Dodgeville Chronicle

The Campaign

The time when each man will be tried is with fire, is at hand. Each and every one of us has something to do, and when we have done what seemeth to us good, may we have the assurance that we have done right. Another Presidential campaign has been inaugurated. It will undoubtedly be an exciting contest, and in its results it will be as important to the nation as the second and sharp contest that placed Lincoln in the Presidential Chair.

The same parties arrayed against each other at that time, have met in battle array once more. There are two, and only two political parties—the Republican and the Democratic, and there is no middle ground. There are two candidates for the Presidency in the field. U. S. Grant heads the Republican cause, Horace Greeley that of the Democracy. The idea of liberal Republicans or liberal Democrats is all bosh; for there is no such candidate in the field.

The contest then will be as usual between the present Republican party and the old Democratic party. Changes will be made as in every Presidential campaign. There are men in both parties that have become tired, and for reasons best known to themselves, wish to change their politics, but from the observations we have made we have seen no reason for believing that more changes will be made during the present contest than any previous one. Of course, those wishing to leave the Republican party and join that of the Democracy, are at liberty so to do, but before taking such a step it would be well to weigh all the chances and see where they will stand when the excitement is over, and they should fully understand that if they give their support and votes to Horace Greeley they give that support to the Democratic party, and by so doing they of course become Democrats; there is no way out of it however irksome it may be.

In looking at the thing from a Republican standpoint, it seems absurd to see the bitterest enemy the Democrats ever had, one who has always been a deadly antagonist, and said and printed meaner things of the party than any man in America ever did, craving the support of that party. It looks equally absurd to see the Democrats taking such an old goose as their standard bearer. It is evident to every thinking man that both party and candidate have become desperate demoralized and altogether unprincipled. We are not speaking now of individual men, of our neighbors and friends, for we have as close personal friends in the Democratic party as in the Republican; men that we can tie to every day. Our friends may have the same political creed and faith as we have, or they may not, but our friendship may be none the less though we be political opponents. It is when seen through the past that the party is objectionable. We have every reason for believing, judging from the past, that if the Democratic party came again into power, no matter what person may represent it, the work the Republican party has done will be undone if possible. The negro will be outraged and insulted, and in many instances re-enslaved. The national debt repudiated, or probably the confederate debt, including all the slave loss of the south, will be assumed, and the thousands of valuable lives and the five thousand million dollars expended in putting down the most terrible rebellion that ever existed, will all have been spent in vain.

What is there in the past history of this party that we should join them and help them to elect their President? Does not their late history justify our conclusions that there is danger in losing at a stroke what we have been ten years in gaining? Not so with the Republican party. It has been a reform party from the first, and is so acknowledged all over the civilized world. When it came into being it found the nation almost overwhelmed with that accursed thing, slavery, it found our finances, army, navy, &c., in a most deplorable condition. It immediately went to work and broke down slavery, giving freedom to all regardless of nationalities, color or station. It filled our treasury with money that these same Democrats declared worthless, and did all in their power to shake the confidence that patriotic and good men might have in our government by a cry of failure. It raised a mighty army in a shorter space of time than was ever known in the history of the world. It established national credit, integrity and good faith wherever its influence was felt. It carried us through a war of such magnitude and so rapidly as to astonish the whole world; and to-day, notwithstanding the croakers, we are at the head of the nations with the most perfect and prosperous government on earth.

And this is the party whose ruin is sought by a few disappointed politicians, who seek to force the people to believe the Republican party is all corruption. In answer we refer them to Tammany, Ku Klux, Slave masters, &c., the avowed supporters of Horace Greeley.

The following, which we copy from an exchange, is given to the public as an authentic copy of the letter which Mr. Greeley will soon make public in reply to the notification of his Baltimore nomination. His oral response was brief on that occasion; he was too full for utterance, or the gentleman who unfolded the round unvarnished tale were too full to endure more than the most excessive brevity in reply. This is strictly reliable.

New York, July 20.
Gentlemen of the Democratic Convention:
It is the happiest moment of my life when I am informed of my nomination to the Presidency by such a lot of thieves, pimps, and blacklegs as you are. As I have frequently remarked, you hate school houses and where they are pretty thin you are pretty thick. You are propagated in sinks of iniquity, and begotten in festering rumholes; therefore your approbation thrills my bosom with pride. I loathe your contaminating presence, as I said before. You fill the jails, and Republicans support them, as remarked in the Tribune of last September. As I said on January 7, 1865, 'every one who chooses to live by pugilism, or gambling, or harlotry, with nearly every keeper of a tippling house, is politically a Democrat. A purely selfish interest attaches the lewd ruffianly, criminal, and dangerous classes to the Democratic party, by the instinct of self preservation.' Therefore my heart throbs with delight at this manifestation of—of—[there his pen faltered with emotion.] Recovering himself he proceeded:
You have not elected me to anything very often. [Laughter.] It seems to me a good deal like going home. Because as I recently said in the Tribune, 'point where you please to an election district which you will pronounce morally rotten—given up to debauchery and vice—whose voters subsist mainly by keeping policy offices, gambling houses, grog shops, and darker dens of infamy—and that district will be found giving a large majority for which it styles itself the Democratic party. There you see yourselves, boys, as in a glass. This is a most auspicious moment. I hope Republicans will not doubt my sincerity when I cast myself into the embrace of such a set of jail birds as you are. Now, then, all together, let us move forward earnestly for reform.

"Yours, contemptuously, but devotedly
Horace Greeley."