Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1888-04-18
BURIAL OF OLD ISSUES.
The Death Of Chief-Justice Waite Illus
trates or Emphasizes the Fact That Old
Issues Are Things of the Dead Past.

The Death OF Chief-Justice Waite Illus
trates or Emphasizes the Fact That Old
Issues Are Things of the Dead Past.
The death of Chief-Justice Waite has
demonstrated in the most striking manner
possible, says the New York Esea;ag Post,
that the old issues between parties have
been finally disposed of, and that there is no
longer any such thing as Republican or q
Democratic theory of constitutional inter-
probation. The Chief Justice was North
ern Republican "in good and regular stand
ing" and yet nowhere in the country have
such hearty tributes been paid to him as
those which are uttered by Southern Demo-
Gratis who supported the Confederacy. Rep
resentative Democratic papers published
in the city where the first shot was fired
on the Union flag, the city where the Con-
federate Government was originally es-
tablished. and the the city which became
the stronghold Of the rebellion, vie with
each other in expressing the gratitude
which "rebels feel to the dead jurist.
Says the Charleston Nescs aud Courier:
1t was fortunate for the people, for the
States, for the Republic that so wise, so
conservative, so unprejudiced a lawyer, so
pure and upright citizen, should have
been chosen as the successorpf Chief-Justice
Chase. Year by year, the drift of the de-
cisions of the Supreme Court, with Judge
Waite as Chief Justice, have been in the di-
rection of decentralization. Steadily the
court has won its way in public confidence
as the guardian of the rights of the States
and their peoples under the Constitution"
Says the Montgomery advertiser: "Chief-
Justice Waite dies amid a universal sense
of regret and with all his long record as a
Republican judge on Republican bench,
no Democrat will be found to say aught
but good of him" Says the Richmond
Dispatch: " He was true to himself, true to
his oath, true to the trust confided to him.
At times he was almost the only bulwark
standing between Capitalization and the
States-almost the only safeguard of the
constitution"
This is not the perfunctory language of
the conventional obituary; it bears the mark
of sincere and deep feeling. 1t Is, moreover,
language of sort which Southern Demo-
Gratis could never have used regarding q
Northern Republican Judge in the days when
conflicting theories of constitutional inter-
probation on fundamental questions sharply
divided parties. From the time when the
slavery issue forced Its way to the front in
our politics until the present day there has
been no period when such an event as
Judge Waite's death could have been treat
ed in this way; when the Southern Demo
crat, reared in the State-rights school,
would have rivaled the Northern Republic
an, educated to abhorrence3 of Calhoun
ism, in expressing the Indebtedness of the
Nation to a Northern Republican Chief JUS
tice. The fact is full of significance and
should command general attention.
To appreciate how completely the old
issues have disappeared one must recur to
the platforms of the two great parties years
ago. The declaration of principles made by
the first Republican National convention, in
1856, was devoted almost entirely to its in
depreciation Of the constitution as bearing
on the slavery question in its various
phases, not one word of which has the
slightest pertinence to the existing state of
things. A dozen years later the same old
issue in the new form of the reconstruction
policy divided parties, the salient resolu-
ton Of the Democratic convention OF 1868
being one which declared that "we regard
the reconstruction acts ESQ called) of Con-
gress, as such, as usurpations and uncon-
stitutional, revolutionary and void "a
declaration which also has no pertinence to
any thing in the existing situation.