Birmingham state herald., 1896-07-24
CONSIDER BEFORE TAKING THE
 STEEP

laboring under false impression.
 CONSIDER BEFORE TAKING THE
 STEP
 It matters not how long a man or a newspaper has participated with the democratic party, he or it has a perfect right to abandon the party at any time after a general election and before going into the primary elections of the party preparatory to the selection of a party standard-bearer for an approaching elec- ton. In other words, any voter or news paper in Alabama was in possession of the right to have said last January or any time thereafter before the 18th of April, the date of the party primaries, that it was evident that the democracy, state and national, was going to declare for free coinage, and, believing that doo- Urine or policy to be wrong, we will not go with the party any further. That would have been an honorable departure from the party It would have been no bolt, but the mere exercise of a right that no man could have been heard to say was a violation of honor Every man
 who failed to pursue that course and went into the party primaries forfeited his right to sever his connection with the democratic party until after the Novem- Der election. And the same rule applies to a newspaper
 Whoever takes part in party primary pledges his sacred honor to abide the re- suit and support the ticket and platform which is the outcome of the primary. He may not and is not required to embrace the doctrines proclaimed in the platform but is estopped from assailing them un- til after the general election. No man who voted to select delegates to Mont gomery, whose duty it was to help make a state democratic platform, nominate state ticket and select delegates to the national convention, whose duty it was to help make a national platform and nominate a national ticket has any right morally to withhold his support from the state and national tickets by remaining away from the polls even. Then how much greater will be the offense morally of the man who not only declines to vote for the ticket, state and national by re- maining away from the polls, but goes to
 the extent of casting his vote against it
 A man who steps up to the polls on the day of the primary election and casts his
 vote, then and there makes solemn pledge on his honor that he will support the platform and ticket named by the convention growing out of the primaries. To support a ticket, 1t must be remem- bered is not simply to vote for 1t, but to help it along by talking for it and in sec ing that you throw no impediments in its way. It does not matter whether the question, do you intend to support the nominees, is put to the participant in the primary and answered in the affirmative or not, he pledges his honor as gentle man to support the ticket and platform by the very act of voting itself.
 If two men have a dispute and agree to arbitrate, both are in honor bound to abide the verdict of the arbiters, and all men of honor are ready at once to frown down a man who would bolt the decision of the arbiters and appeal to the courts. There are men in Alabama today who are talking glibly about voting against the democratic nominee for president who voted in the primary, and they are men who would grow very red in the face and probably attempt to strike you, | or at least talk about doing so, were you 1 to walk up to them and say: "Sir, you pledged your honor as a gentleman to | do certain thing and now you fail or refuse to do it." That would be an inn peachment of his honor, and men don't like to have that done. Honorable men don't submit to it for the reason that they give no occasion for being thus ap- preached. Certainly, then, when the men who honestly believe in the gold stand ard theory and who are now talking about bolting, stop and reflect they will not violate their solemn pledge made in the primaries by refusing to vote for Bryan or by voting for Mckinley.
 The men who claim that the party has taken different position on the financial and other questions this year to what it has occupied in the past cannot in Jus- tice to themselves abandon the party
 until after the November election if they took part in the primaries of the