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Buffalo Commercial Advertiser Campaign Document 
 
 No. 1. 
 
 i_ . . * . 
 
 THE PRESIDENTIAL BATTLE OF 1872. 
 
 GRANT AND HIS DEFAMERS: DEEDS AGAINST WORDS. 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. ROSCOE CONKLING, 
 
 U J 
 
 _ At Cooper Institute, New York, July 23, 1872. 
 
 l No might nor greatness in mortality 
 Can censure scape ; back-iuounding calumny 
 The "whitest virtue strikes ; what king so strong, 
 Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue f" 
 
 Measure for Measure. 
 
 The Republican mass meeting held on Tues 
 day evening, July 23d, 1872, at Cooper Insti 
 tute, New York, to ratify the nominations of 
 GRANT and WILSON, was remarkable in point 
 of numbers, respectability and enthusiasm. 
 
 Long before the hour for the opening of the 
 proceedings the large hall of the Institute was 
 densely crowded. Many ladies were among 
 the audience. Every seat in the lobby, hall, 
 and on the stage was occupied, and hundreds 
 were glad to obtain standing room. 
 
 The Hon. JACKSON S. SCHULTZ presided, 
 and a long list of Vice- Presidents and Secreta 
 ries was read. The Hon. ROSCOE CONKLING, 
 U. S. Senator, on being introduced by the 
 President, was received with loud and repeated 
 cheers. After the applause had subsided, he 
 said : 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : 
 Your greeting of me tonight, and the warmth 
 of your reception, quite oppress me. I have no 
 words to fitly express my feelings. 
 
 For twenty years, it has been my privilege to 
 address my neighbors upon political issues, and 
 too" much ardor, has, perhaps, been among my 
 laultsV Yet no canvass has ever stirred me so 
 deeply itethis. No election has ever appealed 
 so stronglyto my sense of fair play, no canvass 
 within my rHemory has ever been so full of foul 
 play, injustices-id malice, none has ever more 
 thoroughly teste^, the common sense and gen 
 erosity of the AmWan people. 
 
 INJUSTICE HEAPEfc ON THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 Eleven years service in Congress has made 
 me a close observer of four Presidents and of 
 
 many public men ; and if among them all there 
 is one, living or dead, who never knowingly 
 failed in his duty, that ope is Ulysses Sydney 
 Grant. There was forecast in giving him the 
 name of Sydney, for his greatest and gentlest 
 quality is his magnanimity. If there has been a 
 high official ever ready to admit and cerrect an 
 error ; if there has been one who did wisely, 
 firmly and well the things given him in charge, 
 that one is the soldier in war and the quiet 
 patriot in peace, who has been named again by 
 every township in forty-six States and Territo 
 ries for the great trust he now holds. Yet this 
 man, honest, brave and modest, and proved by 
 his transcendant deeds to be endowed with 
 genius, common sense and moral qualities, ade 
 quate to the greatest affairs ; this man who 
 saved his country, who snatched our nationality 
 and our cause from despair, and bore them on 
 his shield through the flame of battle, in which 
 but for him they would have perished; this 
 man, under whose administration our country 
 has flourished as no one dared predict ; this 
 man, to whom a nation s gratitude and benedic 
 tion are due, is made the mark for ribald jibes 
 and odious, groundless slanders. Why is all 
 this ? Simply because he stands in the way of 
 the greed and ambition of politicians and 
 schemers. Many honest men join in the cry, 
 or hear it without indignation. They are de 
 ceived by the cloud of calumny which darkens 
 the sky ; but the inventors are men distempered 
 with griefs, or else the sordid and the vile, who 
 follow politics as the shark follows the ship. 
 A war of mud and missiles has been waged for 
 months. The President, his family, and all 
 nearly associated with him have been bespat 
 tered, and truth and decency have been driven 
 far away. Every thief, and cormorant, and 
 drone who has been put out ; every baffled 
 mouser for place or plunder ; every man with a 
 
, ." ; The. President and His Slanderers. 
 
 grievanqe />r. a grudge, j aU who have something 
 to make- l>y a engage, seem t<? vteg an unbridle- 
 ed tongue or to drive a Foul pen. 
 
 The President cannot enter the lists of con 
 troversy and defend himself ; the proprieties of 
 his station forbid it ; his chief competitor, 
 managing behind the curtain a newspaper 
 from which he pretends to have retired, is free 
 to defend and puff himself, and feels free to fill 
 his paper with base and scurrilous falsehood, in 
 the hope of blackening a name which is one 
 of the treasures of the nation and which will be 
 the pride of posterity. All this pollution will, 
 in the end, disgrace only its authors ; it will not 
 disgrace Grant or the nation, because the na 
 tion will spurn and resent it. The disgusting 
 personalities emptied upon Gen. Jackson se 
 cured his re-election ; an offended people struck 
 back, and they will strike back again. 
 
 WHERE THE OPPOSITION HAS BLUNDERED. 
 
 The American people may misjudge a politi 
 cal question ; they may be deceived ; but, with 
 the truth before them, they will never be unjust, 
 and never untrue upon a question of right and 
 wrong. Ingratitude has been charged upon 
 Republics, and just there is the point where the 
 angry enemies of the President have blundered. 
 Had the cool veterans of the Democracy formed 
 or selected the issues to be presented, they would 
 have been wise enough to so frame them that 
 the people could decide in their favor without 
 fixing a stigma upon Gen. Grant, and without 
 blasting his name or doing him wrong. But the 
 Democratic statesmen, the leaders in a hundred 
 fights, have been mere lookers on; leadership 
 has been assumed by Republican renegades and 
 "outs;" men so eaten np with envy, or so mad 
 dened with the loss or refusal of place and pat 
 ronage, that nothing would satisfy them short of 
 a rancorous, revengeful, personal raid. When 
 a man turns Turk he spits on the Cross, and 
 when wide-throated ultra Republicans clandes 
 tinely trade with the enemy, and then turn 
 open traitors to their party, they become the 
 meanest and fiercest opponents, just as Yankee 
 slave overseers from New England were always 
 more brutal than those born in the South. 
 When men whose vanity was hurt, and others 
 gnawed by ambition and cupidity, went out to 
 ruin the party which they could not rule, mad 
 ness drove them on. They had no polar star, 
 except hatred of Grant and his supporters. 
 These lusty patriots who modestly assumed the 
 name of "Reformers," would not have an ordi 
 nary Presidential canvass for the fair discussion 
 of political questions ; such a proceeding would 
 have been too tame and insipid for them. Their 
 stomachs craved stronger, more game-flavored 
 meat ; hard names must be called ; vengeance 
 must be satisfied ; the President must be politi 
 cally court-martialed or dragged before a na 
 tional assize to be tried as a malefactor. 
 
 In the Senate the Democrats proper kept si 
 lent or talked about business ; I give them 
 credit for wasting but little time ; but half the 
 last session, eight months in length, was worn 
 out and wasted by slanderous electioneering 
 harangues aimed at the Administration and its 
 friends by men badly in, need of being reformed 
 
 themselves. These self-righteous and noisy or 
 acles pitched the key in which the anti-Grant 
 chorus was to be sung, and hence comes the ab 
 sence of political questions and the presence of 
 personal and scandalous issues. The public 
 journals and newspaper correspondence from 
 Washington, controlled by these "Liberals" 
 liberal in nothing so much as in defaming honest 
 men and praising and helping themselves took 
 hue from the heart-burnings, distempers and 
 ambitions which set them on. "Anything to 
 beat Grant" was the motto, and it gratified 
 their hate and spite to assail the President per 
 sonally, and to heap malignant charges upon 
 him ; thus his character, his integrity, his stand 
 ing as a man, have been put in issue, and the 
 people are compelled to pass upon his guilt or 
 innocence. The case has been so put, that the 
 question is not merely whether Grant shall be 
 President, but whether Grant shall be pronounc 
 ed by the nation a fool, a knave, an impostor, 
 an enemy of his country. Had issue been 
 taken upon public measures, had public ques 
 tions been raised, whether new questions or 
 those which have divided parties heretofore, 
 a popular verdict would have been a verdict 
 only between parties s and policies, and princi 
 ples. Such a verdict would have rested upon 
 public grounds, personal and disparaging to 
 no one. 
 
 If the political views the President represents 
 are not those of a majority there is no injustice 
 and no reflection upon any one in so saying and 
 so voting. But when he is arraigned for ignor 
 ance, dishonesty and vice, and for nothing else,, 
 the case is different. 
 
 PLATFORM MADE UP OF SLANDERS OF DIS 
 APPOINTED MEN. 
 
