The Civil War in New York
image 1
image 2
image 3
image 4
cropped image 1
THE CIVIL WAR IN NEW YORK.
Our readers are doubtless informed ere this of the occurrences which yesterday converted the City Hall steps of New York into a battle field, and the office of the Recorder into a temporary hospital.1 None can hear of these disturbances without regret and alarm. Not even those who are warmest in their partisanship can help deploring the occasion which calls that partisanship forth.
Without caring to point out the immediate or proximate causes of the conflict, we shall be endorsed in affirming that there can be but one opinion as to its remote original cause. The saying, "Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few," was never more truly exemplified than in this contest. Whether the leaders on one side only, or on both, are censurable, the fact remains that nothing but party virulence and political allegiance has brought New York into its present semi-anarchical state. Had not the police been long ago prostituted to political uses, such a crisis as now exists could never have arisen. Yet now men are resorting to that as a cure which is the very cause of the disorder. The Daily News is lashing Cochrane, McKeon & Co., into the Wood ranks,2 endorsing the Mayor's acts in the name of the party, and threatening political excommunication against all who refuse to obey him. And so, good Democrats—law abiding citizens, who individually would rather see a dozen Woods repudiated than one breach of the peace occasioned—are forced by their party affiliations to endorse Fernando's desperate course.
The curse of American politics—especially in municipal and State affairs—is that men love their party better than their country. They see a man nominated for office whom they know to be unfit for the position, and seeking it only that he may plunder the treasury—yet rather than endanger the success of "the ticket," they vote him into power. They see him misusing that power, converting it into an engine to enrich his adherents, to shelter rogues from punishment, to bar and obstruct the course of good government. Yet as "the party" placed him in power, each member of the party, forgetting his duty to the community, resolves to sustain him.
This tyranny of party fealty—this self-imposed yoke which hangs around the neck of so many of the best as well as the worst of the community, must be loosened, or scenes like those of yesterday—and like those recently occurring in Ohio, in Washington, in Buffalo—are unavoidable. Perish party obligation, sooner than that the tranquility of the community should be jeopardised, and the public interest and even the lives of citizens sacrificed. The man whose motto is, "my party can do no wrong;" and whose practice is to unreflectingly array himself as an apologist and defender of every man and measure that his party has endorsed, may boast of his liberty and independence, but he is in truth the slave of as ruthless a despotism as can well be imagined, and the tyranny of which is the more galling and hurtful, because of its being clothed in the guise of freedom.