The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1893-03-10
DEAR GOVERNOR"
Another Open Letter From MAJ.
j. Z. Hudson.
The Recent Warlike Farce Enacted BY His
Excellency-Gov. Lewelling as Great
Military Leader-The Party OF
Manifestoes.

| ManfestOeS.
Mai. Hudson, of the Topeka Capital,
in continuing his incisive open letters
20 Gov. Lewelling had this to say about
the action of the executive after the
'late war;
My Dear Governor: Your comic adj
ministration has added one more week
of history that amuses those who de-
spise us and humiliates those who love
us Your fantastic display of troops,
whose presence was the only menace to
the peace and good order of this COM
munity, summoned as they were to
overcome the sheriff's legal right to
maintain order, becomes more and more
absurd the longer we consider its i'm
propriety and your revolutionary in
tent You no doubt owe your present
good health to the fact that the state
escaped fatal collision between the
deputy sheriffs and your forces That
Kansas was not further disgraced by
/ blOodshed to sustain n minority filed
with the solidified gall that claims So
/ is greater than Ga is more due to the
forbearance and patriotism of the men
you abuse in your recent semi-otficial
address than to any appreciation
of responsibility or control on your
part of the excited conditions sur
rounding the week ended February
18th. How the troops of the state were
martialed to give Legislative power to
reform party that feared to submit
questions in dispute to the courts for
adjustment is fully understood by an
outraged people who are powerless to
reply 10 the ridcule and contempt
heaped upon Kansas throughout the
nation Your play is not Il farce, be-
cause it imperils the credit and tar
nishes the good name of the state, while
the political clowns travesty legisla-
ton. 1t is not a comedy, for that is
bright and witty and entertaining. 1t
is not a tragedy, because it is full of
empty proclamations and weak bravado.
Seven weeks have passed since you and
your. co-conspirators undertook to rob
the people who elected the majority
of the house of their just representa-
ton. Backed by your legal jugglers,
| Webb, Doster and Clemens, strong
in the power of a populist senate,
YOU have been determined since
the 10Th day of January to organize the
house for populistic purposes on a mi
nority of fifty-six legal members. Two
years ago there was republican gov
ernor and republican senate and your
party had a majority in the house
What mighty shout would have gone
up from every populist meeting since
that time if the republicans had enun-
ciated the infamous doctrine you have
tried to force upon the state, viz, that
the governor and the senate having
recognized the minority of the house,
therefore it is the legal house. This is
your position and the argument-of your
assistant governors-Webb, Doster and
Clemens Your windy orators all over
Kansas would have sawed the unoffend-
ing air for hours to prove that such
course was dictated by corporate greed
and monopolistic agencies To-day
you do this crime in the name of re-
form.
My dear governor, your friends in
creased your vanity and raised false
expectations by assuring the people,
after your election, that you would be
larger than your party. Is it possible
that your party is no drawer when fac
ing public duty, no stronger, no more
patriotic or faithful to the principles of
Justice, and represents no more state
| pride than your wabbling course for
she past seven weeks would indicate?
Beginning with your inaugural address,
where you missed your great oppOrtu-
nifty to present some evidences of states
manship, following that with your first
address to the people, so full of errors
of fact as to call from you a second eX-
planatorv one within Il few days. This
] apology was so much worse than the
first offense that you denied its anthem
ticity after you saw it in cold print
Your prOclamltory administration
then rested its case without further
Iubernatorial threats of violence until
your war proclamation calling out the
militia. On last Monday, February 20.
. pOpulist address was issued with your
approval which presents in the usual
elegant literary style of the guberna-
torial Office, the deep chagrin and in
dignation you and your party felt over
the just defeat you suffered in your
first military campaign. cannot for
bear quoting from this last literary
gem of the revolution. 1t says:
When the governor found himself confronted
by the sheriff of Shawnee county and huge
horde OF drunken, ruflianlG deputies, said to be
| largely from Missouri, present, he also found
| that the militia OF the state ION whom he had to
| rely). were TO a man stained through and
through with treason. The commanding officer
was the first to make known his contempt for
| his official oath and that he would not obey
! lers from his superior officer.
! But the partisan sheriff, after involving him
| self in evasions and gross contradictions per
,eiving that the governor was helpless in the
/ midst of a cowardly and disloyal militia, raised
! An army of deputies, many OF whom we're the
I most vicious and depraved characters, filled
! with rum and continually talking about hang
| ing the populist leaders Backed up by this
! motley crew, the sheriff denies the governor the
| powers conferred on him by the constitution.
| and under threat OF boOdshed and an assault
| upon the state house and the governors feeble
forces compels him TO treat with the lawless
and troason-nfected republican gang.
That essential is 1.-THE preservation Of the
populist house"
To suppress this. to destroy it, to wipe it
! out OF existence was the dastardly and far
! reaching purpose OF the republicans when they
! precip.tlted the late Instruction Could they
! have accomplished the suppression of that
| house, they would have thwarted all possibility
! Of any reform legislation They know that
laws passed by the assistance of that house are
| valid They know that the supreme court that
would declare otherwise would have to reverse
| all respectable precedent, immediate itself to
the basest partisan demands, and face wave
Of pubic indign ltion unparalleled since the
lays when the notorious Judge Tresillan was
followed to the sca1oll By an outraged people,
| where they beat him with slaves TO make him
ascend, and then exulted at his just but shock