2352 1880 018 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by HENRY O'CONNOR, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 08-24-42 GS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AS THE PARTY OF OBSTRUCTION.NOTHING IF NOT PURELY "BOURBON." The history of the last session of the Forty-fifth Congress, and the first session of the Forty-sixth or present Congress, known as the extra session, is still fresh in the minds of the people. A brief resume, however, of that revolutionary period, even though it may prove tedious to the quiet and indifferent ease-loving Republican, is nevertheless important and necessary to the millions of honest, liberty-loving men and women whose hopes and patriotic aspirations are bound up in the progress, prosperity and perpetuity of this "Great Republic." As all the South American and Eastern nations invariably style it in their diplomatic papers, "The Great Republic of the North." Few people in the near East or the great West, who were not here in Washington during that six months of strain and trial comprising the short three-month session of the Forty-fifth, and the three succeeding months of the extra session, when the Democrats got control of both Houses of Congress, knew the real dangers that threatened the nation, and from which it was saved only by the firmness of a faithful and patriotic President. All honor to Rutherford B. Hayes for his timely and manly vetoes. Here is the history of that contest between a Democratic majority in both Houses and the Executive. This Democratic majority itself being ruled by a caucus, and the majority of that caucus being Southern Rebels, three-fourths of the latter being exConfederate officers, from Major-Generals down to Captains, so that, in fact, if we had had then in the executive chair Tilden or any other Democrat, the country would have been practically captured, and a prisoner in the hands of the traitors who had just come from the fields where they had spent four years trying with their swords to destroy it. It will be remembered, that in the Presidential year of 1868, New York, the great Empire State of the Union, Republican always since 1856, when she gave Fremont eighty thousand majority, was carried by Hoffman, as Governor, and Seymour, for President, by a few thousand majority. It turned out soon after that that success was achieved by means of the most glaring frauds on the ballot-box, on the sacred right of suffrage that had ever, up to that time, been perpetrated in this or any country. (True, they have been surpassed since in Louisiana, South Carolina and Mississippi. The shot gun is more effective than the "repeater," unless it be a |