Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1885-07-16
Danger Ahead.


It may be that the danger of the for
NAL abrogation of the war amendments
to the National Constitution is remote.
Yet in these days of Indifference and
cranky politics there is no telling what
may happen. The result of the election
in Ohio, Virginia and New York this
fall may determine the political CONT
plexion of the United States Senate from
and after March 4, 1887. The result in
Ohio alone may be conclusive. Given a
majority in both Houses of Congress the
Democratic party, under the lead of the
ex-Confederates, would proceed to re-
organize the Supreme Court of the Unit
ed States so as to give the Confederates
and their sympathizers a majority of
that tribunal. That purpose has been
avowed for years.
The ruling power in the South has
never recognized the war amendments as
part of the Constitution, and at the
! time of the adoption of those amend
ments the Democrats of the North, with
a few exceptions, resisted their adoption
with all the power they possessed. And
for years after their adoption it was the
almost universally expressed sentiment
of the party leaders that the amendment
were void because of the alleged revolu-
tionary, irregular and violent methods
resorted to in their submission and rati
fcatiOn. Have the men who manufac-
ture Democratic opinion changed front
on that proposition within the last ten
years? If they have, they have made no
avowal of the change. They have been
silent on the subject, for the reason that
they discovered that the agitation of the
question resulted in Democratic defeat
at every national election. Prudence,
therefore, demanded that they postpone
the discussion to more convenient sea-
son-until such time as, under other pre-
lenses, their party could get control of
the executive and legislative branches of
the Government.
Should the Democrats get control of
Congress during the latter half of Cleve-
lands administration it will not be nec+
essary for them to pass any act or reso7
tion declaring the amendments void. All
they will have to do will be to provide a
court, the members of which are of their
way of thinking, and the work is done.
1t is the universal Democratic idea south
of the Potomac and the Ohio that the
war amendments are contrary to the ge-
MUS and general tenor of the Constitu-
tion; that they were iIregularly adopted
and imposed upon the South by violence,
and ought, therefore, to be declared void.
Who doubts that state rights court
would so declare.
With the war amendments out of the
way, the black men of the South (and of
the North, too, for that matter), may be
lawfully disfranchised and reduced to a
condition no better than chattel slavery
and there will be no barrier to the as
sumption of the rebel debt by the indi-
vidual states of the South or by the gen.
eral government; and if it be held that
the amendments were never part of
the Constitution shareholders and their
heirs will have just and lawful claim
against the government for S4 4,OOO, 600, 600
on account of slaves emancipated by the
pretended thirteenth amendment.
AS remarked in the opening sentence
of this article, the danger may be remote; !;
but he who observes the signs of the
times can not fail TO see that state rights
Confederate ideas are not unacceptable
to the present administration, and that
Confederate Congress and a Confederate
court may grasp the power of the nation
in the immediate future. OF course the
people of the United States will never
Intentionally reverse the results of the
war for freedom and Union; but what
with mugwumpery and political cranks
who go off upon side issues not pertinent
to party politics. the minority may sue
ceed TO power in all departments of the
government, and while in power may
consummate revolution which the ma
jOTity, under the forms of the Constitu>
tion, may not be able to reverse in half
century, and which may ultimately be
reversed by another bloody and devas-
tating war.-O. S. Journal.