Interesting, take an article from 1870, swap the words "Republican" and "Democratic"

[woodsprite]

What I've typed below are 2 small articles as they appeared in the Cecil Whig (MD) in 1870. Read it through, but swap the words "Republican" and "Democratic". In the 2nd article when reading, swap the 2 party names, as well as substitute the words "Iraq War" for "Democratic Rebellion".
----------------------------------------------------------
Article 1: Record of the Two Parties.

Record of the Republican Party.

It abolished Slavery
It established Universal Suffrage
It gave liberty to all Sections
It protected the Civil Rights of all Men
It defeated Repudiation
It gave Republican Government to the South
It built the Pacific Railroad
It passed the Homestead Law
It opened New Roads into the uninhabitable public domain
It secured Pensions and Homesteads to the Union Soldiers
It has reduced the National Debt one hundred and forty six millions of dollars in 16 months and could erase the whole
debt in 15 years.
It has reduced taxation by 80 million dollars in one bill
It has passed a Revenue Tariff with full incidental protection to American Labor
It has reduced the prospective interest on the National Debt

Record of the Democratic Party

Sympathy with the Rebellion
Devotion to Slavery
Sympathy with the mob that burned Colored Orphan Asylums
Hostility to University Suffrage
Persecution of the Freed People
Opposition to the Civil Rights Bill
Favorable to Repudiation
Adverse to the Reduction of the Debt
Votes in Congress against reducing Taxation
Prejudice against the Union Soldier
Committed to Low Wages and Free Trade

That the above are true and faithful records of the two respective parties no one can successfully deny. The glorious mission of the Republican Party has not yet been completed. A deep responsibility rests upon the next Congress. Those glorious principals above named, must be sustained and brought to perfection by an overpowering Republican strength in the next Congress. The Union sentiment of Maryland, which served as a bulwark around the capital in the darkest hours of the Rebellion, has been silenced by treachery of a Chief Magistrate and a false Governor, and the representatives of the Rebellion from this State, have alone for years been heard in that capital, disgracing the State and the Nation.

This fall the voice of the loyal people is bound again to make itself heard. The enemy feels that a defeat this fall will be a crushing ruin - a blow from which that party can never recover, and hence they are nerved by desperation. Let every Republican, by laying aside his personal grievances, if he have any real or imaginary ones, put his hands to the work, and his heart in it, and give the party of dead issues, prejudices and hates, a finishing blow -- a Sedan defeat in Maryland.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Article 2: What Democracy has Cost

There are probably not far from 6 million voters in the United States and about the same number of tax-payers. The late Democratic Rebellion cost the nation four thousand millions of dollars. To this amount must be added the eight hundred and fifty millions of interest already paid, and the sixteen hundred millions more of interest they must pay before the national debt is extinguished. This will make six thousand four hundred and fifty millions of dollars which the Democratic Rebellion of 1861 will have cost the American People. The six millions of tax-payers have and must pay every dollar of it. Divided equally among them it will amount to just one thousand sixty-six dollars and sixty-seven cents each. This is the price each over has been taxed by a rebel Democracy! We will recapitulate and see how startling the fact will look in figures:

(didn't type the table for "What we pay for Democracy" - but it showed the 1870 cost of the rebellion, interest already paid, interest to be paid, total cost in dollars, cost in blood and the lives of men, cost in limbs and health of men, cost in widows and orphans&quot

The party which has cost the nation this vast treasure, this vast sea of blood, and this mighty army of widows and orphans, asks the soldiers who they failed to slaughter, the sons whose fathers they did slaughter, and the taxpayers upon whom they have imposed this mighty burden of six thousand five hundred and fifty millions of dollars, to restore them to power, that they may have another chance to destroy the Government!

[Matariki]

1. Very interesting. Thanks for posting this.

[woodsprite]

3. It is just soooo interesting.

I can't believe it. I mean, what the heck has really changed in 150 years? Not a whole lot other than the switching the names of the parties.

I'm still reading the same series of articles, and let's see, there was a plea to parents to keep their firearms away from kids (a kid died from a firearm left laying around), there was an article about the Democratic party buying voters with free whisky at a "white mans meeting", a blurb about how the Democrats - both state and Congressional - vote in lockstep to do anything they can to destroy and undermine the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, and an article called "Look out for Democrat Falsehood ("The Democrats are spreading reports among colored people that it will cost them five or six dollars a piece to be registered. Keep a sharp look out for such reports and expose them. It will not cost a cent to get registered.&quot

I'm amazed and appalled at the same time over these things

[defacto7]

2. I have always marveled

at the way the two parties have flipped position since the 1860s but there have been many changes and splits within both parties between the 1870s and the early 20th century that it's actually hard to compare. The Republican party of the 1880s and 90s was pure plutocracy and cronyism till Roosevelt and the media muckrakers as they were called made headway toward breaking up the monopolies and starting a call to social justice. Many Democrats were very closely tied to that movement toward social justice but there was a strong anarchist movement as well. In the 1870s through the 1890s, it's difficult to determine what was propaganda and what was factual since that's when the great monopolies got their hold on the public through disinformation and organization trusts. But the difference between the early republicans (Lincoln) and the modern republicans is as different as night and day.

If you like long very well documented synopses of US politics from Lincoln to T. Roosevelt/Taft and Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, Doris Kearns Goodwin has some excellent books.

[woodsprite]

4. Thank you for the recommendations. I love reading about history

Even before I became a teen (back in the 70s), I had already started collecting books on Lincoln, the Civil War, local history, FDR and JFK. I think I'll look those books up

[defacto7]

5. That great.

So glad to hear someone who has interest in history. You won't regret reading Goodwin's biography of Lincoln Team of Rivals. Her newest is still hard back called The Bully Pulpit, I suppose you know who that is about, but it also puts Taft into a perspective that is incredibly informative as well as the role of the media at the time.