 What is the arraignment? What political 
 position held by the Republican Party or its. 
 candidates does the "Any thing-to-beat-Grant" 
 coalition deny? Will anyone tell me? Read 
 the manifesto put forth at Cincinnati, which Mr. 
 Greeley did over in improved words, as he 
 thought, in his letter of acceptance. Read the 
 address lately published by Mr. Greeley and his 
 committee, soliciting the votes of the people of 
 this State. These papers, in so far as they 
 refer to the Administration, are a gross personal 
 libel upon the President, and they are nothing 
 more. 
 
 Hear the words of the self-constituted crowd 
 at Cincinnati that motley group made up of a 
 few respectable men who have since repudiated 
 it, and of the most piebald, disreputable collec 
 tion to be scraped from the gutters and sewers 
 of politics. These political lazzaroni, pretend 
 ing to represent States, laid down the platform 
 on which Mr. Greeley thinks he is running. 
 See how it reads : 
 
 The President of the United States has openly used 
 the powers and opportunities of his high office for the 
 promotion of personal ends. 
 
 He has kept notoriously corrupt and unworthy men in 
 places of power and responsibility, to the detriment ot 
 the public interest. 
 
 He has used the public service of the Government as 
 a machinery of corruption and personal influence, and 
 has interfered, with tyrannical arrogance, in the pohticaS 
 affairs of States and municipalities. 
 
 He has rewarded with influential and lucrative oraces, 
 
Senator Coriklmifs Great Speech at New York. 
 
 men who have acquired his favor by valuable presents, 
 thus stimulating the demoralization of our political life by 
 his conspicuous example. 
 
 He has shown himself deplorably unequal to the tasks 
 imposed upon him by the necessities of the country, and 
 culpably careless of the responsibility of his high office. 
 
 Mr. Greeley s personal backers and trainers 
 recently delighted the public with an address, 
 embroidered with the rhetoric and signature 
 of Mr. John Cochrane. This paper, gorgeous 
 in composition, speaks of the Cincinnati fiasco 
 as "one of the most stately and brilliant par 
 liaments ever assembled in this country. " These 
 rainbow-dyed words show on what sky-scraping 
 pinions the "Liberal" eagle soars. See how 
 this gloomy and peculiar monarch of the -clouds 
 swoops down on the poor pigmy and truant of 
 Appomattox. Observe the awful obscurity, 
 grand even in parenthesis, with which he "goes 
 for" his prey, as another reformer "went for 
 that heathen Chinee": 
 
 The history of the Administration is a shadowy record 
 of discreditable (sometimes disgraceful) acts many of 
 them blunders: others, crimes. 
 
 He has repeatedly shown himself on the one hand ig 
 norant of the laws, and on the other defiant of them. 
 
 He has accepted gifts from flatterers, for which he has 
 rendered dishonorable equivalents, by bestowing public 
 emoluments on obsequious givers. 
 
 These are but three of the seventeen personal 
 crimes, of which the bright particular Cochrane 
 appears as the avenging angel. Do such des 
 picable assertions and imputations raise any po 
 litical or party issue ? 
 
 NOTHING TANGIBLE ABOUT TARIFF, AMNES 
 TY, OR CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 
 
 The tariff resolution, at Cincinnati, is a mere 
 juggle a shallow evasion, by which no one of 
 common intelligence has a right to be cheated. 
 
 The resolution about Congress and "central 
 ism," if they mean anything, refer to the exercise 
 of powers by Congress everyone of which Mr. 
 Greeley approved and demanded in his usual 
 violent and unmeasured language. 
 
 The amnesty resolution is spent, because a 
 general amnesty bill was passed weeks ago. 
 
 Every rebel votes, and every rebel may hold 
 office now, except Jefferson Davis, and less 
 than two hundred others, who still spurn for 
 giveness. There is nothing left of the amnesty 
 question, unless some one wants to mount a 
 dead horse in behalf of Jefferson Davis and his 
 handful of cronies, who say that their perjury 
 needs no forgiveness, and seeks none, and that 
 they have no use just now in that way for those 
 they keep to sign their bail bonds, and da their 
 other chores. 
 
 Where, then, is the political issue the people 
 are to pass upon? It cannot be "civil service 
 reform," unless dishonesty is imputed to the 
 President. He is for civil service reform ; he 
 recommended it and inaugurated it, and the 
 Philadelphia Convention specially declared for 
 it. There can be no issue of that kind, except 
 by pretending that Grant is a hypocrite, and 
 that Greeley is not ; and neither of these things 
 would be easy to prove. Mr. Greeley has 
 plainly and repeatedly avowed, in public and in 
 private, that his political action hinges on pat 
 ronage and spoils ; without stopping to prove 
 this now, I will recur to it hereafter. 
 
 The coalition presents nothing of substance, 
 on which parties or individuals are divided m 
 principle, but only assaults upon the President. 
 
 This is nothing more or less than a challenge 
 of comparison between the candidates. The 
 issue is narrowed to a single inquiry : Which is 
 personally the safest, fittest man for the Presi 
 dency? That is the question, and the whole 
 of it. 
 
 DEMOCRACY GIVES UP WHAT IS ASKED OP 
 DEMOCRATS. 
 
 Some things, however, are said and done ef 
 fectually by the platform and nomination of our 
 opponents. They blot out and renounce the 
 time-honored creed of the Democratic Party. 
 That creed is laid aside and its vital points re 
 pudiated. 
 
 It is fairly admitted that Democratic doctrines 
 and Democratic candidates cannot stand before 
 the judgment of the country. 
 
 The Democracy confesses its defeat upon the 
 great issues of the century, and confesses its 
 error also. Equality of race ; emancipation of 
 slaves ; the ballot for the blacks ; a protective 
 tariff; exemption of Government bonds from 
 taxation ; paying bonds in coin ; upon these 
 and other things, the Democracy at last con 
 fesses itself not only beaten but wrong, and the 
 Republican Party victorious and right. Stop 
 ping here, the homage paid to the Republican 
 Party would be great indeed, but we find greater 
 tribute and homage still. 
 
 Not only are the old grounds of difference 
 given up, but no new ones can be found. 
 What measure or doctrine of the Republican 
 Party, again I ask, have our opponents ventur 
 ed to attack ? 
 
 The Republican Party has been in power 
 for years, responsible for all legislation in the 
 greatest era of the nation, and now its life-long 
 rival and adversary at last throws up the sponge, 
 not daring to join issue upon one political ques 
 tion. 
 
 Even the Kuklux and election bills are noc 
 matters in difference, for Mr. Greeley supported 
 them both, with all his virulent vocabulary. 
 My own part in preparing and pressing the 
 election law was, I remember, the occasion of 
 my being praised in the Tribune. This puzzled 
 me at the time, and suggested that I must 
 have been doing something wrong, because the 
 Tribune marked me for destruction after its 
 editor was not elected to the Senate. Mr. 
 Greeley must have been elated indeed over the 
 Congressional election law, when his exuber 
 ance became so great that he could write a 
 kind, or even a just or true, word of me. 
 
 The only instances of alleged "centralism" 
 being measures to which Mr. Greeley stands 
 fully committed, the candidate and the plat 
 form together leave not a shred of anything 
 Democratic. As if to abjure the last vestige of 
 Democracy and wipe out its very memory, 
 these vaulting managers have selected as their 
 figurehead a professed ultra Republican, for 
 merly -an ultra Whig, and they ask honest 
 Democrats to vote for him, against a man bom 
 and bred a Democrat, who never acted with the 
 Republican Party till after the war had raised 
 
The President and His Slanderers^ 
 
 new issues on which Democrats divided. Demo 
 crats are asked to vote for that Republican 
 who "out-Heroded Herod" always in politics 
 and abuse, and who did more than any other 
 man in the North to encourage secession and 
 bring on the \vnr. A Republican, coming 
 from the Whig Party with such a record, now 
 asks the votes of Democrats ! 
 
 The anti- Grant managers are daring, if they 
 are not silly. They attempt to crowd down the 
 throats of Democrats who fought the Maine 
 law, the man who drowned all other voices in 
 his outcries for penal statutes and Sunday laws, 
 to stop by force the drinking even of lager-beer. 
 
 WHY SHOULD DEMOCRATS VOTE FOR 
 GREELEY? 
 
 If a Democrat was running, or if Democratic 
 principles were in the field, Democrats might be 
 expected to vote the ticket ; but when the choice 
 is between Republicans, and no Democratic 
 principle is at stake, Democrats will be apt to 
 pick and choose for themselves which Republi 
 can they will vote for, if they vote at all. 
 
 Upon what ground will patriotic Democrats 
 prefer Greeley to Grant? They must prefer 
 Greeley because they disapprove Grant person 
 ally, or else because they disapprove some po 
 litical doctrine he represents. 
 
 Are Democrats for repudiating the debt? Are 
 they for agitating or annulling the Thirteenth, 
 Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the 
 Constitution? Would they re-establish slav 
 ery? Would they pay the rebel war debt, or 
 pensions to rebel soldiers, or rebel war claims? 
 Would they inflate the currency again, and flood 
 the country with paper money? Are Demo 
 crats against reducing taxes and expenses ? Are 
 Democrats opposed to peace with all nations, 
 and stable government at home ? These ques 
 tions are not asked to impugn the position of 
 any man, but for the opposite reason. 
 
