The Morning Star And Catholic Messenger

DRIFTING.
A solid South! A solid North! These are the words that we now hear as the smoke of the recent electoral conflict is clearing away. We do not believe that the result justifies the comment which seems to be based principally on the Republican gain of five Congressmen in New York. Ohio gives a Republican loss of four members of Congress, Pennsylvania of one, Oregon one, Nevada one, Vermont one, and Maine two. Illinois remains as before. The West seems to incline against, instead of towards, Republicanism. The solidifying influence appears to be felt only in the Atlantic States of the extreme North. Republicanism gains five members in New York, in New Jersey two, in New Hampshire one, and in Connecticut two. Rhode Island was solid already, and Massachusetts nearly so.
This region represents the floating capital, the commercial empire and the manufacturing monopoly of the country. Here is where the bond-holders and money kings reside, and they are indignant at the Democrat-Greenback alliance. Here are the merchant princes of our foreign commerce; they are still more indignant at the fast growing alliance of the whole Mississippi Valley in one grand commercial revolt of which the emporium shall be New Orleans, and which shall end by wresting the sceptre from the Northeast. Here are the great lords of calico and cloth, of leather, wool and cotton fabrics; they redouble their protest against a party which distrusts the protective tariff and threatens to remand the stony hills of New England to their natural barrenness.
As may be seen from the figures quoted above, the agricultural portions of even New England take no part in this tendency to a solid Republicanism of the North. And yet there is a great outcry of a solid North answering to a solid South. What nonsense! The North was solid before; it is so no longer. And if it were, is that a rebuke to the Southern policy. The South is solid in self-defence; the North, if solid, would be so for aggression. If such an issue is forced on us it must be accepted. No true Southern man can ever affiliate with a party which persecutes his section with vindictive malice, which sends a locust horde of carpet-bag adventurers to eat up the land, and which would stifle every Southern interest and every protest of Southern honor under the broad ruin of negro rule. That is the Republican programme for the South; is it strange or rebellious in the Southern people to present a solid front against it? Can any pretence whatever be found in such action on their part to sustain a charge against them of antagonism to the Union?
No! We will not believe that the people of the North can be so blinded to the facts of the case and to their own true interests as to harden their hearts against Southern rights and Southern people. We look forward with hope to a grand future for a united America, powerful for good, the pioneer of a new international policy of forbearance and magnanimity. Let the United States be a giant for peace. Let her be the champion of true progress and real prosperity, putting forth her mighty strength in the interest only of general harmony and universal brotherhood. Shall we sink from this high destiny to repeat the farcical tragedy of Mexican failure? The grand stumbling block of African slavery is no longer in the pathway of national unity; shall the more degrading slavery of reckless passion prove a mountain obstacle upon which all hope of national grandeur will be shattered to fragments?
Drifting! Yes drifting, not as some fear into the mortal antagonism of two solid fronts of hatred, but, as we hope, along the steady current of a glorious destiny to which the finger of God points us as his instrument in the modern triumphs of Christian civilization.