The Crime of Caste in Our Country

by Benjamin Rush Davenport

The surprising overturn of affairs in the distinctly Republican State of Illinois is accounted for by Senator Cullom by distinctive issues other than the McKinley and Force Bills: “Our losses in this State are mainly due to the school question, but in the nation at large they are due, in my judgment, to the passage of the McKinley law, and the impression in the minds of the masses in regard to it. When it was passed, the people expected us to revise the tariff, and revise it in the direction of reducing duties, and, while we did make reductions, they were dissatisfied because so many increases were made. When the bill came to the Senate from the House, we cut many of these in pieces, but, when it went back to the House and got into the Conference Committee, enough of them were restored to put us on the defensive and at a great disadvantage. Yes, I think our defeat can fairly be attributed to the McKinley Bill,” and Senator Cullom represents the State of Abraham Lincoln. The prairies that gave breath to the typical champion of the people, produced this statesman, who, representing the State of a man who stands first in the minds of the people as their representative, sees only the indications of the mercenary spirit of the people. How Abraham Lincoln would have gauged correctly, instinctively, the heart-throbs of the people whom he assumed to represent in the councils of the nation!

Senator Cullom, in his opinion, mirrors only the reflection, cast upon the surface of his mind, by the aristocratic and multi-millionaired Senate of the Union, in which he occupies a seat. He sees only the cold, hard dollars and cents at issue.

He does not appreciate, as Abraham Lincoln would have done, the feeling of the people whom he pretends to represent. In every prairie home of Illinois there was an insulted wife or mother by the assumed distinctions made by the would-be aristocrats of the Republican party. Stevenson’s speeches awakened no echo in their hearts, except that it gave an opportunity for the exhibition of the old, old story, written by the swords of the Anglo-Saxon people, “Caste is a crime.” That the State of all States, Illinois, which gave to the Federal Union Abraham Lincoln, should be presented in the sedate Senate of the Union, by a man whose views are so narrowed by the horizon of his own thoughts as to express a sentiment like the foregoing; namely, that the people were governed in their selection of their representative, the Chief Magistrate, by the power of the pocketbook; to be so unresponsive to the throbbing hearts of his constituency, is most disappointing.

Editors can be at times epigrammatic, and this election has brought forth some keen and trenchant opinions on the causes of defeat. Here are a few of them. All of them seek, as a child playing blind-man’s-buff, in darkness, for that which, had the bandage which blinds them been removed from their eyes, would have been made plain, and which was occasioned by their own presumption in assuming to measure the depths and power of the people’s feelings and impulses:—

Clark Howell, in the Atlanta Constitution, says: “Now, after thirty-one years, since Buchanan’s Democratic administration, another political revolution has taken place, and, as a result, the election of 1852, which destroyed the Whig party, is repeated in the Waterloo defeat of the Republican party, and the question is, will this defeat finish the career of that party? The probability is that it will.”

The Atlanta Constitution, of November 17th, in a brisk editorial, states that “Colonel J. B. McCullagh, the esteemed editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, is not very happy. Naturally, he has his regrets and his hours of gloom, but he is not so miserable that he is unable to appreciate a mystery that crosses and recrosses his path in broad daylight. He cannot, for instance, understand the post-mortem talk of his party leaders. ‘Curiously enough,’ he says, ‘they are now claiming that Harrison was defeated by the very things which they then said must insure his success.’ Of course, these statements have a humorous twang, but it seems to us that a Republican as prominent as Colonel McCullagh would be willing to drop a veil over these gibbering evidences of human frailty. After all is said, there is but one trouble with the Republicans. They have but one regret. Editor Grubb, of Darien, outlined the situation very aptly when he said that the only thing that the Republicans desired, was the opportunity to steal a State. They are perfectly willing to see Harrison defeated; they are perfectly willing to retire from the control of the government; the only bitterness they feel is the realization of the fact that they failed to steal a State. They stole three Southern States in 1876. They stole two Northern States in 1890, and they stole a Western State last year, but they have failed to steal a single one in 1892. It is no wonder they are going about talking wildly and rolling their eyes. These are the symptoms of paresis, and, under the circumstances, Senator McCullagh ought to forgive them. The grief and disappointment of the Republican leaders are natural; a general election, and not a State stolen! Surely, their hands have lost their cunning. They made a tremendous effort to keep up their record. They tried to steal Delaware and West Virginia and Connecticut, but everywhere the Democrats met them and exposed their plans. The result was, that they failed to steal even one State. Under the circumstances, we think editor McCullagh should treat his brethren gently; he should not make satellite allusions to their troubles. Let them gibber.”

Thank God, with our Australian Ballot system, each free-born American citizen carries with him into the voter’s booth, if he be at all sensitive, and clothed with an enlightened conscience, the same awful sense of responsibility with which the enlightened and tender-conscienced Catholic enters the sacred realm of the confessional-box. Tremendous issues are at stake. He feels their force, and arises to the occasion, as he ever has done when the exercise of worth, virtue, or virility has been required upon his part, and of the great mass of the common people, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, furnish fair samples of the people’s worth, virtue, and virility.

The Buffalo Commercial, than which there is no paper in the State of New York in possession of more perspicacity and political common-sense, in speaking of Senator Allison, a Republican leader of the Senate, states that just before leaving for Europe he intimated that the McKinley Bill was too strong a specific for the Republican party. “You remember,” he said, “that epitaph on the tombstone of the young man who died before his time: ‘I was well; medicine made me ill, and here I lie.’”

The Illinois State Journal remarks: “Until the post-mortem is held, it is, perhaps, just as well not to be certain what it was that hit the G. O. P. last Tuesday. It may have been the McKinley Bill, or the Homestead matter, or the Lutheran business, or the naturalized vote, or several other things, and then it may have been a complication of all these diseases.” Thou wise physician, who would lose sight of the most important evidence of the disease, the discontent of the people, the artificial class distinction created by the sham aristocracy of America, the diagnosis of the disease, called discontent, as made by the press generally, is as faulty and erroneous as would be the opinion of the quack who would call measles, smallpox. Every symptom of the displeasure of the people at the prevalence of the crime of “caste” in our country was evident; yet, apparently, the most learned failed to discern it.