Alexandria Gazette

Frank Blair's Speech.

MONTGOMERY, ALA., October 20.—Gen. Frank Blair, who is here with the Ku-Klux Committee, made a speech last night. He dissented entirely from the proposition that the South should not send delegates to the next Democratic Convention, and accept whatever candidate for President the Northern Democrats should give them. He wanted to have the counsels of prudent and wise men from the South in that Convention. If she should abstain on the ground that their presence in the Convention of 1868 was laid hold of to injure the party, such abstinence will now be claimed as a refusal to go with the Northern Democracy because they have adopted the New Departure. It will be said that the spirit of rebellion still lingers.

He went on to say that he was opposed to the New Departure, but believed in the purity and patriotism of those who had taken that path. It was a disastrous policy, but what the party chose to adopt he should maintain, without surrendering his own convictions. He said:

'I believe that this policy has failed to give us success in the elections of this summer and autumn, and for the reason that it was a confession in open court of our inability to carry the elections upon our own principles. It was a confession that we must make a concession in order to draw to us others who had acted against us, but, in making that concession, it failed to place candidates before the people in harmony with that platform. Thus, while some Democrats were disgusted at this concession, no Republicans were conciliated.'

He believed that Grant would be renominated, and that men who stood highest in the Radical party would then leave it. He wanted a guarantee given to the disaffected Republicans by the Democrats nominating a man who represented the New Departure, or else supporting the nominee of the disaffected Republicans. 'He said:

'In other words, I don't see that we go back on our principles in making a choice between candidates neither of whom may suit us. We could all vote for a Republican who was in favor of universal amnesty, against the Ku-Klux bills, and against the military laws. Why, the most ancient Bourbon in the State of Alabama could vote for such a Republican in preference to U. S. Grant, and hold all the time to his very heart all that there would be of his Bourbonism.'

He concluded by praising Carl Schurz and predicting that if such a man was nominated he would receive the support of the entire German vote in the United States, numbering from five hundred to eight hundred thousand men.