Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1909-08-17
INsURGENT MOVEMENTS.

Sioux City Journal.-The last biz
zard was the fiercest, the last wind
the highest. the last hot day the hot
test, and those who have been "in-
surging and their sympathizers are
now magnifying that movement to tho
utmost and striving to make people
think that 1t is the biggest thing that
has happened since Hec was a pup.
There has BEEN" says one Of the
megaphoning magnifiers, "snch a
smashing of party traditions and diyid-
Ing lines as has not been known since
1860" and whether this sort of thing
| be the result of mere visual defect or
OF desire, it, will continue til be magBi-
lied many diameters many times,
Our notions of Lincolns time are
those OF generation taking a histor-
lcal and not contemporary view of
MIN and his time. in which indeed the
facts then most conspicuous have long
since passed wholly or for the most
part beyond horizon. But the truth
nevertheless is that Lincoln himself
had to deal with an insurrectionary
movement within his own party, not
merely hostile to him personally, but
to the whole tenor of his administra-
insurgency with which Taft and his
party has had to deal Is toe lnerest
boys play The Republican anti-Lin-
coin "1nsurging" was the real thing,
demanding his head for incompetency,
for 1ndecision, for dilatoriness, for
higher conservatism. It's leaders were
men like Ben Wade, among the most
powerful leaders Of the party botn in
and out of congress. They demanded
his defeat for denomination and they
held great national convention and
did nominate presidential ticket
against Lincoln. And there is hardly
more pathetic scene in politics than
that in which Abraham Lincoln. wor-
ried to the limit of human endurance
by these Republican insurgents, and
finally convinced that they were strong
enough to defeat him in the election.
drew up that memorable paper, as a
sort of political last will and tesla
ment, affirming his despair and stating
what he would do and advise his
friends to do when the election verdict
OF rejection should be formally rem
dered.
Or take the Republican insurgent
movement in Grants administration,
when that most formidable organiza-
ton of party leaders in congress was
effected. Sumner and Schurz and
Trumbull in the senate and scores of
the foremost Republican editors were
it's directing minds. They, too, held a
great national convention and no1ni.
mated a presidential ticket headed by
Horace Greeley, an insurgent Republic
can movement so formidable that the
Democratic party endorsed it, refusing
to nominate a ticket of Democrats.
In those two cases, not to refer to
others, there was indeed ominous eff
fort to smash party traditions and
party dividing lines" and there was
grave reason for the friends of the Re-
publican party to fear and for it's enc
mics without and within to hope that
the effort might succeed. But serious
and ominous as those great insrrrec-
ton We're. and led by really able and
resolute men, those memorable Repub-
lican outbreaks failed and collapsed
utterly. They broke before the sound
judgment CT the country. of tine plain
people, when the truth got to them
and the time came for them to act