The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1894-12-14
GRAND OLD PARTY.
REPUBLICAN, VICTORIES IN THE
SOLID" SOUTH.
A Breach That Will Never BE Closed
VIII the Farmer Continue to Play the
Piper While These Schemsrs Dance
Where's That Glover?
No More Solid South.


To those Republicans who opposed
the bill OF Senator Lodge, commonly
though enormously known as the
''force BILL" there is more than a
coincidence in the fact that for the
first time since the troops were re-
moved from the Southern states the
line of the .ssolid South" is broken by
Republican victories. The st. Paul
Pioneer Press was among those who
took the view of the situation which
has now been SO glCriously ~vindicated.
We have not ceased to call
for justice on the outrages
committed against the suffrage and
against the peace and rights of inno-
cent men in the states of the South.
They have moved u pity and our in
dignatiOn. But in considering any
remedy, the question of methods is all
important. And as long as this is to
be a self-governing nation, a union of
states to each of which is reserved the
right to manage its own affairs in
dependently as long as it does not
come into conflict with the supreme
power of the nation, we have seen no
way in which to work out of this evil
except by the rational punishment of
reducing to a minority the party guilty
of it. The strong hand of federal
authority had been tried in vain.
Soldiers could not establish free and
easy suffrage in the South. Such fed
eral election laws as W. had could not
do it. The more that remedy was
applied. the more u~ntinchingly the
states of the South stood together,
and the more were they able to appeal
on partisan grounds to the Democrats
of the North. No satisfactory results
were ever obtained.
We did not approve of the repeal
of the federal election laws by. this
congress, because they are so mild
that they could not possibly do an in
justice to any one. and because the
only use ever made of them wa to
help suppress indubitable and out
rageous frauds in the great cities.
But it was also true that they were
only occasionally of any consequence
whatever. Now we do not believe it
to be by accident that the first cleo
ton held without any federal re-
s%traint, and under the conviction that
there will be none, should result in
turning over several Southern states
to the Republican party. 1t is easy to
believe that the spector of '.negro
domination" has been a real bugaboo
to the people, and that they had been
made to believe. by constant
iteration of partisans, that it
would come to pass under the
compulsion Of the federal law exer-
cised through the machinery of cleo
lions. Absurd as the thing is, there
is nc doubt that this conviction pre-
vailed largely at the South. and
turned many votes to the Democrats
that would naturally have gone else
where. With the disappearance of
all possibility of the imposition of au-
thority from without, the people turn
toward a natural division ON the line
of local issues. The moment that
they do that, the Democratic
party has no longer a monopoly of
power. There is no reason why the
breach in the solid South should ever
be closed, or why the states OF that
section should not presently become
as doubtful and as hotly contested as
those of any other part of the Union.
When that happens, justice cannot be
denied to the negro, and the eager de-
sire to obtain votes will compel re-
spect for the suffrage where the white
vote cannot any longer be held solid
nv a threat that has lost all meaning.