The Alaska citizen., 1912-09-23

two powerful existing political or ganizations. IL was in 1854 that the new Republican party entered the field of national politics, casting its gauntlet full in the teeth of the Democrats and the Whigs. Success was almost immediate. for in that year it elected the majority of the lower house of congress.
 The reason for its success was plain a great moral issue was agitating the nation. conditions were ripe and the material was at hand. To the new banner of Republicanism Hooked all the antislavery senti- ment of the country which had hith- Liberty. Free Soilers. Barn Burners all leaped forward in response to the call of the new party.
 The Whigs withered and fell like autumn leaves. Nearly all of the Southern Wings. after the passage of the Kansas Nebraska bill. which threw those territories open to slav- cry. went into the Democratic party. The Northern Whigs, with influence gone. maintained a show of organi- ! zation for while. but were finally swept into the new organization by the conditions which the passage of the Kansas Nebraska bill created. In 1860 the Republicans elected Lin soln president. and entered upon the career of office-holding that is now drawing to a close with the Taft i administration.
 In this connection, much might be ! written Of tne power of enlightened | public opinion, The Republican pow l CT succeeded because it appealed to this sentiment - because it had a 1 spiritual significance. A certain | Judge Bland, of Pennsylvania in the course of a recent address spoke of the unwritten law which is the real law" and cited the rise of tha i Republican party as an example:
 "A similar instance" he said, is furnished by the sudden concentra- ton of moral feeling concerning ! slavery. Note the arithmetic of its expression. In 1S40 the candidate | of the Abolitionsts for president received 1000 votes; in 1S44, 62,0oO; 1 in 1S4S the Abolitionists and Free Soilers united and Van Buren, their candidate, received 29l 900 votes; in 1 1852 an out-ahd-a4t Abolitionist can tidate got l56,000; and then, in 1S56 d sudden outburst came, moral tidal wave, so to speak, and Ere mont, a pure Abolitionist, received l ,350,00 votes. A legislative trifle caused 1.-the formal repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Finally came | the Dred Scott decision. in 1857. | shocking the moral feeling of the nation. and in 1860 Lincoln carried the country with 1,S00.0OO votes; and then followed the moral cyclone of the war. The organized church opposed 1t. organized business opposed 1t, organized politicians op- posed it, the written law opposed 1t; yet it came with the irresistible might of a moral hurricane, and old things suddenly passed away. We can only account for it by recogni- tion of the fact that the moral gov ernment of the world is directed by spiritual power working in man." | In 1860 the Constitutional Union par ty bobbed up with Bell of Kentucky and Edward Everett of Massachu- setts as its candidates,
 movement to sidetrack the slavery question. and was fathered by the Southern Whigs. The Constitution al Unionlsts deprecated "geographi cal and sectional parties" appealed to duty and patriotism" and insist ed that the thing to do was to let everything go as it stood" It was joke from the first.
 1 In 1872 the Liberal Republicans formed under the leadership of Carl SchurZ and made A bold hid for Suc- cess. These were men dissatisfied with Grants first administration, and in their convention that nominated Horace Greeley for president and B
 GratZ- Brown for vice-president, an alliance was formed with the Dem ocrats, which had it continued, would have beaten Grant undoubtedly But dissensions arose, the Democrats went ahead with their nominations and Grant was elected by an over
 whelming majority.
 The Prohibitionists came into be-
 ing in 1869 in Chicago, and have
 been with us ever since. playing small part in political results, but moulding an immense amount of
 public opinion.
 The Greenback party, in 1874
 bounced into the political arena with loud roar They demanded that all bank and corporation currency