 Pres. Grant being tried and true in all these 
 things, why should any Union man, or con 
 servative, or business 1 man, or patriot, vote 
 against him, even if his competitor was a safe 
 and fit man for President ? Plainly there can 
 be no reason, unless Grant is unworthy of confi 
 dence or respect, and deserves to be found guilty 
 of the crimes and vices alleged against him. To 
 judge this question we must examine his history 
 and lay bare his life. "The tree is known by 
 its fruit"; the carpenter by his chips; the man 
 by his deeds. 
 
 GRANT S EDUCATION AND BOYHOOD. 
 
 Grant cannot be illiterate, or, as a Greeley 
 orator told an audience the other day, "ignorant 
 of what school-boys know." 
 
 He was educated at West Point, and whoever 
 graduates in that exacting school must have an 
 education such as few Americans receive. 
 Mental culture is not all we find in Grant at 
 West Point. His letters written then stamp 
 him with a character enough by itself to refute 
 the worn and soiled tavern scandal which now 
 offends the nostrils of the nation. Here is a 
 letter to his mother, June 4, 1839. He was 
 then seventeen. "As the twig is bent the tree 
 is inclined." 
 
 Let us see what kind of a boy the man grew 
 out of. 
 
 UNITED STATES WEST POINT MILITARY ACADEMY, 
 June 4, 1839. 
 
 MY DEAR MOTHER : I have occasionally been called 
 to be separated from you, but never did 1 feei the full 
 force and effect of this separation as I do now. I seem 
 alone in the world without my mother. There have been 
 so many ways in which you have advised me, when, in 
 the quiet of home, I have been pursuing my studies, 
 that you cannot tell how much I miss you. When I was 
 busy with father in the tannery, and on the farm, we 
 were both more or less surrounded by others, who took 
 up our attention and occupied our time. But, I was so 
 often alone with you, and you spoke to me so frequently 
 in private, that the solitude of my situation here at the 
 Academy, among my silent books, and in my lonely room, 
 is all the more striking. It reminds me all the more 
 forcibly of home, and most of all, my dear mother, of 
 you. But, in the midst of all this, your kind instructions 
 and admonitions are ever present with me. I trust they 
 may never be absent from me as long as I live. How 
 often I think of them ! and how well do they strengthe 
 me in every good word and work ! 
 
 My dear mother, should I progress well with my 
 studies at West Point, and become a soldier for my 
 country, I am looking forward with hope to have you 
 spared to share with me in any advancement I may 
 make. I see now, in looking over the records here, how 
 much American soldiers of the right stamp are indebted 
 to good American mothers ! When they go to the field, 
 what prayers go with them ! What tender testimony of 
 maternal affection and counsel are in their knapsacks ! 
 I am struck, in looking over the history of the noble 
 struggle of our fathers for national independence, at the 
 evidence of the good influence exerted upon them by the 
 women of the Revolution. Ah ! my beloved friend, 
 how can the present generation ever repay the debt it 
 owes the patriots of the past for the sacrifices they have 
 so freely and richly made for us ? We may well ask, 
 Would our country be what it is now, if it had not been 
 for the greatness of our patriotic ancestors? Let me 
 hear from you by letter as often as convenient, and send 
 me such books as you think will help me. They can be 
 forwarded through the courtesy of our member of 
 Congress. 
 
 Faithfully and most lovingly your son, 
 
 ULYSSES. 
 
 To his father he writes from West Point : 
 
 I find much here that makes me love my dear native 
 land more than ever. I am happy in the fact that this 
 stronghold of nature is safely in the hands of the United 
 States. Do you know, father, that it is called the Gib 
 raltar of America ? * 
 
 As I return from my walk, refreshed by the exercise, 
 inspired by the grand and varied scenery, and better pre 
 pared for my studies, I pass by the cemetery of the 
 Academy, where some of our cherished dead repose. 
 Here is the monument erected by our grateful country to 
 the brave hero, Kosciusko, who fell on the field of battle, 
 on American soil, fighting for the liberties of mankind. 
 You remember, father, the line that is recorded of him : 
 "And Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell." 
 
 I am rendered serious by the impressions that crowd 
 upon me here at West Point. My thoughts are frequently 
 occupied with the hatred I am made to feel towards trai 
 tors to my country, as I look around me on the memorials 
 that remain of the black-hearted treason of Arnold. I am 
 full of a conviction of scorn and contempt, which my 
 young and inexperienced pen is unable to write in this 
 letter, toward the conduct of any man who, at any time, 
 could strike at the liberties of such a nation as ours. If 
 ever men should be found in our Union base enough 
 to make the attempt to do this : if, like Arnold, they 
 should secretly seek to sell our national inheritance for 
 the mess of pottage of wealth, or power, or section- 
 West Point sternly reminds me of what you, my father, 
 would have your son do. As I stand here in this national 
 fort, a student of arms under our country s flag, I know full 
 well how you would have me act in such an emergency. 
 I trust my.-future conduct in such an hour would prove 
 worthy the patriotic instructions you have given. 
 
 Yours obediently, 
 ULYSSES SYDNEY GRANT. 
 
 Had the boy who wrote these letters a good 
 and gentle nature ? Was he well grounded, or 
 
Senator Conkling^s Great Speech at New York. 
 
 afloat? When did he lose the moral sense 
 which there speaks out ? 
 
 i From West Point he went to act a subordi 
 nate part in the Mexican war. He acted it 
 bravely, modestly and well. The Mexican war 
 being over, his pay in the regular army would 
 have gone on, and he might have lived in peace 
 and idleness at the public cost, but, unwilling to 
 be a drone, he became a tanner. 
 
 THE 
 
 TANNER OF GALENA." WHAT HE 
 TANNED. 
 
 Mr. Sumner withers him by reminding us 
 that "he tanned hides at Galena for a few hun 
 dred dollars a year." He did not masquerade 
 as a wood -chopper ; he did not figure in pic 
 torials as a fanner ; he did not go round telling 
 " what he knew about " anything that he didn t 
 understand himself; he minded his own busi 
 ness, and let other people s business alone ; but he 
 worked with his hands as a hewer of wood, 
 which he sold in the market, and wrought out 
 a living for his family and himself. 
 
 From the breaking out of the rebellion, his ca 
 reer is a " thrice-told tale " the world knows it 
 by heart. When the flag sank at Sumter, he did 
 not wait to be called. Without commission, 
 command, uniform, or shoulder-straps, he start 
 ed for the field, and grasping the Stars and 
 Stripes, he carried them through a blaze of victo 
 ries such as no mortal man before him had won. 
 
 While Senators who now hawk at him were 
 lolling for a fourth term on cushions, and evis 
 cerating encyclopedias, books of quotations, and 
 classical dictionaries, the Tanner of Galena 
 swept rebellion from the Valley of the Mississip 
 pi, and the Father of Waters went unvexed to 
 the sea. 
 
 Lincoln and Stanton, who reposed unmeas 
 ured confidence in him, called him at once from 
 the victorious fields of the West to the Depart 
 ment of the Potomac, that Golgotha, where 
 army after army, the very flower of the nation, 
 had melted away. He came to the wilderness 
 of Virginia, when that traitorous Commonwealth 
 had become the rendezvous of the allied armies 
 of rebellion, and when the rebel chiefs were 
 boasting that in the fastnesses of the Blue Ridge 
 they could defy the world in arms. He march 
 ed from Washington, and he measured no back 
 ward step until he had set his foot upon the 
 shattered fragments of the greatest military 
 power an invading army ever overthrew. He 
 solved the problem which had baffled all others, 
 and preserved a nationality after the world 
 thought it had gone down. 
 
 How stood he then? The nation leaned and 
 reposed upon him, and blessed him. Both 
 hemispheres gazed at him, as the prodigy and 
 wonder of the age. 
 
 The Democrats sought his consent to nomi 
 nate him for the Presidency without platform or 
 pledge, but he declined. His integrity taught 
 him that when a party chooses a candidate from 
 the other side, somebody is to be cheated ; and 
 by Grant s consent no one ever was or ever will 
 be cheated. 
 
 But the Democratic managers ddored him, and 
 saw him only resplendent with greatness and with 
 virtues. He was not unfit for President then ; 
 
 he was the fittest of all his countrymen. He did 
 net become unfit until three years experience 
 had ripened and enlarged his knowledge. He 
 did not become unfit while the patronage held 
 out, and while unclean fingers were allowed to 
 fumble it. 
 
 In his recent modest letter of acceptance he 
 says, "Experience may guide in avoiding mis 
 takes inevitable with novices in all professions 
 and in all occupations." 
 
