all their work; for
one of the most brilliant and candid of their coadjutors had said, only
a few months before: "We do not intend to stop until we have stricken
the last vestige of your War measures from the Statute-book."

Unfortunately, however, for their plans, an attempt made by them, under
the lead of Mr. Morrison of Illinois, in 1876, to meddle with the
Republican Protective-Tariff, had caused considerable public alarm, and
had been credited with having much to do with a succeeding monetary
panic, and industrial depression. Another and more determined effort,
made by them in 1878, under the lead of their old Copperhead ally,
Fernando Wood, to cut down the wise Protective duties imposed by the
Tariff Act, about 15 per cent.,--together with the cold-blooded
Free-Trade declaration of Mr. Wood, touching his ruinous Bill, that "Its
reductions are trifling as compared with what they should be. * * * If
I had the power to commence de novo, I should reduce the duties 50 per
cent., instead of less than 15 per cent., upon an average
as now proposed,"--an effort which was narrowly, and with great
difficulty, defeated by the Republicans, aided by a mere handful of
others,--had also occasioned great excitement throughout the Country,
the suspension and failure of thousands of business firms, the
destruction of confidence in the stability and profitableness of
American industries, and great consequent suffering, and enforced
idleness, to the working men and working women of the Land.

The sad recollection of these facts--made more poignant by the airy
declaration of the Democratic Presidential candidate, that the great
National question of the Tariff is a mere "local issue,"--was largely
instrumental, in connection with the insolent aggressiveness of the
Southern leaders, in Congress, in occasioning their defeat in the
Presidential contest of 1880, the Republican candidate receiving 214
electoral votes, while the Democratic candidate received but 155
electoral votes.

In 1882, the House of Representatives was under Republican control, and,
despite determined Democratic resistance, created a Tariff-commission,
whose duty it was "to take into consideration, and to thoroughly
investigate, all the various questions relating to the agricultural,
commercial, mercantile, manufacturing, mining, and (other) industrial
interests of the United States, so far as the same may be necessary to
the establishment of a judicious Tariff,