Year: 1868



 The violent and revolutionary measures which the radical leaders have adopted for the obvious and sole purpose of keeping power. are inspired, not by hope, but by despair. The congressional caucus, who constitute the central oligarchy into which the radical party has been resolved, well know that, having for three years con trayened the wishes, they have now at length forever forfeited the confidence of the American people. They are well aware that only in a course of persistent and aggravated usurpation is there the forlornest chance of retaining the oppro- brious supremacy which they have obtain ed by usurpation. This is the thought which colors all their legislative enact ments that bear in any way or in any de gree upon the political conditions of the country. With perfect truth it may be asserted, and the heart of every radical leader will indorse the assertion, that the purpose of such enactments is to organize defiance and resistance to the constitu- tional voice of the people and to force the continuance of radical ascendency by the permanent suppression of the popular will. This is the meaning of those foul and hide ous births of usurping legislation and bayonet coercion which, with horrid irony, are dignifed with the name of reconstruc- ted State governments. The African lep- rosy with winch radicalism has infected the South, is not intended to terminate in the South, but is designed to spread politi- cal infection throughout the nation and to subject the whole country to despotism resting on those two indispensable props, the unreasoning bayonet on the one hand, and the ignorant negro dupe of radical knavery on the other hand. The authors of this atrocious scheme have audaciously attempted to delude the people of the North with the idea that the perpctuation of radical power, with its extravagant and corrupt expenditures constantly increasing, and with its vexatious and obstructive legislation, ruinous to the repose and the prosperity of the country, is necessary to secure the results which it was the object of the late war to obtain. But this pre- tense is exploded. The popular mind at the North is at length awake to the fact that under radical rule, not only are the Northern masses cheated of the great end at which they have aimed, to secure a Union founded in fraternity of feeling and in conscious community of interest, but that even an outward and visible unity, designed simply for tho maintenance of internal peace and national safety, becomes constantly more remote and problematical The radical leaders, conscious that the peo- pie have detected the utter fallacy and failure of their policy, and forewarncd of the impending popular reproduction at the ballot-box, are desperately bent on fore arming the existing regime against the sovereign verdict of the country. But all their divices only reveal their increasing despair and forebode their inevitable con fusion and defeat Let them do what they may, by fraudulent technicalities or downright violence, to stife the voice of the people, their contrivances could not stand against clearly ascertained numeri- cal majority, rising in it's might and in it's wrath to condemn them, any more than a congressional edict, assisted by bayonets, could turn back the Mississippi river or arrest the flow of the gulf stream. The physical preponderance expressed by such a majority would eventually translate itself into political preponderance-at all haz- ards.