Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1888-07-04
THAT BLOODY SHIRT.
The Republican Party a Bar to a Perfe,
Union of North and South.

The Republican Party q Bar to a Perfect
Union of North and South.
Thoughtful people are coming to see the
fact, and to understand the reason for the
fact, that there can be no real peace or
union in this country until the Republican
party dies.
The talk about the dissolution of both the
Democratic and Republican parties, and the
reorganization of parties-which we some
times hear-is based upon misconception.
There might be, and, to certain extent
there has been and will continue to be, a
redistribution of party forces. But the
undertaking principle of the Republican
| party is the sentiment of war; the purpose
of its being, sectional supremacy; and,
these eliminated, there can remain no
further reason for its existence, and it will
disappear as uthe old Federal party, and
after it, the old Whig party, successively
disappeared, before the more liberal aspir-
ations of popular feeling and the larger
needs OF National progress.
The attitude of the Republican party on
the threshold of another Presidential cam
paign is, says the Louisville Cot1icr-Io,u1,dl,
conclusive proof Of its obsolete character.
1t looks backward, not forward. 1t does
not see the whole of its country, but only
half of it. 1t is more concerned to make
point upon the internal affairs of Louisiana,
and to direct the whole pressure of the Ma
ton to this, than to consider what is really
best to be done about it. 1t seeks to in
flame, not to allay, the passions and preju-
dices of the people. 1t is war party, not
peace party.
tihty to the South-that the negro vote is
suppressed-is not sincere because it does
not aim to cure the evil of which it COM
plains, but to organize the solid North by
every manner of excited appeal to sectional
ignorance and belligerent feeling. That
the negroes of the far South are different
species from the negroes of the North and
the Middle and border States, and wholly
unfit to vote and unable to protect their
vote, and, therefore, bound inevitably to be
the prey of whatever force is applied to
make them vote, or to prevent their voting,
is not allowed to enter into the account, or
accepted as an argument. Nevertheless
those are the simple facts, and, until they
be recognized, we can hope for no electoral
reform.
For ten years the repression of the whites
was tried, amid such scenes of corruption
and carnage as make the heart sick to re-
call. We have had ten years of normal con-
ditious; and they have been years of devel-
opment and order. Intelligence and prop
erty hold their natural ascendancy:
barbarism and brute force are held in sub
lection; and, as a consequence we have re-
sponsible government. No one claims that
the millennium has been reached. In the
South, as in the North, ignorance is at
discount, whereas, during the Reconstruc-
ton period which the Republicans seek to
restore, it was at a premium. There is in
Southern elections, as in Northern elections,
the customary amount of fraud; but there
is no longer the violence which prevailed
whilst the Republicans were forcing the
white people to submit to the black people
by arbitrary acts of Congress and military
power. In a word, we have peace and law
where we had bloodshed and rapine, and if
one negro is no longer the equal of two
white men, he is at least protected in his
rights of person and property, which is
more than the Republicans were able to in
sure him.
The thorough emancipation of the black
man can be wrought only by time, and, even
by time, only through conditions of COM
plete repose from race agitations. The
foolish theories of fanaticism urged in his
behalf, and the wicked schemes of party
interest advanced by the Republican leaders
for their own benefit, can work nothing but
mischief to him, no matter what else they
may do. The whites of the South have no
motive to persecute and every motive TO be-
friend him individually He constitutes our
labor system. Nor is he politically dangerous
except when organized on race lines TO sup
port bad men in the establishment of cor
rupt and irresponsible Government When
the whites divide-as they will when their
lives, properties, laws, civilization are no
further menaced-the blacks will divide,
and not till then will they become political
force save as the organized occasion and
instrument of hostile Federal power, seek
ing by martial law to destroy the whites.
This latter is now the policy and purpose
of the Republican leaders, who, despairing
of return to power by the agencies of
peaceful and rational discussion, are pre-
pairing to resort to every kind of warlike
violence.