 WHAT THE NEW YORK WORLD SAID. 
 
 He was a "novice" when the New York 
 World, then as now, the ablest opposition paper, 
 said on the I ith of April, 1865 : 
 
 Gen. Grant s history should teach us to discriminate 
 better than we Americans are apt to do between glitter 
 and solid work. Our proneness to run after demagogues 
 and spouters may find a wholesome corrective in the 
 study of such a character as his. The qualities by which 
 great things are accomplished are here seen to have no 
 necessary connection with showy and superficial accom 
 plishments. 
 
 Ulysses S. Grant, the tanner, Ulysses S. Grant tke 
 unsuccessful applicant for the post of City Surveyor of 
 St. Louis, Ulysses S. Grant, the driver into that city of 
 his two-horse team, with a load of wood to sell, had 
 within him every manly quality, which will cause the 
 name of Lieut. -Gen. Grant to live forever in history. 
 His career is a lesson in practical democracy it is a quiet 
 satire on the dandyism, the puppyism, and the shallow 
 affectation of our fashionable exquisites, as well as 
 upon the swagger of our plausible, glib-tongued dem 
 agogues. 
 
 Apply to Gen. Grant what test you will ; measure him 
 by the magnitude of the obstacles he has surmounted, 
 by the value of the positions he has gained, by the fame 
 of the antagonist over whom he has triumphed, by the 
 achievements of his most illustrious co-workers, by the 
 sureness with which he directs his idomitable energy t 
 the vital point which is the key of a vast field of opera 
 tions, or by that supreme test of consummate ability the 
 absolute completeness of his results and he vindicates 
 <fcis claim to stand next after Napoleon and Wellington 
 among the great soldiers of this country, if not on a level 
 with the latter. 
 
 WHAT HORACE GREELEY SAID. 
 
 He was not quite a novice when Horace 
 Greeley said these things : 
 
 Grant and his policy deserve the very highest credit. 
 
 The people of the United States know Gen. Grant 
 have known all about him since Donelson and Vicksburg 
 they do not know his slanderers, and do not care to 
 know them. 
 
 While asserting the right of every Republican to his 
 untrammeled choice of a candidate for next President 
 until a nomination is made, I venture to suggest that 
 Gen. Grant will be far better qualified for that momen 
 tous trust in 1872 than he was in 1868. 
 
 We are led by him who first taught our armies t 
 conquer in the West, and, subsequently, in the East also. 
 Richmond would not come to us until we sent Grant 
 after it, and then it had to come. He has never yet been 
 defeated, and never will be. He will be as great and 
 successful on the field of politics as on that of arms. 
 
 Yes : Gen. Grant has failed to gratify some eager 
 aspirations, and has thereby incurred some intense 
 hatreds. These do not and will not fail, and his admin 
 istration will prove at least equally vital. We shall hear 
 lamentation after lamentation over his failures from 
 those whose wish is father to the thought ; but the 
 American people let them pass unheeded. Their strong 
 arm bore him triumphantly through the war and into 
 the White House, and they still uphold and sustain him : 
 and they never failed and never will. 
 
 He was not altogether a novice when, in Sep 
 tember, 1871, Mr. Greeley wrote, and sent to 
 the Republican State Convention for adoption, 
 these resolutions : 
 
 II. In this alarming crisis in City and State affairs, the 
 Republican party refers all good citizens to its record, as 
 
The President and His Slanderers. 
 
 their warrant for giving it their fullest confidence and 
 support in the campaign, now formally opening, of the 
 honest men against the thieves. 
 
 It abolished slavery. 
 
 It led in the suppression of the rebellion. 
 
 It preserved and enlarged the Union. 
 
 It promptly reduced the enormous forces thus required 
 to a peace footing. 
 
 It has reduced the debt" over two hundred and fifty 
 millions of dollars in the last three years. 
 
 It has simultaneously reduced public taxation over two 
 hundred and fifty millions of dollars per annum. 
 
 It has preserved peace on the border. 
 
 It has won a friendly adjustment of the threatening 
 troubles with Great Britain. 
 
 III. For its conspicuous share in this beneficent rec 
 ord we endorse the National Republican Adminis 
 tration. 
 
 These resolutions were written only a little 
 while ago, and all the slanders to this day in 
 vented against the President, had long been cur 
 rent then. 
 
 "GIFT-TAKING." 
 
 But let us go back a moment, to Grant, be 
 fore he seriously thought of being President, 
 and when he was only the idol of the nation. 
 Returning from the field, covered with glory, 
 but poor in money, the affluent, whose fortunes 
 he had saved, met him with munificent offerings. 
 In this they followed the customs of ancient 
 and modern times. 
 
 The austere republics of antiquity enriched 
 and ennobled their heroes returning from vic 
 tory. England, with an unwritten Constitution, 
 and an omnipotent Parliament, which a lawyer 
 once" said could do anything but make a man 
 a woman, "has enriched her Generals both by 
 acts of Parliament and by voluntary subscriptions. 
 
 In the United States, the Constitution does 
 not permit Congress to act in such matters ; 
 here they rest wholly in the voluntary action of 
 individuals, and that public presentations to 
 heroes involved turpitude in givers or recipi 
 ents, has been first found out by the spurious re 
 formers and libelers now clamoring for notice. 
 
 Wellington received from his Government, 
 and his neighbors, more than $3,000,000. 
 British citizens of Calcutta made him presents, 
 the officers of the army gave him $10,000, the 
 House of Commons voted him $1,000,000, and a 
 mansion and estate were purchased for him by 
 subscription, at a cost of $1,300,000. Besides 
 this, he was three times ennobled, twice by Eng 
 land, and once by Spain. 
 
 Oliver Cromwell, for deeds done in civil war, 
 received $32,500 a year in gifts. Marlborough 
 was given a stately palace and a splendid for 
 tune. Nelson and his family were ennobled, 
 and received $70,000. Jewels and money were 
 given to Fairfax for services in civil war. 
 
 The Generals and Admirals of England and 
 France have generally been recipients of great 
 pecuniary benefits. In England and elsewhere, 
 the custom of presents to public men has gone 
 beyond the army and the navy. Richard Cob- 
 den, a civilian, in token of political service only, 
 was given by subscription three hundred and 
 fifty thousand dollars. John Bright has just 
 received costly gifts. 
 
 America, younger and poorer, with few wars 
 to breed heroes, has been less lavish than older 
 nations ; but Americans have not been stingy. 
 Gen. McClellan, perhaps, begins the list of 
 
 largely-rewarded Generals. His active service 
 ended before the war was over, and his Demo 
 cratic admirers, prior to nominating him for the 
 Presidency, presented him a costly house and 
 a large purse, amounting in all to a hundred 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 To Sherman, Sheridan, Farragut and Grant 
 large sums were given. To Stanton s family 
 and to Rawlins s, were given more than a hun 
 dred thousand each. Were these things dishon 
 orable? Was it wrong for Gen. Grant to 
 accept such gifts ? The charge is an insult to 
 the nation who witnessed and applauded the 
 proceeding ; it is an imputation upon those who 
 gave, as much as upon him who received. It 
 cannot have been dishonorable or improper for 
 him to accept a gift, without being dishonorable 
 and improper to offeV it. 
 
 How mean must the cant and snivel we hear 
 seem to the people of Germany just now. Bis 
 marck, though Chancellor and Prime Minister, 
 has just received as a gift, in token of his ser 
 vices in the recent war, a magnificent landed 
 estate, worth more than was- given to all our 
 Generals ; and Bismarck, in like token, has 
 been made a prince. Gen. Von Moltke, for his 
 services in the German-Franco War, has been 
 given $300,000 ; and Germany has set apart 
 from the French indemnity fund, four million 
 dollars, to be distributed in gifts to her heroes. 
 Do you believe that any German, or any man 
 with a German heart in his bosom, will ever be 
 mean enough to throw these gifts in the face of 
 those who earned and accepted them ? If there 
 is a man mean enough to do it, he will be safer 
 in the Greeley menagerie than he would be in 
 any hiding place in Germany. 
 
 Yet gift-taking, forsooth, is paraded by po 
 litical Pharisees. One thing is noticeable ; the 
 men. who screech about gift-taking are those 
 who never gave a cent, and who were never 
 openly offered a cent certainly not for any hon 
 orable service rendered to their country. The 
 charge that Grant accepted any gift after he be 
 came President, or after he was nominated, is 
 wholly false. He has accepted nothing of value 
 since his first nomination not even a carriage 
 and horses although Lincoln, and Buchanan, 
 and Pierce, and Taylor, and other Presidents, did 
 accept carriages and horses after their election. 
 
 "GIFT-BEARING GREEKS." 
 
 But it is said that men who subscribed to gifts 
 have been appointed to office, and the insinua 
 tion is that they were appointed because they 
 subscribed to gifts. 
 
