitiless butch
erer of his soldiers, and that traduced in Gar
field one of the Nations noblest characters,
have begun the same kind Of warfare against
James G. Blaine, a man as far above his &C
cusers, in honesty, in ability and in patriotism,
as the armament is above the earth.
Voters not old enough to personally know
the facts should not fail to investigate them,
and to thereby be enabled to place just es-
innate on the worth Of the foul charges now
made against the Republican partys repre-
sentative man and nominee 1t is well to
know that the character Of the slandered Lin
coin is one Of the brightest in all the worlds
history, an heirloom of patriotism
and of patient devotion to lib
orty and Union, to be treasured as sacred
80 long as this Nation shall endure. 1t is we'll
TO know that General Grant, mercilessly
slandered by the same men in the interest Of
the same political party, stands to-day man
honored in all parts Of the world as one Of the
greatest military chieftains ever known. 1t is
well to. know that the Democracy -slandered
Garfield, now that his influence is no longer
feared by the country's enemies is univer-
sally accorded place on the same high plane
with Washington and Lincoln, from which
the unclean hands Of his brutal accusers
can never pull him down. And from these
conceded facts it is only wisdom to place that
measure Of contempt upon the Democratic
ISLANDERS now uttered which they 50 richly de-
serve.
History win repeat itself, and as Lincoln,
and Grant, and Garfield rose triumphant over