The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-01-15

have been engrafted upon the organic law but
for his sagacity and untiring energy, and in
the presence of manifestations of mourning
from one end of the land to the other which
may fairly be said to hang the very heavens in
black.
''WHAT Senator Morton has done during the
later months of his life has been in harmony
with this view of his ruling motive. The CON
elusion of the presidential campaign left the
country with disputed election. The worst
passions of the Democratic party were being
played upon. There were heard the mutterings
of a rebellion which threatened more dire dis
aster than the one inaugurated by the same
spirit in 1861. Mr.. Morton believed, with a
conviction that could not be shaken, that
not only had the Republican candidates been
legally elected, but that their Inauguration
was an act of supreme necessity for the preser-
walton of a government of law Believing
this he was ready to do whatever might seem
to be necessary to place President Hayes in
the presidential Office. In this purpose he ac-
cepted service upon the joint committee to de-
wise plan for counting the electoral vote,
and in this purpose he declined to recommend
a plan which appeared to hinge the result
upon the hazard of one mans opinion. When
the bill passed he became member of the |
commission, and with his infexible spirit did
more work than any other commissioner In
firm though he was he missed no minute of
those laborious sessions, and when the illness
OF Senator Thurman threatened delay fatal
to completion of the task before the 4th of |
March, he it was who suggested a visit to
the sick mans residence, and the taking of
a vote in Mr.. Thurman's bedroom. When
the administration had been inaugurated, and !
some of the cabinet appointments aroused
threatening opposition in the Senate, Mr..
Morton used his influence for harmony, and
secured their prompt confirmation. When,
later, there was schisnatic spirit abroad in the
land, by reason of the Presidents policy, Sen
ator Morton appeared with his letter of the
oath of May, showing how futile would have
been any other course on the part of the ad-
ministration, and urging the Republicans North
to remain solid in the presence of 'solid
South" factor which had hitherto been full
of disturbance and danger to the nation, and
cenee. On the occasion of the Presidents
visit to Richmond, the Senator said heartily
that We're he in his place in the Senate, he
would give the administration % warm and
cordial support. Later, only ten days before
he died. his counsel was for har-
mony in the Republican ranks believing
that the preservation of the party, with its
history, its purposes, and its possibilities, was
vital to the permanence of the great national
idea to which he as a leader in that organiza-
ton, had given sixteen years of his lifes best
labors. The speech prepared in Oregon for
delivery in the Ohio campaign contains a warm
and effective defense of the Presidents policy
The South had never offered to the nation the
hand of friendship. 1t was ever the mailed
hand of hostility, backed by ku-klux and by
rife clubs, emphasized with massacres untold
and implacable ostracism So long as the
South maintained this attitude Oliver P. Nor
ton, with lion heart, had nothing but the
mailed hand in return. If it shall be that I'M
der the influences now pervading the politics
of the country the South will come to be
loyal peaceable and equality-loving segment
of the Union, the great work for which Sena-
tor Morton lived and died will have been ac-
complished, and no one, he said in his let
/ ter, would have greeted with greater joy the
| contamination for which he labored with
singleness of purpose and utter forgetfulness
of self
1--WE have not the space to notice at any
length his efforts toward electoral reform.
They were begun in 1873 at time when
danger from the complexities of our present
system seemed very remote. He gave to this