 The fact that hundreds who gave have never 
 been appointed to anything would of itself seem 
 to disprove the charge that official patronage has 
 been used to re-pay gifts. Only three or at 
 most four contributors to the funds raised for 
 Gen. Grant have ever been offered appointments, 
 and it would seem far-fetched to explain the se 
 lection of three for a reason applying to more 
 than three hundred who were never selected at 
 all. But the facts answer the charge. 
 
 MR. A. T. STEWART AND MR. BORIE. 
 
 Mr. A. T. Stewart subscribed to the Grant fund; 
 so did every leading man in the City of New 
 
Senator Conkling s Great Speech at New York. 
 
 York who then supported the war and the Re 
 publican Party. No man on Manhattan Island 
 who would have been thought of for the Cabinet 
 refused to subscribe. A man of wealth and 
 prominence belonging to the Union party at that v 
 time, who had refused to share in an offering to 
 a Union General, would have been as mean and 
 as marked as a member of a church who should 
 refuse to pay his part to the minister. The call 
 was general, and for the wealthy who had sup 
 ported the war to give was a matter of course. 
 When Gen. Grant became President, had he nam 
 ed for his Cabinet E. D. Morgan, George Op- 
 dyke, Jackson S. Schultz, William E. Dodge, 
 Henry Clews, or any other leading merchant or 
 banker who supported him, it would have turned 
 out that he too was a "gift-bearing Greek." 
 
 The same thing is true of Mr. Borie, of Phila 
 delphia, the late Secretary of the navy ; the only 
 difference being, that Mr. Stewart was willing to 
 accept office, and Mr. Borie utterly refused andde- 
 clinedit, consenting at last, under protest, to serve 
 only for a short time. These Cabinet Ministers 
 were selected for two reasons: First, theirsupposed 
 fitness, and second, because they were not "politi 
 cians." Mr. Stewart s success and mastership of 
 the details of a vast and varied business convinced 
 the President that he might render great services 
 as Secretary of the Treasury. Mr. Borie, a retired 
 merchant and importer and shipper and ship-own 
 er, was believed to have large experience and 
 knowledge applicable to the navy department. 
 
 These facts by themselves might not have 
 caused these two selections, because other men 
 might have been found qualified, and at the 
 same time known in political affairs. 
 
 THE TRIBUNE AT THE BOTTOM OF IT. 
 
 The New York Tribune, and the newspapers 
 which followed it, or chimed in with it, had 
 more to do than all else, with bringing about 
 the nomination of Mr. Stewart and Mr. Borie, 
 and of others unknown in public affairs. 
 
 The Tribune had vociferated against "politi 
 cians"; it had conjured the President to avoid 
 "politicians," and had proclaimed again and 
 again that the country had a right to expect of 
 Gen. Grant that "politicians" would not be put 
 in high places, but that new men would be 
 brought in. Listening to this hollow bluster, 
 echoed in many public journals, the President 
 was misled as to the popular judgment. 
 
 His own wisdom taught him that if you want 
 a lawyer you should select a man who has prov 
 ed himself a lawyer ; that if you want a doctor, 
 you had better take one who has been tried; and 
 so if you want an agent to manage public affairs, 
 you had better take a man experienced in such 
 affairs. But Mr. Greeley insisted that a Cabinet 
 should be chosen upon the principle on which 
 he is trying to be President, viz., passing over 
 all the men whom you know to be fit, and tak 
 ing a man at a venture with no reason to believe 
 him to be fit. Indeed, Mr. Greeley once told the 
 President that, in his opinion, offices should 
 never be given to those who could take care of 
 themselves, but should be kept for those who 
 couldn t make a living in any other way. Much 
 has been said about President Grant s choice of 
 his Cabinet, but those who know its inside his 
 tory know that the very men who are now hound 
 
 ing the President warmlyapproved of the persons, 
 named, especially of Mr. Stewart. 
 
 THE LAW AND THE TRUTH IN MR. STEW 
 ART S CASE. 
 
 The provisions of law making Mr. Stewart 
 ineligible were as much out of the minds of 
 others as of the President. 
 
 Mr. Stewart was unanimously confirmed by 
 the Senate, as were the other Cabinet nomina 
 tions now said to be so bad ; and yet there sat 
 Sumner and Tipton, and Schurr and Trumbull, 
 and the other new-light oracles, and appointed, 
 because the President without the Senate could 
 . not appoint, A. T. Stewart and the rest. Sev 
 eral old statutes forbid importers to hold such 
 places, and upon the President s attention being 
 called to this, he submitted to the Senate a sug 
 gestion that the law be so changed as to allow 
 Mr. Stewart to act as Secretary of the Treasury. 
 When he reflected on the subject, however, the 
 President did what no small man could have 
 done. He saw the error ; he did not say the 
 Senate was as much to blame as he was, or as 
 ignorant as he was, or that the Senate, having 
 confirmed Mr. Stewart, must reconsider its 
 action or share the responsibility of getting out 
 of the predicament ; but he took the whole 
 blame himself. He said, " This is my mistake; 
 I will correct it." He immediately withdrew 
 his message recommending the law s repeal, 
 and then he did the disagreeable duty of appri 
 sing Mr. Stewart that his proffered deed of 
 trust, pronounced sufficient by certain Senators, 
 now ranting "reformers," would not do, and 
 that nothing would do except to resign and let 
 another take the place. The President s man 
 liness in meeting everything and shirking 
 nothing on this occasion, raised him greatly in 
 the estimation of all just beholders. He offen 
 ded Mr. Stewart, and impaired his friendship, 
 and yet the bald pretense is now made that 
 he used official power to recompense a gift. 
 
 MR. MOSES H. GRINNELL. 
 
 Mr. Moses H. Grinnell was a subscriber to the 
 Grant fund. He was appointed Collector of 
 New York, greatly to the satisfaction of Mr. 
 Greeley and the motley crew which follows him. 
 Did you ever hear that Grinnell s subscription 
 was any objection to his appointment ? When 
 Mr. Grinnell resigned the Collectorship he be 
 came a Tribune martyr. He then asked the 
 President for the Naval Office, and the President 
 yielded to his request. Did you ever hear this 
 objected to because Grinnell was a "gift-bear 
 ing Greek"? When members of Congress and 
 Senators from other States, Massachusetts for 
 one, urged the President to appoint Mr. Lafiin 
 Naval Officer, Mr. Grinnell was displaced, and 
 then the very men who now prate about ap 
 pointing those who made presents, denounced 
 the President for ingratitude to Grinnell, on the 
 ground that Grinnell had subscribed money for 
 the President. As Nasby would say, "sich is life. H 
 
 No man who knows President Grant, unless 
 he be knave or fool, for a moment believes that 
 the President ever dreamed of prostituting his of 
 fice to pay a debt of his own, or to bribe, or re 
 ward, or repay the givers of money to him. 
 
8 
 
 The President and His Slanderers. 
 
 THE PRESIDENT S RICHES. 
 The " Liberal " idea of decency and manly 
 war, forces me to speak of another thing which 
 will grate upon your ears. The political scav 
 engers pretend that the President has 
 grown rich, as President, by illicit gain, and 
 they parade his property by millions. We have 
 fallen on soi ry times, when the Chief Magistrate 
 of the country, with a fame so great and pure, 
 must give account of his private property in art- 
 swer to electioneering falsehoods. The Presi 
 dent would disdain to do it ; I have no author 
 ity to do it ; 1 do not assume to do it on his 
 behalf; but on behalf of the party and the 
 cause he represents I venture to state the facts. 
 At Galena, where he "tanned hides," he 
 owned a house, and during the war he invested 
 the savings from his pay in some lots in Chi 
 cago, and in some shares of street railway stock. 
 Mrs. Grant inherited her share in her father s 
 farm in Missouri, and they bought out the other 
 heirs with a portion of the hundred thousand 
 dollars presented by citizens of New York. 
 This one hundred thousand dollars also paid 
 for a house in Washington, which was subse 
 quently sold to Gen. Sherman, and a cottage 
 and grounds were bought at Long Branch after 
 the Washington house was sold. The people 
 ef Philadelphia presented a house, which rents 
 for about two thousand dollars a year. This 
 completes the property of the President, with 
 one exception. 
 
 Some years ago he purchased ten thousand 
 dollars, in nominal value, of the stock of the Sen 
 eca Stone Company ; to this day it has paid 
 nothing, partly because the President has inter 
 fered to prevent Seneca stone being adopted as 
 building material for the Government. One of 
 the plans submitted for the new State Depart 
 ment required the use of Seneca stone, and, be 
 cause of his being a stockholder, the President 
 refused to allow the plan to be even considered. 
 The other stockholders complained of this, say 
 ing they were punished because the President 
 owned stock ; the President replied, expressing 
 his regret, and saying that he would sell his 
 stock or give it away, except for imputations cast 
 upon him by political opponents because of his 
 ownership ; but he deemed it unsuitable even to 
 seem to defer to such calumny by panting with 
 his stock. 
 
