The Tipton Advertiser

"OLD ISSUES."

One of the distinctive features of the present political campaign is the overweening anxiety of the Democratic party to contrive some plan by which events of the past may be thrown into a shadow too deep and dark for recognition. Considering what those events were, and how their consideration is likely to affect old Democratic leaders, many of whom are now coming to the front for the first time in several years, this is not at all strange. Nor is it to be denied that there are issues of the present which deserve prime consideration; and which are of quite sufficient importance to warrant their being made the subject of grand political divisions. And while making this admission we are also more than willing to admit that very many men throughout the North who have in the past been acting with one or the other of existing political parties, would be glad to have an opportunity to make issue on these questions of the present, and to unite themselves with the party-old or new-whose principles shall accord with their own views. But while this is true, it is also true that with every man who has in the past supported union against disunion, and the supremacy of the constitution and laws against treason and anarchy, these issues--call them "old" as much as you please-will still tower above everything else in importance. Of what use to speculate about national finances if national existence is threatened? Why spread eagle about needed laws in regulation of commerce when whole sections of country are defying all law? We know that Democratic speakers and writers North are denying the existence of any circumstances which are calculated to thus vitalize so-called "Old Issues." They scout the idea of any serious difficulty in the South. This is the language of a prominent Democratic Western newspaper: "The present pother is actuated more by the political necessities of the Republican party than anything else. The whole pack of the Radical press are engaged just now in howling, baying and yelping about the persecution of the poor negro by Southern Democrats." This is the flippant way in which the matter is disposed of; but in answer we need not refer to the open rebellion in Louisiana which has culminated and been, for the present, crushed since those words were penned. We will merely introduce another Democratic paper as a witness-the Louisville Courier Journal, the most able and sagacious newspaper published south of Mason and Dixon's line. The Courier Journal, summing up the testimony of its own correspondents, speaks of the outrages of the White League and Kuklux desperadoes in the following hopeless strain: "There was a chance that the next House of Representatives would not be radical. That chance is gone. The outbreaks in Kentucky and the massacre in Tennessee settle that much. No people no party, could stand such a load as the people of the South and the Democratic party of the North are forced to carry. There is no use writing, talking, speaking, argufying, contradicting, proving, as long as the bloody sum total recorded within the last fortnight goes out to the world unchallenged by adequate redress." Now who are we to believe, northern office seekers, or the Courier Journal, published in the midst of the scenes which it describes. The latter see in these lynchings and murderings, the murder of white and colored school teachers and the driving out of Northern settlers, the hand writing on the wall that seals the fate of its party in 1876. If the Democracy had a month ago any prospect of victory, that prospect has been already hopelessly and irretrievably thrown away. The scotched but not defunct Confederacy has lifted its head too soon. If this is what it dares to do before election, what would it not do after election, particularly if the results of that election should place a Democratic majority in the Congress of the United States. What the Democratic party would do with the latest amendments to the Constitution may be inferred from the following frank avowal of opinion by Foster's Democrat, of Dover, N. H. That journal says: We were always opposed to the Fourteenth "Amendment," so called, to the Federal Constitution. In fact, we never believed it to be an amendment in any just or reasonable or decent sense of the term. And all the new so called "amendments," the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth, are alike in this respect-they were illegally adopted by force and fraud, which vitiates everything in the eye of law and justice. The Democracy of the South are now attempting to nullify the Constitution and laws of the United States to the extent of armed rebellion. Let the Democratic party of the nation once obtain control of the Federal Government, and nullification will speedily become the rule throughout the country. Maine, Maine, have you heard from Maine? It had a good Republican ticket all around-State and Congressional-and the consequence is the same old Republican majority, with a ring to it. That State and Vermont have shown that the heart of the country and the faith of the country are still with the Republican party. Coushatta massacres and New Orleans riots are encouraged by electing to Congress men who, like Sheean, express sympathy for the slaveholder's rebellion in 1863, and now says he was honest in it and still believes he was right.