The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-04-13
A BURNING QUESTION.


Congressman Dalzell, of Pennsylvania,
In a recent speech on the floor of the
House, said:
AS to the question OF suffrage, its solution is
yet in the womb OF the future: but / should
doubt the permanency of popular government
and the stability of free institutions If per-
mitted myself for one moment to believe that
the masses of the people OF this country will
rest satisfied until there 10 secured to every man
beneath the flag the right freely to cast his bal
lot, and have that ballot counted as cast
Congressman Dalzell is distinguished
for his mastery of the purely practical,
economic questions of the tariff, revenue,
and finance, as separated from questions
of pure sentiment; he is not whooper, a
crank, a sentimentalist; he is sober,
practical statesman as distinguished from
an incendiary demagogue. His utterance
concerning the vitality of the question of
free suffrage is worth all the gable about
"the blue and the gray" that has been
emitted during the last ten years. The
frightful civil war of ls61-65 was not mil
itary picnic nor Tammany target excur-
sion in any sense.
The nation invested large amount of
blood and treasure on the issue of the con-
test, and 1t is determined soon or late to Sc
cure the dividend. The unsettled question
of the civil war is not the right of seces-
sion, for the sword has solved that Gordian
knot. The unsettled question rests on the
fact that the dominant party at the South
persists in multiplying the right of political
opponents to exercise the political privi-
ieges that the constitution guarantees to
all. The persistency OF this determination
10 refuse political rights at the South is
made evident beyond dispute by the per-
iodical invocation of violence and fraud
on the part of the stupid South to secure
its silly solidty.
This Southern question needs to be
solved and solved rightly, and until it is
solved rightly and the solidity of the
South ceases 10 exist there will be eternal
war between the sections, and there ought
90 be eternal war. because the triumph of
the nation after bitter struggle was too
frighttully expensive to throw away the
legitimate dividend on the tremendous in
vestment of blood, tears and treasure
The country could not do otherwise than
free the negro, and having freed him it
could not do otherwise than endow him
with the suffrage Even General Sherman
said that 1.-The South would have to yield
to the inevitable and abandon her SYSTEM
attic suppression of the suffrage or sink
with her ship of the Solid South scuttled
by her own stupid, reckless hand"
The South is up to its ears in debt; the
Southern states are carrying two-thirds OF
all the state debts of the Union, and vet
they persist in 8 policy of exclusion, ostra-
cism and general hostility to those who
insist that the victorious results of the
civil war in the shape of federal legislation
shall be respected aud enforced. This con-
ilict concerning the results of the war
must go on TO solution so complete that
il will be settled for all time. The govern
ment must keep its word to the black
freedman as religiously as to the white ex-
Confederate; it must keep its word TO the
Union veteran and make him feel
that there Is no place in this
nation so remote from Washing
ton that the federal arm can not
reach forth for his protection or the pun
ishment Of his sssassins. And until it is
SIS safe for any man to vote and cast his
vote and have it counted fairly under the
palmettos and live oaks of the South As
il is under the pines and frs OF the Pacific
coast there will always be political war be-
tween the sections too sincere and serious
TO be quenchei by the annual blatherskits
and bouquets of Memorial day.
The conflict is as irrepressible a. that be-
tween slavery and freedom. There will be
no real political peace between the sections
until freedom OF speech and action at the
polls Is as perfectly assured under the pal
meste as under the Northern pine, because