People's Party

Winfield Courier, October 19, 1882.
                                                          Sedan Pencilings.
EDS. COURIER: We are in trouble, they say, at least I am sure that we are entitled to the sympathy of our people. Cowley County was never menaced by such a monster of political bastardy as is preparing to launch itself into the arena in Chautauqua County this fall. In a county overflowing with wealth and schools we might expect to see liberal politics. But alas! The old principle of “Rule or Ruin,” is omnipresent as the spirit of Democracy itself, and the minority factions, Democratic and Greenback, curing the genius of fusion from winter till fall, are preparing to embrace each other with open arms in the early days of October. The Republican convention met and nominated a strict prohibition ticket. Now comes forward the opposition, preparing a nasty pill for the public, coated with the sugary title of “People’s ticket.” Sore headed Republicans started it, Greenbackers boosted it, Democrats sustain it. The cry of Madam Roland, “Oh, Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name,” comes to us with peculiar force when we are compelled to exclaim, “Oh! People of America, what schemes of political villainy are hidden by thy name!” The Greenback party of this county, whose Lilliputian squeak has been heard from time to time calling for reforms which nothing but sore heads had ever discovered; finding that their financial taffy would never elevate them to office, have waved all nominations in deference to the so-called peoples’ convention. The Democrats have a similar part in the program, and then the deed is done; and what have we then? A few trembling Greenbackers hiding under the wing of a vulture to avoid the tempest of defeat which confronts them, ready to enter the crop of that voracious bird when the danger shall have subsided.

Then what have we remaining? Democracy. Nothing but sublimated Democracy. And has the time come to trust that? Democracy which was born before true civilization commenced, stood up and swore eternal allegiance to a code adapted to that day, and the light of modern advancement has never been able to illumine the veil of political retrogression which envelops its imperious head. In an age of slavery it adopted principles of slavery, and when slavery died all that remained of Democracy constituted a pale and emaciated twin. In an age of states rights, it adopted principles of states rights; and when a righteous power choked that villainous phantom to death, Democracy hobbled away on one leg. In an age of free whiskey, and now it fights with the desperation of a bayed hyena; for when free whiskey is lost its last leg is gone, and its detestable trunk, covered with the odor of riot, revolution, and rebellion inherits a realm of infamous oblivion. Free whiskey is its motto, free whiskey is its idol, free whiskey is its Ebenezer. No other element has ever shown such little scruple in the exercise of power, and such desperate resolution in retaining that power, as this same fusion agency. No other power in the history of our country has assumed to raise the skeleton of a dead issue and march it before its line of battle as has this same pretending party. In its struggle for supremacy, the ominous whim against our finest statutes comes to our ears like the fatal winds of despair, sighing through the skeleton of a murdered republic; and in the exercise of that power nothing is heard but the gluttonous grapple and sinister snarl as this great army of political swine rush into the gardens of the nation.
And this is the trap which Democrats, Greenbackers, and disaffected Republicans have covered with the cloak of a patronizing title to wreck the only party which has ever reflected an iota of credit upon any county, or state, or upon the nation since the days of Andrew Jackson. It is an Anti-prohibition movement from stem to stern. The Greenback convention blew out at the breech in its favor, and the Democrats embrace it with joy, because it antagonizes St. John, Prohibition, and the Republican party more effectually than anything else.
And we want the COURIER for humanity’s sake to aid us in airing this half-breed combination, intended as it is to ruin that which it cannot control. TIM.

Winfield Courier, November 8, 1883.
The Grand Legion of the Select Knights of the Ancient Order of United Workman has just closed its session at Topeka. Our worthy county Supt., Limerick, was representative from the Winfield Legion. He reports that the session was conducted with great harmony and much useful work accomplished. The Grand Legion paid a handsome compliment to Win-field by electing J. F. McMullen, Esq., Grand Commander of the state. The Winfield Knights are much pleased with this action and a boom in the Legion here is expected. This is a uniformed order, standing to the Workman, about as the Knights Templar do to the Masons. They are very numerous in the eastern states, and are flourishing in Kansas, having already about forty Legions, with new ones rapidly instituted.