The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-02-24
The Real Cause of Alarm.

AZ the EultOr OF the Indianapolis JOurnaE
That spirit of unrest, bordering on intense
alarm pervades the country cannot be concealed.
The utter failure of Tilden's attempt to buy the
presidency through his cypher dispatches, both
before and after the election, was at first re-
garded as exceptional and the atrocity of it was
almost forgotten, when the plot to steal United
States Senator in Illinois was discovered just in
time to prevent its consummation The impris-
onment. in the Illinois pententiary, of the plant
tool of baser men, somewhat allayed the alarm.
and this beginning to be considered as local
and EXCEPTIONAL when the President par
doned Mullen who had been convicted
on his own plea of guilty on the
charge of imprisoning more than a hundred
voters in Cincinnati at the election of 1884, and
holding them. on election day, until the polls
were closed without even charge of any kind
against them, but purely to rob them of their
right to vote. This gave national and party
significance to this. the basest of election crimes
and indicated Endorsement by the Demo
cratic party of the fraud. That of itself was
cause of alarm, but when the Democratic party
of Cincinnati placed this same Mullen at the
head of its police force, and through his machi-
known against the rights of citizenship
were perpetrated. the cause of the alarm was in
creased, yet even this might be local and excep-
tional. But when the Democratic members of
each branch of the Ohio Legislature Endorsed
the methods adopted by the Cincinnati Demo
Gratis for the purpose of stealing another United
States Senator, all honest mon stood aghast and
saw in this a concerted system of fraud in
dorsed by the Democratic party, and all for the
purpose of stealing the United States Senate by
Acknowledgement of Northern voters by meth
DDS as vicious as those that had made the South
solid for that party. This is a real and fearful
cause of alarm, and all the more alarming be-
cause not Democratic politician in America
has been heard TO utter one word against it.
1t may be well to forget much of the late war,
but those remaining who struggled thirty years
ago to avert it, but found themselves overborne
by the tide OF corruption and villainy which cul-
minated in the years of bioodshed cannot be in
different to the exact paralelsms Of the events
which preceded that war and those now transpir-
ing. 1t is not history repeating itself, but his
tory running so exactly parallel that it requires
no prophets ken to foresee that these events
on the field of battle But it will not be like that
war, local and sectional, for the combatants min
gle in nearly equal numbers in every State.
Slavery was not the cause of the war, it was
only an occasion or incident of it. There would
have been no armed collision had not the Demo
cratic party espoused the demands of slavery
and joined in and Endorsed every step taken by
that institution. When slavery planted cannon
on the Missouri river to prevent free~State men
from entering Kansas; when armed ruffians
murdered free-State men on Kansas SOIL and
adopted pro-slavery Lecompton constitution,
the Democratic party Endorsed it all, and when,
after the election of Mr.. Lincoln, the Demo
Gratis of the South had taken up arms, the Dem
ocratic party Of the North, without the excep-
ton of one single convention in township,
city, county or State, promised them aid and
gave them comfort. But this was only a contin-
uation of the Democratic policy which had
robbed honest men of their right of suffrage for
generation in the South. In short it was only
because free men had voted their sentiments and
elected Mr. Lincoln that the rebellion was inaue
urated.
To-day we are travelling the identical road the
men of thirty years ago travelled, with the same
party in power, with man elected by the late
rebels now commander-inchief of our army and
navy, and with the same political tactics
that brought on the blood.shed of twenty
five years ago--a purpose to disfranchise
all but Democrats by one method or another
In Ohio the latest method was imprisoning vot-
ers, or driving them from the polls by roughs, or
by forging the returns The Democratic party
of the Nation makes this method their own by