 Here, then, is the sum total of the President s 
 possessions ; and they embrace no cigars smug 
 gled in the dispatch bag, no costly works of art 
 or rare wines bestowed by foreigners, no testi 
 monials sent from other lands, in gratitude for 
 efforts to tarnish the fair fame of his country. 
 Every dollar he owns came from sources open 
 as the clay, and every month of his Presidency 
 has made him poorer than the month before ; 
 and yet the country and Congress are disgraced 
 by inuendoes and poisonous hints that vast wealth 
 has been amassed in the Presidential office. 
 
 GRANT NO MONEY-MAKER AND NO OFFICE- 
 SEEKER. 
 
 Had wealth gained in office been Grant s aim, 
 he would never have been President. As General 
 of the Army he stood the foremost man of all 
 the earth. His pay was for life, and was nearly, 
 
 if not quite, as great annually as the Presidential 
 salary. In money value and money-making 
 opportunity, as well as in ease and freedom, his 
 position then was unmeasurably better than the 
 * Presidency for four years or eight. We know 
 the Presidency sought him, and not he the 
 Presidency ; but had avarice been his thought, 
 he would have refused the Presidency, and 
 kept the life-place of General. 
 
 The Presidential salary has not lured him now. 
 We hear of "his pretentions," and of his "in 
 sisting upon being a candidate"; yet, first and 
 last, he never made himself a candidate, and 
 never, to my knowledge, has he expressed a 
 wish to be re-elected. So far from it, that for 
 more than a year his friends were uneasy with 
 solicitude lest he should withhold absolutely the 
 use of his name. 
 
 In place of dividing or hazarding the Repub 
 lican Party by seeking a renomination, he never 
 consented to stand a second time until he was 
 assured on every hand that the party demanded 
 him as the only man who could not be beaten ; 
 and my firm conviction is, that, had no asper 
 sion been cast upon him, he would personally 
 gladly be mustered out. 
 
 More than a year ago, expressing to me pri 
 vately his earnest wish to leave public toil, he 
 said that at West Point he counted the days, 
 the hours, and even the minutes to elapse, be 
 fore he should be graduated, and that, with a 
 like eagerness, he counted the time that would 
 complete his Presidential service; and often, 
 before vindictive injustice had roused him to 
 resistance, those who knew him best, and among 
 them the ablest and purest members of the 
 Senate, continually expressed solicitude lest he 
 should refuse to run again, and leave the party 
 distracted by rivalries, and with no candidate 
 so strong. 
 
 But when the shower of mud, and the beating 
 of gongs, and the foul-mouthed uproar burst 
 upon him, all felt that we were safe. Grant never 
 scares well at all, and is never driven when 
 courage can make a stand ; and the two debts 
 the Republican party owes to the deserters who 
 have attempted to betray it are, first, that they 
 cleansed and reformed the party by leaving it ; 
 and second, that they have insured it a candidate 
 who, in the words of Horace Greeley, "never 
 has been defeated and never will be." 
 
 The assaults made upon him at once swelled 
 the tide in his favor, and the determination to 
 renominate him soon became obvious even to 
 those who hated most to see it. 
 
 Then came the next effort to throw dust in tne 
 people s eyes. The New York Tribune, and 
 other journals, which for a year had been doing 
 the worse than menial offices of the Democratic 
 party, raised a yell that "the office-holders were 
 going to renominate Grant." This bald tale 
 had its run until the Philadelphia Convention 
 met. It then turned out that, among seven hun 
 dred and fifty delegates, there were not thirty 
 office-holders, a thing unexampled in American 
 politics. No National Convention of the party in 
 power ever met before, in which men holding offi 
 cial station were not largely present. Perhaps no 
 single precinct in the whole country so effectu 
 ally gave the lie to the pretense that the office- 
 
Senator Conklingls^Great^ Speech jat New York. 
 
 holders controlled the people, as the Seventh 
 Ward of the City of Boston, the ward in which 
 Mr. Sumner lives. There, unde r his own vine 
 and fig tree, where he carefully superintended 
 the selection of "office-holders," the primary 
 meeting brought out unusual numbers ; the Re 
 publicans turned out en masse and voted unani 
 mously for Grant. Mr. Sumner, in his opposi 
 tion, could not command a vote. 
 
 THE PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION HENRY 
 WILSON. 
 
 The roll-call in the National Convention was 
 answered by a chorus of States, and with a 
 unanimity and a spirit which made the Conven 
 tion the most remarkable ever held, and the in 
 dorsement the most flattering and pronounced 
 ever given to a candidate. The announced wish 
 of Mr. Colfax to withdraw from public life, left 
 the Convention without unity of sentiment as to 
 the second place on the ticket ; and the choice 
 fell upon the man whom Mr. Wade has well 
 described "as the incarnation of American citi 
 zenship." 
 
 Born a child of poverty and toil, the Natick 
 Cobbler, during a long life of purity and public 
 service, had won a place in the respect and good 
 will of his countrymen which made it fit that the 
 second office in the Republic should be held by 
 Henry Wilson. Without the contrast between 
 his colleague and himself, the prize might not 
 have fallen to him. But the inexcusable con 
 duct of Mr. Sumner led the Convention to pre 
 fer Mr. Wilson for Vice- President, for his own 
 great merit, and also because his nomination 
 would record a national judgment against the 
 pretention that the party belongs to any man, or 
 is subject to the whim or dictation of any knot 
 of men, however petted in the past. Mr. Wil 
 son has been a Senator many years, a Senator 
 during Gen. Grant s whole military and civil ser 
 vice. He has at all times upheld Republican 
 measures, and therefore is answerable, as he 
 wishes to be, for the acts of the party and the" 
 policy of the Administration. The objections 
 to either candidate apply to both, and can be 
 argued together. 
 
 The Administration is on trial. Charges are 
 made against it, and the Republican ticket de 
 serves defeat unless these charges, as far as they 
 are worthy of notice, can be fully met. If such 
 changes were ever canvassed before in a Presi 
 dential election, they were used as make-weights 
 to go with other and very different things. 
 Never before were such charges alone the theme 
 of popular consideration. 
 
 WASHINGTON AND OTHERS SLANDERED. 
 
 Never before did a political party plant itself 
 upon personalities and scandal, and upon noth 
 ing else. George Washington was visited with 
 loathsome abuse by his political opponents. 
 During the pendency of Jay s treaty, to which 
 Washington was earnestly devoted, Chief Justice 
 Marshall informs us that Washington s 
 -" military and political character was attacked with 
 equal violence, and it was aveured that he was totally 
 destitute of merit, either as a soldier or a statesman. 
 The calumnies with which he was assailed were not 
 confined to his political conduct ; even his qualities as a 
 man were the subjects of detraction. That he had vio 
 lated the Constitution in negotiating a treaty without the 
 
 previous advice of "the Senate, and in embracing in that 
 treaty subjects belonging exclusively to the Legislature/ 
 was openly maintained, for which an impeachment was 
 publicly suggested ; and that he had drawn from the 
 Treasury for his private use more than the salary an-i 
 nexed to his office, was asserted without a blush. This 
 last allegation was said to be supported by extracts from 
 the Treasury accounts, which had been laid before the 
 Legislature, and was maintained with the most unblush 
 ing effrontery. Though the Secretary of the Treasury 
 denied that the appropriation made by the Legislature 
 had been exceeded, the atrocious charge was still confi 
 dently reported, and the few who could triumph in any 
 spot which might tarnish the lustre of Washington s fame 
 felicitated themselves in the prospect of obtaining a 
 victory over the reputation of a patriot, to whose single 
 influence they ascribed the failure of their political plans. 
 MarsJuiU s Life of Washington, Vel. 1, page 267. , 
 
 Do you discover any likeness here ? Is there 
 in the revolting ugliness of these attempts to 
 blacken Washington s name anything to remind 
 you of what is going on around us now ? Jack 
 son was brutally defamed, and even charged in 
 a public print with the paternity of colored bas 
 tards. The Convention which nominated Polk 
 hung but from the balcony a full length daub of 
 Henry Clay, bespattered with blood, holding a 
 pistol in one hand and a pack of cards in theother. 
 These were revolting brutalities indeed, but 
 there is one marked difference between the scan 
 dals hurled at Washington, Jackson, Buchanan, 
 Lincoln and others, and those now flung at Grant. 
 The public measures, the political policy of 
 these other Presidents, was in each case opposed 
 and criticised, and the sting of personal calumny 
 was used as a spur to the main contest. Now, 
 personal abuse is the Alpha and Omega on one 
 side. John Quincy Adams was besmeared with 
 rancorous aspersion on account of his appoint 
 ments to office, as his father had been for appoint 
 ing relatives to office, but the issue at the same 
 time was always made upon grave political ques 
 tions. 
 
