for it. If there existed a doubt sufficiently strong to require such an act, it was clearly an injustice to ignore the rights of the many in the interests of the few. But the men who had not scrupled to send rag-money to the soldiers in the trenches, and coin to the plotters in the rear, had no consciences to be troubled. They had dared to pay to the soldiers the money of the nation, and then rob them of two-thirds of it under color of law, and now needed only to search for methods, not for excuses. Political exigencies must be guarded against. The public must be hoodwinked, the soldier element placated with pension doles.
The first essential was to stifle public discussion. Some fool-friends of the money power had introduced and pressed the bill early in 1868. There were still a few Representatives in Congress who had not bowed the knee to Baal, and they raised a vigorous protest against the iniquitous proposal. Discussion then might be fatal to both the scheme and the party, and Simon Cameron supplemented an already inodorous career by warning the Senate that this bill would seriously injure the Republican party, and that it should be laid aside until the excitement of a political campaign had subsided, and it could be discussed with the calmness with which we should view all great financial questions.
Here was the art of the demagogue, blinding the eyes of the people with sophistry and false pretences in order to secure by indirection that which could not be obtained by fair discussion. A Presidential election was approaching. An honest Chief Executive had rebelled against the attempt to nullify the results of the war by converting the Southern States into conquered territories, in order that party supremacy should be secured, even at the expense of national unity and harmony. Any discussion of a proposition to burden the victorious soldier with greater debt, in the interest of a class of stay-at-homes, would have caused vigorous protests from the men whose aid was necessary for party success. Thaddeus Stevens had announced that if he thought “that the Republican party would vote to pay, in coin, bonds that were payable in greenbacks, thus making a new contract for the benefit of the bondholders, he would vote for Frank Blair, even if a worse man than Horatio Seymour was at the head of the ticket.” Oliver P. Morton, the war-Governor of Indiana, had been equally vigorous in his language; and practical politicians foresaw that even Pennsylvania and Indiana might be lost to the Republican party with these men arrayed against it. Therefore the cunning proposal to postpone this discussion “until after the excitement of a Presidential election was over, and we could discuss this with the calmness with which we should view all great financial questions.” The hint was taken, the contest of 1868 was fought under a seeming acquiescence in the views of Stevens and Morton; the dear people were hoodwinked with catch-phrases coined to deceive, and a new lease of power was secured by false pretence. But when the excitement of the election had passed, and there was no longer any danger of “injuring the Republican party,” all discussion was stifled; and the first act signed by the newly elected President was that which had been laid aside for that season of “calmness with which we should view all great financial questions.”
The next step in the conspiracy was a logical sequence to all that had preceded. Having secured coin payment of interest and principal of all bonds, it was now in order to still further increase the value of the one and to perpetuate the payment of the other. To this end, silver was demonetized by a trick in the revision of the Statutes, reducing the volume of coin one-half, and decreasing the probability of rapid bond payments. Then the volume of the paper currency was contracted by a systematic course of substituting interest-bearing bonds for non-interest-bearing currency, and the first chapter of financial blunders and crimes of the Wall Street servants ended in a panic, revealing, in its first wild terror, the disgraceful connection of high public officials with the worst elements of stock-jobbery.
It is possible that a direct proposition in 1865, to double the amount of the public debt as a free gift to the creditor-class, might have caused such a clamor as would have forever driven from power its authors, and have silenced the claims of modern Republicans that they were the sole friends of the soldier, and defenders of national honor. But the financial legislation of the Republican party has done more and worse than this. Its every act has been in the interest of a favored class, and a direct and flagrant robbery of the producing masses. It has won the support of corporate monopoly by blind submission to its demands, and, with brazen audacity, sought and obtained the co-operation of the survivors of the army by doling out pensions and promises. And yet, with a record that would have crimsoned the cheek of a Nero or Caligula, its leaders are posing as critics of honest statesmen, and the only friends and defenders of the soldier and laborer. The leaders of its earlier and better days have been ostracised and silenced in party councils, while audacious demagogues have used its places of trust as a means of casting anchors to windward for personal profit. Its party conventions are controlled by notorious lobbyists and railroad attorneys, and the agricultural population appealed to for support. Truly the world is governed more by prejudice than by reason, and American politics of the present day offer but slight rewards to manliness or patriotism.
THE HONOR OF AN ELECTION
Whose is the honor? Once again
The million-drifted shower is spent
Of votes that into power have whirled two men: —
One man, defeated; one, made President.
Whose is the honor? His who wins
The people’s wreath of favor, cast
At venture? – Lo, his thraldom just begins! —
Or is it his who, losing, yet stands fast?
The first takes power, in mockery grave
Of freedom – made, by writ unsigned,
The people’s servant, whom a few enslave.
The other is master of an honest mind.
From venomed spite that stung and ceased,
From slander’s petty craft set free,
This man – the bonds of formal power released —
Moves higher, dowered with large integrity.
Though stabs of cynic hypocrites
And festering malice of false friends
Have won their noisome way, unmoved he fits
His patriot purpose still to lofty ends.
Whose is the honor? Freemen – yours,
Who found him faithful to the right,
Clean-handed, true, yet turned him from your doors
And bartered daybreak for corruption’s night?
Weak-shouldered nation, that endures
So painfully an upright sway,
Four little years, then yields to lies and lures,
And slips back into greed’s familiar way!
For now the light bank-note outweighs
The ballot of the unbought mind;
And all the air is filled with falsehood’s praise —
Shams, for sham victory artfully designed.
Is theirs the honor, then, who roared
Against our leader’s wise-laid plan,
Yet now have seized his plan, his flag, his sword,
And stolen all of him – except the man?
No! His the honor, for he keeps
His manhood firm, intact, unsoiled
By base deceit. – Not
