REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT.
Among our Californian passengers, we had many strong party men, and
political conversation never flagged throughout the voyage. In every
discussion it became more and more clear that the Democratic is the
Constitutional, the Republican the Utilitarian party--rightly called
“Radical,” from its habit of going to the root of things, to see whether
they are good or bad. Such, however, is the misfortune of America in the
possession of a written Constitution, such the reverence paid to that
document on account of the character of the men who penned it, that even
the extremest radicals dare not admit in public that they aim at
essential change, and the party loses, in consequence, a portion of the
strength that attaches to outspoken honesty.
The President‘s party at their convention--known as the “Wigwam”--which
met while I was in Philadelphia, maintained that the war had but
restored the “Union as it was,” with State rights unimpaired. The
Republicans say that they gave their blood, as they are ready again to
shed it, for the “Union as it was _not;_” for one nation, and not for
thirty-six, or forty-five. The Wigwam declared that the Washington
government had no constitutional right to deny representation in
Congress to any State. The Republicans ask how, if this constitutional
provision is to be observed, the government of the country is to be
carried on. The Wigwam laid it down as a principle, that Congress has
no power to interfere with the right possessed by each State to
prescribe qualifications for the elective franchise. The Radicals say
that State sovereignty should have vanished when slavery went down, and
ask how the South is to be governed consistently with republicanism
unless by negro suffrage, and how this is to be maintained except by
Federal control over the various States--by abolition, in short, of the
old Union, and creation of a new. The more honest among the Republicans
admit that for the position which they have taken up, they can find no
warrant in the Constitution; that, according to the doctrine which the
“continental statesmen” and the authors of “The Federalist” would lay
down, were they living, thirty-five of the States, even if they were
unanimous, could have no right to tamper with the constitution of the
thirty-sixth. The answer to all this can only be that, were the
Constitution to be closely followed, the result would be the ruin of the
land.
The Republican party have been blamed because their theory and practice
alike tend toward a consolidation of power, and a strengthening of the
hands of the government at Washington. It is in this that lies their
chief claim to support. Local government is an excellent thing; it is
the greatest of the inventions of our inventive race, the chief security
for continued freedom possessed by a people already free. This local
government is consistent with a powerful executive; between the village
municipality and Congress, between the cabinet and the district council
of selectmen, there can be no conflict: it is State sovereignty, and the
pernicious heresy of primary allegiance to the State, that have already
proved as costly to the Republic as they are dangerous to her future.
It has been said that America, under the Federal system, unites the
freedom of the small State with the power of the great; but though this
is true, it is brought about, not through the federation of the States,
but through that of the townships and districts. The latter are the true
units to which the consistent Republican owes his secondary allegiance.
It is, perhaps, only in the tiny New England States that Northern men
care much about their commonwealth; a citizen of Pennsylvania or New
York never talks of his State, unless to criticise its legislature.
After all, where intelligence and education are all but universal, where
a spirit of freedom has struck its roots into the national heart of a
great race, there can be no danger in centralization, for the power that
you strengthen is that of the whole people, and a nation can have
nothing to fear from itself.
In watching the measures of the Radicals, we must remember that they
have still to guard their country against great dangers. The war did not
last long enough to destroy anti-republicanism along with slavery. The
social system of the Carolinas was upset; but the political fabric built
upon a slavery foundation in such “free” States as New York and Maryland
is scarcely shaken.
If we look to the record of the Republican party with a view to making a
forecast of its future conduct, we find that at the end of the war the
party had before it the choice between military rule and negro rule for
the South--between a government carried on through generals and
provost-marshals, unknown to the Constitution and to the courts, and
destined to prolong for ages the disruption of the Union and disquiet of
the nation, and, on the other hand, a rule founded upon the principles
of equity and self-government, dear to our race, and supported by local
majorities, not by foreign bayonets. Although possessed of the whole
military power of the nation, the Republicans refuse to endanger their
country, and established a system intended to lead by gradual steps to
equal suffrage in the South. The immediate interest of the party, as
distinguished from that of the country at large, was the other way. The
Republican majority of the presidential elections of 1860 and 1864 had
been increased by the success of the Federal arms, borne mainly by the
Republicans of New England and the West, in a war conducted to a
triumphant issue under the leadership of Republican Congressmen and
generals. The apparent magnanimity of the admission of a portion of the
rebels, warm-handed, to the poll, would still further have strengthened
the Republicans in the Western and Border States; and while the extreme
wing would not have dared to desert the party, the moderate men would
have been conciliated by the refusal of the franchise to the blacks. A
foresight of the future of the nation happily prevailed over a more
taking policy, and, to the honor of the Republican leaders, equal
franchise was the result.
The one great issue between the Radicals and the Democrats since the
conclusion of the war is this: the “Democracy” deny that the readmission
to Congress of the representatives of the Southern States is a matter of
expediency at all; to them they declare that it is a matter of right.