 What political policy of Grant or his Admin 
 istration does the opposition assail ? What part 
 of the present policy do they propose to reverse 
 or alter ? What part dare they avow or admit 
 they mean to change ? Lay your finger on it if 
 you can. Hard words you can find, vague, 
 cloudy, sweeping denunciations ; but take up, 
 one by one, the important positions and meas 
 ures of the Administration, and except the San 
 Domingo Treaty, if that be an exception, where 
 is the specific thing upon which issue is made? 
 Let me state the case in another form. Sup 
 pose all the slurs and flings and vile gossip 
 against Grant are true suppose you admit the 
 whole of them what do they signify ? Suppose 
 he has appointed a dozen relatives to office; 
 suppose he has failed to appreciate the claims of 
 certain politicians ; suppose presents had been 
 given him after he was President j suppose the 
 idea of making A. T. Stewart Secretary of the 
 Treasury was as foolish as every reformer says it 
 was now ; suppose there was no express law 
 authorizing two young military friends to write 
 in his office and carry his messages. Put it to 
 gether, and what of it ? 
 
 If you want a man to pilot a ship, or lead an 
 army, or try a cause, or build a house, or set a 
 broken arm, or run a locomotive, what do you 
 care so long as he does his work well, whether he 
 is too fond of his relations, or doesn t like certain 
 politicians, or has subjected himself to envious 
 
10 
 
 The President and His Slanderers. 
 
 sneers by having presents given to him? All 
 these things are aside from the purpose. "They 
 are tithing, mint, anise and cummin." Has he 
 made a good President ? That is the question. 
 
 SAN DOMINGO. 
 
 Let us examine the evidence ; and, first of all, 
 let us take up the charges and evidence against 
 him. The San Domingo treaty, unlike going 
 to Long Branch, or smoking a cigar, or riding 
 in a palace-car, was a matter of public business, 
 and is, therefore, a topic not despicable or un 
 worthy. His guilt and his innocence in this 
 respect can all be briefly stated. 
 
 The Monroe doctrine is one of the traditions 
 of the country, and of both political partte:,. 
 The Monroe doctrine means opposition to ac 
 quisitions on this continent by European Powers. 
 When President Grant came in no such question 
 was pending, but such a question soon arose. 
 An . agent from the Dominican Republic pre 
 sented himself to the President, saying that the 
 people of Dominica, few in numbers, but rich 
 in one of the most fertile isles of any sea, lying 
 close to our shores, waited to come under the 
 American flag ; and, that failing to do so, they 
 would look to a European alliance. The Pres 
 ident made no reply, and afterward a second 
 envoy appeared repeating these statements, with 
 glowing accounts of the fertility and resources 
 of the Island of San Domingo. 
 
 Gen. McClellan, Admiral Porter, Commis 
 sioner Hogan, and others, had previously ex 
 amined and reported upon the island, and had 
 strongly stated its advantages as a coaling sta 
 tion, a naval station, a military key to the Gulf 
 of Mexico, and as an area prolific in coffee, 
 sugar-cane, rice, dye-stuffs, mahogany, and other 
 valuable woods, and in other products of the 
 tropics, besides iron, copper, gold and salt. 
 
 With this information before him, the Presi 
 dent could not turn a deaf ear and a closed eye 
 to so grave a matter. He caused two or three 
 discreet persons to go, unexpected and unob 
 served, to San Domingo, learn all they could, 
 and make report. This being done, the Presi 
 dent was convinced that the matter should be 
 entertained, put in the form of a treaty, and 
 submitted to the judgment of the Senate and 
 the country. 
 
 THE PRESIDENT CALLS ON MR. SUMNER A 
 QUESTION OF VERACITY. 
 
 A treaty was proposed and reduced to writ 
 ing, and the President, with none of the " pre- 
 tention " which Mr. Surnner imagines, paid Mr. 
 Sumner the deference of going to his house, in 
 place of sending for him to confer with him as 
 Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Rela 
 tions, and to ascertain whether he favored the 
 treaty, and would support it. The interview 
 took place in the presence of two witnesses, 
 Gen. Babcock and Col. John W. Forney. 
 
 These two witnesses, in addition to the Pres 
 ident, affirm that Mr. Sumner distinctly de 
 clared himself in favoi of the treaty, and stated 
 that he should support it. 
 
 Col. Forney testifies as follows : 
 
 I was present at Mr. Sumner s residence when Presi 
 dent Grant called and explained the Dominican treaty 
 
 to the Senator, and, although I cannot recall the exact 
 words of the Jatter, / understood him to say that he 
 would most cheerfully support the treaty. At the Pres 
 ident s request, I remained to hear his explanation, and 
 am free to add, that such is my deep regard for Mr. 
 Sumner, that his endorsement of Hie treaty ivent very 
 far to stimulate me- in giving it my own support, I 
 have already said this much to Mr. Sumner, who, how 
 ever, claims that other information since obtained has, 
 \haped his present action. 
 
 (Signed) J. W. FORNEY. 
 
 This statement is true, or it is wilfully false ; 
 because although Forney might have misunder 
 stood Mr. Sumner at the time, he cannot Le mis 
 taken in the fact that Mr. Sumner afterward 
 admitted that he had changed his mind. Gen. 
 Babcock certifies in writing that afler the inter 
 view with the President, he and Mr. Sumner 
 read and examined the treaty carefully together; 
 and that at the close of the interview, Mr. Sum 
 ner said, " That he could not think of doing 
 otherwise than supporting the Administration in 
 the matter" ; and further, "that there was no ob 
 jection to the instrument as a whole." 
 
 Yet Mr. Sumner, having meanwhile taken 
 offense because his views and wishes in other 
 matters were not deferred to, became incensed 
 at the President and Mr. Fish, denounced them, 
 and among other things the San Domingo 
 treaty, and raising an issue of veracity with 
 three witnesses, denied that he ever intimated 
 that he Would give the treaty his support. 
 
 His version of the interview with the President 
 is, that the President came to his house and was 
 proceeding to unfold the San Domingo matter, 
 when he (Sumner) broke in with the subject of 
 an appointment in which he was interested ; and 
 that when the President returned to the treaty, 
 he (Sumner) evaded the point altogether by a 
 studied ambiguity. Here are Mr. Sumner s 
 words, delivered to the Senate : "lie (the Presi 
 dent) proceeded with an explanation which I 
 very soon interrupted, saying, by the way, Mr. 
 President, it is very hard to turn out Gov. Ash 
 ley ; I have just received a letter from the Gov 
 ernor, and I hope I shall not take too great a 
 liberty, Mr. President, if I read it. I find it 
 excellent and eloquent, and written with a feel 
 ing which interests me much. 7 I commenced 
 the letter and read two pages or more, when I 
 thought the President was uneasy, and I felt 
 that I was taking too great a liberty with him in 
 my own house, but I was irresistibly impelled by 
 loyalty to an absent friend, while I was glad of 
 this opportunity of diverting attention from the 
 treaty. As conversation about Gov. Ashley 
 subsided, the President returned to the treaty, 
 leaving on my mind no very strong idea of what 
 they proposed, and nothing with regard to the 
 character of the negotiations. My reply was 
 precise. The language is fixed absolutely in my 
 memory : 
 
 " Mr. President, I said, I am an Administration 
 man, and whatever you do, will always find in me the 
 most careful and candid consideration. . . . 
 My language, I repeat, was precise, well considered, and 
 chosen in advance : I am an Administration man, and 
 whatever you do will always find in me the most careful 
 and candid consideration. " 
 
 Mr. Sumner did not deny that the President 
 acted upon the belief that he approved the treaty, 
 nor did he deny that he left the President so to 
 act, without ever informing him that he had 
 
Senator ConkUntfs Great Speech at New York. 
 
 11 
 
 changed his mind, or been misunderstood. Yet 
 Mr. Sumner in the Senate assailed the President 
 personally and bitterly ; and in a published in 
 terview in Chicago with Major Chamberlain, a 
 man of character and veracity, who had been a 
 Union officer, and was then connected with the 
 Press, Mr. Sumner charged the President with 
 venality and jobbery in the San Domingo Treaty. 
 
 In consequence of these and other like occur 
 rences, it was proposed to send three Commis 
 sioners to San Domingo, at no cost beyond their 
 expenses, to investigate and clear up the whole 
 matter, and to ascertain whether, as Mr. Sum 
 ner had charged, lots in San Domingo had been 
 staked off and marked with the names of the 
 President and others. 
 
 The inquiry seemed fair to most of those who 
 opposed and to those who favored the treaty, 
 but Mr. Sumner resisted the inquiry inch by 
 inch, and after a majority of the Foreign Rela 
 tions Committee had joined him in denouncing 
 it, he insisted that it should be referred to that 
 Committee. 
 
