The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-01-31

| /
very few newspapers, we apprehend, that
would care to be represented in Washington
by a lobbyist.
POLITICAL CRIMES AND THEIR EFFECT.
While hypoclitically pleading for reform
in the civil service, in the tariff, and
in other branches of public affairs, the Demo
cratic party through its opponents and agents,
has practiced and perpetated fraud, intimi-
dation and deliberate murder in order to
compel votes from public that fears and dis
trusts it. The experience of civil
war has taught the public to suspect
the Democratic party. That awful crime has
been condOned but it cannot be forgotten,
nor does the conformation work absolution
from new crimes. If these recurring breaches
of the peace are so much like the crime of
rebellion and treason that the party guilty of
each cannot distinguish difference between
Them it is scarcely fair to ask others to do So
or to complain if they be rated in the same
category.
To speak of these outrages has been oe-
nounced as waving the bloody shirt, and the
papers daring to do it have been abused, ridi-
culed and vilifed, as were those which, be-
fore the war, spoke out against the number
less and nameless crimes commit
ted upon Northern people, men
and women, who had dared go south of
Mason and Dixon's line. Then, as now, the
men who dared be other than sympathizers
with local crimes were logged and murdered,
and their bodies were barreled UP and shipped
back to the North, as testimonial of the
undying hostility of the South. Down this
bloody incline the South naturally slid mo
Sui L bloodler Gif1v:l war. Many in the North
foresaw the inevitable result and attempted to
arrest the tide, but were driven back by
the insulting cry of ''black Abolition
lists and 'nigger-loving Puritans." The
war came just as was predicted; not from the
North, in crusade against the ''sacred institu-
ton of slavery" but from the South, that had
systematic murder and outrage respectable.
The people of the South, seeing helpless vic
TINS shrink and writhe under the fortunes in
f1icted, were educated to believe that the North
would cover and submit if formidable and
armed opposition was made The avalanche
of armies that crashed over South
ern fields, stopping not for wales
nor retarded by mountain ranges, was ca
lamity upon the South that hundreds of thou
sands of her citizens had never dreamed posi-
BILE. twas fearful revelation that dawned upon
their self-imposed ignorance too late to save
them from the direful consequences. There
may not be another rebellion. The Journal
sincerely believes not, and it is not against the
possibility of war that we argue In striking
down and crippling popular sentiment the
South hurts herself much more than
she does the North So long
as violence shall prevail there so long will the
North be superior in strength, in patriotism
and in wealth The South, with the advant-
age of marvellous climate, soil as fruitful
as any in the world and a people for the main
part generous hearted to fault, and much
better than those who are permitted to misrep-
resent them, has always occupied an inferior
position in wealth, in population and in every
thing that goes to make America glorious
above older countries. Statistics show this in
manner that cannot be contro-
verted. 1t is from these malign
and retardative influences that the South
should be delivered. The men who conspired
more harm to that State and all its people
and interests than could the Indianapolis
journal achieve in century, were it ma
Hgnantly disposed. The massacre at Dan
vile hurt the whole South thousandfold
more than could the combined influence of
the Northern press. The Journal proposes
to continue to cry out against these
crimes and criminals until the South
shakes them off and rises to her
privileges. No taunt about waving the
''bloody shirt" will deter, no specious side
issues will deceive. The North has saved the
South from the incubus of slavery; she must
now be rescued from political bigotry that
finds vent in social ostracism and bloodshed.
-----z--z-z-
VERY fewnewspapers of character and stand