Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-11-05
THE WAR ON RUM,
The Parallel Between the Anti.Slayerv
Struggle and the Prohibition
Effort.
From the Toledo Blade /

moral sense OF humanity seems to sleep
with regard to some particular question.
The traffic in the bodies of men came to this
nation by inheritance. TWAS relic of the
Dark Ages, survival of state of society
whose era had long closed There were
men IN the nation who saw it in its true light,
AVID they Indignantly acclaimed against
1t, and strove to rouse the people to sense
OF Its monstrous iniquity. But their fer
vld denunciations fell upon unheeding
ears. Men We're engrossed in business;
they mad no time to pause in the mad rush
for wealth, for fame, for pleasure, to listen
to the arguments of the apostles Of liberty.
The prevailing sentiment of the people of
the free States seemed to be that slavery
was very probably monstrous wrong, but
It was no particular concern of theirs. The
South had slavery; we wanted none of it,
but it was hardly proper for us to attempt
to &c, overthrow it where it already existed.
Ihere was, in fact, no real opposition to
the slave power until it arrogantly attempt
ed to extend the peculiar institution" into
the Territories and convert those embryo
commonwealth into future slave States.
Then men began to be aroused to the over
shadowing danger. Slavery gave birth to
TIE per,Acious Estate rights" doctrine, and
s!a'e, holding was claimed as constitu-
tlonal right. The people saw that it was
necessary to act, or the nation would be
dominated by the section which supported
slavery.
From that time the struggle began. The
!ethargy of decades was thrown off; the
indignant eloquence Of the anti slavery
orators no longer fell on dull and unhear-
ing ears. The nation was aroused, and
the issue was made over the extension of
slavery into the Territories. Few, if any of
the men foremost in that struggle could see
its logical resultant it must end in either
making the Union all slave or all free; for
1t the right to hold slaves in the Territories
were conceded, the right to hold them in
the free States could not be withheld; or if
the battle in the Territories went the other
way, the friends of free soil would never
stop until slavery was wiped out. Though
the struggle then seemed doubtful, retro
spective glance shows that it could have
but one ending; for on the side of freedom
were arrayed all the moral forces of civili-
cation, while slavery was but relic of
barbarous past. 1t was doomed from the
time that its advocates raised the question
OF It's extension into the Territories; for that
demand raised the apparently dead con-
science Of the North to life, and broughtinto
play moral forces that seemed hopelessly
dormant.
We have before alluded to the parallel
that exists between the anti-slayery strug-
gle and the prohibition effort. Not the
false and misleading parallel that the third
slavery was not because of the labors of the
leaders Of the old Liberty" party; not be-
cause of the work of the Abolitionists. 1t
was because of the arrogance of the slave
power itself The Abolitionists preached
and detained against the sin of slavery,
but their words did no good. They did not
rouse the North to its determination. But
the freemen of the strong Northland rose
as one man to resist the arrogance of the
slave power when it reached out it's hand
to make itself supreme and perpetual by
aiming tc erect new slave States out Of the
Territories, and thus obtain sure control
ling power in the halls Of Congress.
In the struggle with the rum power the
third party prohibitionists are playing the
same role as those anti-slavery leaders Of
two generations ago who acclaimed against
the Constitution of. the United States as ga
league with death and covenant with
HE'LL" because it implicitly recognized
slavery as an institution, and who sang
Pull down the starry flag!
Tear down the Haunting lie!"
because that flag waved over nation in
which slavery was permitted. They are
not the ones who will finally overflow the
rum power. That overthrow will be by the
people, and it will be because of the AFRO
gance of the men who grow rich out Of the
profits Of this Ubiquitous tratic-proits
wrung from the pockets of the poor, profits
that are wrongfully taken from pale-faced
wives and mothers and their ragged hun
cry children.
The true parallel between the slavery
struggle and the battle against the rum
power is found in the fact that both pur-
sued the same path, or rather that the rum
power is following precisely the same
course which led the slave power to ruin
and overthrow. Like slavery, the rum
power claims to be above and beyond the
power of the people to control or check it.
Like its prototype, the rum power brands
as fanatics and fools the men who raise
their voices against its merciless oppres-
sion. Like it, the rum power seeks to make
it's power impregnable by entering politics
and grasping the control Of caucuses, con-
ventions, and elections. Like it, the rum
advocates ostracize every man who honor
ably seeks the suffrages of his fellow citi-
zens, if he does not bow the knee to the
rum Baal. and give his allegiance thereto.
Step by step the two agitations, thirty
years apart in point Of time, have gone
through exactly the same phases. We have
reached this year the same point that the
former struggle had reached in 1915,
during the days of the Kansas Nebraska
struggle. The Prohibition victories in
Georgia, in Iowa, in Kansas, in Rhode
Island, have their prototype in the close of
that fierce combat which ended in the
triumph of freedom in the two Territories.
We are now at the same point in this
second battle with wrong that We were
when the power of the North proved
mightier than that of the South, and set q
bound beyond which slavery should not
come.
The public temper is aroused now as il
was then. Men who never gave the matter
of Prohibition much thought are now in
tently considering it. Men who never
needed who drank or who did not are now
deeply bordering the problem presented by
the rum power, which holds portion of
the people OF the nation in chains, and
cries out that liberty is imperiled it one
shall say that its efforts to enslave the ris-
ing generation are interfered with i'll any
way. 1t declares that the Constitution Of
the United States would be infringed were
the right of man to make q slave, q brute
pauper, mailman OF himself abridged
by decreeing that the poison which would
rai3nca him tO this shall he no longer made