Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1890-03-14
Change in the Social Position of
Political Parties at the North.


[From the N. Y. Evening Post, Ind. Rep
If we could personify History and ask her
where the Republican party was born and
bred, her reply would undoubtedly be,
"NeW England" There, at least, the anti
can party struck deep its tap-root, had its
birth, its fostering, and its genius. In that
region, as whole, the party has been his
tOrlcal1y dominant, and to the tranSplanted
New England stock must the organization
trace its growth in the West and Northwest.
The moral changes which have come over
the party in the Yankee cradle of its faitn
it is not our purpose to amplify here, but
rather to outline some of the social muta-
tons brought out by Republican party his
congratulations with which, however,
moral ones are necessarily blended.
Ii we turn back to the times of Federal
ist and Democrat in New England, no
gap expressed by those two titles. All
the literature of those early days, whether
it is a volume like Mrs. Stoves "Poganuc
People," OF Goodrich's "Recollections of
Lifetime, or the files of old newspapers,
shows how much the New England FEEDER
position above the Democrat. The latter,
in his foes bitter epithets of the time, is
ever "Jacobin," drunkard, or social
outcast of some type. When, three-quar-
tiers of century ago, a Federalist inn
keeper in northwestern Connecticut put up
the sign mo Democrat entertained here, .
the phrase was not more the expression of
partisanship. than of social distinction
which the shrewd landlord was willing to
coin into dollars and siXpenceS. AS the
Federalists recrystalliZed into the Wings
they took into the new party much the
same social distinctions as did the Repub-
licans from the Wings in turn. Ask to-day
o1mOCt ybitohaadod
Yankee, and, if high-bred, he will say
that aside from politics the old social
stress compelled him as young man to be
Federalist Wing, OF Republican; that he
deemed the Democratic party body of
underlings drawn from the grog-shop and
respectable member; and that the oppos-
ed party represented almost exclusively
broadcloth, piety, and social position
Now. of these powerful traditions of re-
spectability in New England the Republi-
can party was not only the residuary lega-
tee, but it came into an Inheritance vastly
increased by stimulating moral forces.
What gains the Democrats had made by
the break up of the Wings were more than
offset by the earnest moral purpose which
the anti-slavery contest poured into the
Republican ranks and which drew to them
almost almost all the advanced New Eng
land thinkers. Even more marked was the
cruited the Republicans with War Demo-
Gratis, men of mind as we'll as patriotism.
1t is safe to say that until the end of the
half-dozen years following the war the Re
publcans of New England had well-nigh
the full benefit of their claim as the party
of social quality. And what a vantage it
was! Every young man of aspirations and
ideals who had been born into its ranks
felt his political fealty deepened by his
party'S high position in the community.
On the other hand, every aspiring young
man bred Democrat was placed, socially
as we'll as politically, on the defensive.
His attitude was more or less apologize,
creed, his normal and constant impulse
was to secede from his hereditary party
associations.
The scene shifts, political history moves
down the span OF twenty years of time, and
10! what a social as we'll as moral change
a -, change visible over the whole North,
but made more prominent in New England
by its historical contrasts Wesee now the
whole drift Of the social and intellectual
current reversed The Republican party.
the party of ancestral caste, is leaving its
old vantage ground, and bit by bit is sur
rendering its birthrlght Contrast, for ex-
ample, its present leadership and social
days of Sumner and Andrews Mark the
distinction in Connecticut between the
"War Governor" Buckingham and the
present Executive, who in the last cam
paign is reported to have said that Republi-
can success could only be secured by ''work-
ing the scalawag vote" Everywhere in
New England we see the party substituting
for its old ideas mechanical politics, az
pealS to prejudice, and direct bribery, al d,
as corollaries, the thinkers, young and old
going over into the Democratic ranks, IL
social argument well-nigh extinct, and the
Democratic party numbering to-day pro-
badly clear majority of the faculties of
the two largest New England UNIVERSE
ties 1t this change in New England, as
elsewhere, meant that the Republican
party was dropping it's old social status
to champion popular rights, criticism
would justly turn to eulogy. But, instead,
the party ignobly forfeits its birthright to
make friends with the selfish factory in
terests and ''fry out fat to corrupt the
very classes, mere association with whom
few decades ago was reckoned a Scorn and
Kissing by the New England Republican
or Wing.
In political organizations, as in fruit,
we often find decay at the core, and the
present condition of the Grand Old Party
in New England its birthplace and breed
ing-spOt, confirms the rule. 1t is a state
OF party affairs that must most painfully
distress the hereditary Republican New
Englander when he contrasts the present
epoch of abasement with the old days of
his party's social and moral exaltation.