There was a rebellion in certain States which temporarily prevented
their sending representatives; it is over, and their men must come.
Either the Union is or is not dissolved; the Radicals admit that it is
not, that all their endeavors were to prevent the Union being destroyed
by rebels, and that they succeeded in so doing. The States, as States,
were never in rebellion; there was only a powerful rebellion localized
in certain States. “If you admit, then,” say the Democrats, “that the
Union is not dissolved, how can you govern a number of States by
major-generals?” Meanwhile the Radicals go on, not wasting their time in
words, but passing through the House and over the President‘s veto the
legislation necessary for the reconstruction of free government--with
their illogical, but thoroughly English, good sense, avoiding all talk
about constitutions that are obsolete, and laws that it is impossible to
enforce, and pressing on steadily to the end that they have in view:
equal rights for all men, free government as soon as may be. The one
thing to regret is, that the Republicans have not the courage to appeal
to the national exigencies merely, but that their leaders are forced by
public opinion to keep up the sham of constitutionalism. No one in
America seems to dream that there can be anything to alter in the
“matchless Constitution,” which was framed by a body of slaveowners
filled with the narrowest aristocratic prejudices, for a country which
has since abolished slavery, and become as democratic as any nation in
the world.
The system of presidential election and the constitution of the Senate
are matters to which the Republicans will turn their attention as soon
as the country is rested from the war. It is not impossible that a
lifetime may see the abolition of the Presidency proposed, and carried
by the vote of the whole nation. If this be not done, the election will
come to be made directly by the people, without the intervention of the
electoral college. The Senate, as now constituted, rests upon the
States, and that State rights are doomed no one can doubt who remembers
that of the population of New York State less than half are native-born
New Yorkers. What concern can the cosmopolitan moiety of her people
have with the State rights of New York? When a system becomes purely
artificial, it is on the road to death; when State rights represented
the various sovereign powers which the old States had allowed to sleep
while they entered a federal union, State rights were historical; but
now that Congress by a single vote cuts and carves territories as large
as all the old States put together, and founds new commonwealths in the
wilderness, the doctrine is worn out.
It is not likely that the Republicans will carry all before them without
a check; but though one Conservative reaction may follow another,
although time after time the Democrats may return victorious from the
fall elections, in the end Radicalism must inevitably win the day. A
party which takes for its watch-word, “The national good,” will always
beat the Constitutionalists.
Except during some great crisis, the questions which come most home at
election times in a democratic country are minor points, in which the
party not in power has always the advantage over the office-holders: it
is on these petty matters that a cry of jobbery and corruption can be
got up, and nothing in American politics is more taking than such a cry.
“We are a liberal people, sir,” said a Californian to me, “but among
ourselves we don‘t care to see some men get more than their share of
Uncle Sam‘s money. It doesn‘t go down at election time to say that the
Democrats are spoiling the country; but it‘s a mighty strong plank that
you‘ve got if you prove that Hank Andrews has made a million of dollars
by the last Congressional job. We say, ‘Smart boy, Hank Andrews;’ but we
generally vote for the other man.” It is these small questions, or “side
issues,” as they are termed, which cause the position of parties to
fluctuate frequently in certain States.
The first reaction against the now triumphant Radicals will probably be
based upon the indignation excited by the extension of Maine liquor laws
throughout the whole of the States in which the New Englanders have the
mastery. Prohibitive laws are not supported in America by the arguments
with which all of us in Britain are familiar. The New England Radicals
concede that, so far as the effects of the use of alcohol are strictly
personal, there is no ground for the interference of society. They go
even further, and say that no ground for general and indiscriminate
interference with the sale of liquor is to be found in the fact that
drink maddens certain men, and causes them to commit crime. They are
willing to admit that, were the evils confined to individuals, it would
be their own affair; but they attempt to show that the use of alcohol
affects the condition, moral and physical, of the drinker‘s offspring,
and that this is a matter so bound up with the general weal that public
interference may be necessary. It is the belief of a majority of the
thinkers of New England that the taint of alcoholic poison is
hereditary; that the children of drunkards will furnish more than the
ordinary proportion of great criminals; that the descendants of habitual
tipplers will be found to lack vital force, and will fall into the ranks
of pauperism and dependence: not only are the results of morbid
appetites, they say, transmitted to the children, but the appetites
themselves descend to the offspring with the blood. If this be true, the
New England Radicals urge, the use of alcohol becomes a moral wrong, a
crime even, of which the law might well take cognizance.
