Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1885-11-13
FRIDAY MORNING, NOV. 10. 1885,
A DANGEROUS CAMPAIGN
AMMUNITION.

now prepared Dy pohc3 lGr caiineF Ill
spection, that the speeches Of Sherman,
Foraker and Logan in this campaign great
ly increased the Democratic vote in this
State. The Republican party has not yet
learned, but it will learn it, that any
resurrection of sectionalism by it's leaders
bars it's way at the South. To the think
ing men Of the South, sectionalism is
dreaded word. They know what 1t costs.
For every sectional harangue within their
own borders, delivered a quarter of CEN
fury ago, they afterwards paid in money,
property and life. They know by dread
experience that the cost of sectional ora
tory is human life, and while they pardon
the fools who INDUCED in it twenty-five
years ago, they nevertheless to this Gay
heartily curse their folly. To tie South,
sectionalism means country laid bare by
armies, wasted fields, families without
bread, roads full of passing troops and
face ushered in with the direst poverty. To
them it does not mean foreign war
carried on on a soil hundreds of miles
away. and happy peace crowded with
money and luxaries, but hostility at their
doors. To the South peace meant
bed under tree and breakfast from
its leaves. With such memories OF the
result Of sectionalism the speech OF John
Logan comes in this day of quiet and
prosperity like Grebell in the night. And
it comes to ears made sensitive by great
adversely. They know too wall what al
fusion to force either by the government
or people, means in the American Union,
ever to countenanca m3n who talk OF it
OF even hint at it. The public man at the
South in this day who would even name
force as a last resort on any public ques-
ton had as we'll retire from public life.
Another reason why the South will not
tolerate sectionalism. 1t is now part
of the American Union, and an equal
part. To it an undisturbed aud peaceful
government and cooperative and frater-
nal people are necessities to its prosperity.
An agitated, unquiet country is bane to
its thrift. The great agitation Of quar-
ter of a century ago was to free an en-
shaved people. There was something in
such an issue, but today there Is nothing
but the ambition of deposed leaders to
regain power, that disturbs the country.
Oae issue came from Omnip0tence, the
other is merely made by disappointed and
narrow man. The South yielded to sec :
tionaIism then because it was bound up
with the great problem that Was working
itself out, but 1t cannot be saduced into
drawing territorial line now, when
nothing but the petty ambitions Of men
are at stake. Nor does it intend to aid.
recognize Or tolerate any political party
that attempts it. AT its present rate Of
advance the South must have the whole
of the Union open to it. 1t must have
every State open to the reception of its
people, black and white. The North
cannot expect to keep the black man
penned up at the South during another
generation. He will, just like his white
countrymen, shift his location and spread
out North. while the whites Of the North
take his vacant place. The grandchildren
of the Virginia black men of today will
be farming in Wisconsin and Oregon and
throughout the West. There muss be no
sectionalism to prevent them any more
than there is to prevent the white men OF
the New England States from coming
here. The world is governed by ideas and
sectional idea is nearly as active and
efficient in its operation as a sectional
statute. The colored man cannot always
be confined to the cotton field to which
now exploded theory has assigned him,
and the white man of the North must be
getting ready to compete with his descen-
dants in his own industries at his own
home. The South has most potent reasons
for wishing to see the whole Union open for
an Interstate communication unchecked
by sectional ideas, and she well knows that
all such ideas are to her injury.
1t was IN violence to both the dread ex-
perience of the past and the bright hopes
of the future of the South, that the Re
publican party adopted in the just ended
campaign a sectional issue and sent out to
that field sectional orators. However in
geniously Messrs. Sherman and Foraker
wordeG their Virginia speeches. the fact
was we'll known here that their speeches
at home had been very differently wordad.
That they Lad arraigned one section of
this country before the rest of it; that
they had located great crime against
suffrage in one section, and that they pro-
posed to reduce the representation Of one
section for that crime. In Virginia. they
explained that they meant suffrage out
RACES in Ohio too, but the Virginians had
seen that in their home speeches they had
never mentioned reducing the representa-
tion Of Ohio, nor had they a thought of it.
They were paltering with the truth and the
people when they said it. Somehow, the
Republican party has gotten so fat and
and stupid on the government for the
last quarter of a century that it has not a
CLEAN of humor about it and cannot see
the comic side Of the most absurd PROPOSE
lions. To any other party the proposition
to send Ohio political missionaries to Vir-
GINA to announce the necessity of cutting
down its representation in Congress on
account Of political crimes, and to per-
suade the Stale to vote its own condemna-
tim and punishment, would have been
too absurd to be entertained. But that
party hasn't moved an inch since Recon
strucJion times in its idea OF government
and it thought 1t the proper thing to do, to
send down to Military District No. /
messengers too absurd to send to free and
equal States of the Union. Virginia toIe.
rated their folly with good nature WHICH
is characteristic of her, but her liberation
mast not be mistaken for blindness to the
fact that behind thlt folly is a VICIOUS