We are often told that party organization has become so dictatorial, so
despotic, in America, that no one not chosen by the preliminary
convention, no one, in short, whose name is not upon the party ticket,
has any chance of election to an office. To those who reflect upon the
matter, it would seem as though this is but a consequence of the
existence of party and of the system of local representation: in England
itself the like abuse is not unknown. Where neither party possesses
overwhelming strength, division is failure; and some knot or other of
pushing men must be permitted to make the selection of a candidate, to
which, when made, the party must adhere, or suffer a defeat. As to the
composition of the nominating conventions, the grossest misstatements
have been made to us in England, for we have been gravely assured that a
nation which is admitted to present the greatest mass of education and
intelligence with the smallest intermixture of ignorance and vice of
which the world has knowledge, allows itself to be dictated to in the
matter of the choice of its rulers by caucuses and conventions composed
of the idlest and most worthless of its population. Bribery, we have
been told, reigns supreme in these assemblies; the nation‘s interest is
but a phrase; individual selfishness the true dictator of each choice;
the name of party is but a cloak for private ends, and the wire-pullers
are equaled in rascality only by their nominees.
It need hardly be shown that, were these stories true, a people so full
of patriotic sentiment as that which lately furnished a million and a
half of volunteers for a national war, would without doubt be led to see
its safety in the destruction of conventions and their wire-pullers--of
party government itself, if necessary. It cannot be conceived that the
American people would allow its institutions to be stultified and law
itself insulted to secure the temporary triumph of this party or of
that, on any mere question of the day.
The secret of the power of caucus and convention is, general want of
time on the part of the community. Your honest and shrewd Western
farmer, not having himself the leisure to select his candidate, is fain
to let caucus or convention choose for him. In practice, however, the
evil is far from great: the party caucus, for its own interest, will, on
the whole, select the fittest candidate available, and, in any case,
dares not, except perhaps in New York City, fix its choice upon a man of
known bad character. Even where party is most despotic, a serious
mistake committed by one of the nominating conventions will seldom fail
to lose its side so many votes as to secure a triumph for the opponents.
King Caucus is a great monarch, however; it would be a mistake to
despise him, and conventions are dear to the American people--at least
it would seem so, to judge from their number. Since I have been in
America there have been sitting, besides doubtless a hundred others, the
names of which I have not noticed, the Philadelphia “Copper Johnson
Wigwam,” or assembly of the Presidential party (of which the Radicals
say that it is but “the Copperhead organization with a fresh snout”), a
dentists’ convention, a phrenological convention, a pomological
congress, a school-teachers’ convention, a Fenian convention, an
eight-hour convention, an insurance companies’ convention, and a loyal
soldiers’ convention. One is tempted to think of the assemblies of ’48
in Paris, and of the caricatures representing the young bloods of the
Paris Jockey Club being addressed by their President as “Citoyens
Vicomtes,” whereas, when the _café_ waiters met in their congress, it
was “Messieurs les Garçons-limonadiers.”
The pomological convention was an extremely jovial one, all the
horticulturists being whisky-growers themselves, and having a proper
wish to compare their own with their neighbors’ “Bourbon” or “old Rye.”
Caucuses (or cauci: which is it?) of this kind suggest a derivation of
this name for what many consider a low American proceeding, from an
equally low Latin word of similar sound and spelling. In spite of the
phrase “a dry caucus” being not unknown in the temperance State of
Maine, many might be inclined to think that caucuses, if not exactly
vessels of grace, were decidedly “drinking vessels;” but Americans tell
you that the word is derived from the phrase a “caulker‘s meeting,”
caulkers being peculiarly given to noise.
The cry against conventions is only a branch of that against
“politicians,” which is continually being raised by the adherents of the
side which happens at the moment to be the weaker, and which evidently
helps to create the evils against which its authors are protesting. It
is now the New York Democrats who tell such stories as that of the
Columbia District census-taker going to the Washington house of a
wealthy Boston man to find out his religious tenets. The door was opened
by a black boy, to whom the white man began: “What‘s your name?” “Sambo,
sah, am my Christian name.” “Wall, Sambo, is your _master_ a Christian?”
To which Sambo‘s indignant answer was: “No, sah! Mass member ob
Congress, sah!” When the Democrats were in power, it was the Republicans
of Boston and the Cambridge professors who threw out sly hints, and
violent invectives too, against the whole tribe of “politicians.” Such
unreasoning outcries are to be met only by bare facts; but were a jury
of readers of the debates in Parliament and in Congress to be impaneled
to decide whether political immorality were not more rife in England
than in America, I should, for my part, look forward with anxiety to
the result.
The organization of the Republican party is hugely powerful; it has its
branches in every township and district in the Union; but it is strong,
not in the wiles of crafty plotters, not in the devices of unknown
politicians, but in the hearts of the loyal people of the country. If
there were nothing else to be said to Englishmen on the state of parties
in America, it should be sufficient to point out that, while the
“Democracy” claim the Mozart faction of New York and the shoddy
aristocracy, the pious New Englanders and their sons in the Northwest
are, by a vast majority, Republicans; and no “side issues” should be
allowed to disguise the fact that the Democratic is the party of New
York, the Republican the party of America.