 The same familiar parliamentary maxim 
 about putting a " child to nurse with those who 
 care not for it," upon which he rung the changes 
 so often in the French Arms affair, was quoted 
 to him in vain. When the sale of arms was to 
 be inquired into, Mr. Sumner slandered the 
 Senate for appointing a committee all in favor 
 of investigating, because the committee was not 
 biased in favor of convicting somebody, but the 
 San Domingo inquiry he insisted should go to 
 a committee of which a majority had declared 
 in advance against any inquiry at all. 
 
 At the end of a protracted and stubborn con 
 test, Congress authorized a Commission to be 
 sent ; not, however, till Mr. Sumner had de 
 nounced the President for not taking it upon 
 himself, of his own authority, to send a Com 
 mission without asking permission of Congress. 
 Now we hear from Mr. Sumner, not that the 
 President shrinks from his prerogatives, but 
 that he arrogantly oversteps them. 
 
 Mr. Wade, Dr. Howe of Boston, and Pres 
 ident Andrew D. W T hite were selected as Com 
 missioners. They visited San Domingo, and 
 made a report which few qtthe American peo 
 ple have read, but which win be read when the 
 din and passion of to-day are forgotten. The 
 report explodes utterly every calumnious pre 
 tense, and presents a statement which leaves no 
 room to doubt the duty of the President to con 
 sider as he did the acquisition of San Domingo, 
 and to urge it upon the attention of the Senate 
 and the country. 
 
 HOW THE PRESIDENT SHAMED HIS AC 
 CUSERS. 
 
 In transmitting this report to Congress the 
 President did his last act in the matter. With 
 ihe report he sent a Message, to which a Minis 
 ter from one of the first Powers of the earth told 
 me he called the attention of his Government, 
 as one of the most remarkable State papers of 
 which he had knowledge. In that Message 
 stand these words : 
 
 " The mere rejection by the Senate of a treaty nego 
 tiated by the President, only indicates a difference of 
 opinion between two co-ordinate departments of the Gov 
 ernment, without touching the character or wounding 
 
 the pride of either. Bat when such rejection takes place 
 simultaneously with the charges, openly made, of cor 
 ruption on the part of the President, or those employed 
 by him, the case is different. In such case the honor of 
 the nation demands investigation. This has been accom 
 plished by the report of the Commissioners herewith 
 transmitted, and which fully vindicates the purity of the 
 motives and action of those \vho represented the United 
 States in the negotiation. And now my task is finished, 
 and with it ends all personal solicitude upon the subject. 
 " My duty being done, yours begins ; and I gladly 
 hand over the whole matter to the judgment of the 
 American people, and of their Representatives in Con 
 gress assembled. The facts will now be spread^before 
 the country, and a decision rendered by that tribunal 
 whose convictions so seldom err, and against 
 whose will I have no policy to enforce. My opinion re 
 mains unchanged ; indeed, it is confirmed by the report 
 that the interests of our country and San Domingo alike 
 invite the annexation of that Republic. In view of the 
 difference of opinion upon this subject, I suggest that no 
 action be taken at the present session beyond the print 
 ing and general dissemination of the report. Before the 
 next session of Congress the people will have considered 
 the subject, and formed an intelligent opinion concerning 
 it, to which opinion, deliberately made up, it will be the 
 duty of every department of the Government to give heed, 
 and no one will more cheerfully conform to it than 
 myself." 
 
 This was the utterance last year of the man 
 whom we are told is swollen with pretension " 
 and "ungovernable personality." 
 
 Among the glaring absurdities heaped upon 
 the San Domingo matter is the allegation that 
 the war was made upon the Republic of Hayti. 
 The foundation for this is that a vessel or two 
 cruised in that part of the ocean during the ne 
 gotiations. Not a gun was fired, nor a pocket- 
 pistol, nor a percussion cap, and the only war 
 like demonstration ever heard of was that a sea- 
 captain sent up a sky-rocket from the deck of 
 his vessel. The purpose of this sky-rocket, or 
 where the stick came down, has never been 
 ascertained. 
 
 This, in brief, is the story of the San Domin 
 go affair. I do not refer to it to champion the 
 treaty or argue its merits ; that is another mat 
 ter. My purpose is to show you that the part 
 acted by the President was the part of an hon 
 est, modest man, walking in the path of the 
 Constitution and of his predecessors. 
 
 Previous Administrations had eagerly sought 
 a foothold in the West Indies. A naval station 
 and a harbor there have long been deemed an 
 urgent necessity. Andrew Johnson and Gov. 
 Seward made a treaty agreeing to pay Denmark 
 seven millions and a half in gold for the Island 
 of St. Thomas. The principal production of 
 St. Thomas is earthquakes, and the Senate re 
 fused to buy earthquakes at the price agreed 
 upon ; but it is not known that Mr. Sumner or 
 anybody else denounced the making of the 
 treaty. 
 
 Andrew Johnson and Gov. Seward made a 
 treaty with Russia, agreeing to pay seven mil 
 lions and a quarter for Alaska, in gold. No 
 body was ever sent to examine Alaska. When 
 the treaty was made we had never looked upon 
 a man who had set foot upon it ; we had heard 
 of its icebergs and floods, and it seemed a white 
 elephant ; but the Senate agreed to the treaty. 
 The Chainnan of Foreign Relations changed 
 his mind on that treaty also. He started against 
 it, but, touched by the master hand of the sage 
 of Auburn, he suddenly turned and made a 
 glowing speech in its behalf. The speech, 
 
The President and His Slanderers, 
 
 bound in Turkey morocco, was sent to the 
 crowned heads of Europe, and its author sits in 
 a picture, with the Russian Minister and Secre 
 tary of State, consigned to immortality by the 
 pencil of Leutze. 
 
 Franklin Pierce, with the whole Democracy 
 at his back, attempted to force Spain to cede 
 Cuba to us. Pierre Soule was sent out as Min 
 ister to Spain, and on his way stopped in the 
 city of New York. There he was serenaded 
 by the Order of the Lone Star, a band of avow 
 ed Cuban filibusters, and, addressing the crowd 
 in the street, he declared that Cuba should be 
 "torn from the old Spanish Wolf." 
 
 In the face of this outrage and affront tp a 
 friendly power, President Pierce suffered Soule 
 to sail for Spain ; he proceeded to Aix-la-Cha- 
 pelle, and there Soule, James Buchanan, John 
 Y. Mason and August Belmont, all American 
 Ministers to foreign countries, sat down and 
 signed the Ostend Manifesto. This paper, 
 caught up and endorsed by the whole Demo 
 cratic party, argued the imperative necessity for 
 self-defense of a foothold in the West Indies, 
 and, upon the plea of necessity, stated without 
 a blush the Rob- Roy doctrine that might makes 
 right, and avowed that if Spain would not sell 
 Cuba it should be taken by force. 
 
 After all these things, the same men who 
 justified them denounce as monstrous the idea 
 of paying one million and a half for a territory 
 next our own shores, with one of the finest har 
 bors in the world, with an area as large as 
 Conpecticut, Vermont and Massachusetts, with 
 a soil and climate better than Cuba, and 
 with only a handful of people. We pay Cuba 
 $58,000,000 a year for products of slave labor. 
 We buy nearly all the slave-raised coffee of Bra 
 zil ; and here is an island on which would grow 
 all that Cuba and Brazil send here ; and a Presi 
 dent is denounced as knave and fool for submit 
 ting to the people its purchase for one and a 
 half million dollars ! 
 
 The scheme may be unwise ; upon that ques 
 tion I wait for further light and better judgment; 
 but the public sense will never run so mad as 
 to crucify a public servant for submitting it to 
 the wisdom of the people. 
 
 "REMOVAL" OF MR. SUMNER. 
 
 It may not be amiss here to allude to the effort 
 to rouse indignation over the so-called "removal" 
 of Mr. Sumner from the Committee of Foreign 
 Relations. Mr. Sumner was never "removed" 
 at all. All Senate committees die at the end 
 of each session. All Senate committees are 
 created anew at the beginning of each session. 
 Mr. Sumner had been selected repeatedly for 
 the Chairmanship of the Committee referred to, 
 and the question was always, looking over the 
 whole Senate, who would be the most useful, 
 and, all things considered, the best man for the 
 place. At the time in question, and for rea 
 sons easily stated, the Senate thought it would 
 not be wise to select Mr. Sumner again for that 
 Committee, and he was selected for another. 
 This was not done because Mr. Sumner op 
 posed San Domingo, nor because he changed 
 sides upon that question, nor because the Presi 
 dent or the Secretary of State wanted, or did 
 
 not want, Mr. Sumner on this committee or on 
 that. The reasons were wholly different. 
 They were reasons of the Senate alone, and 
 reasons which have governed the formation of 
 parliamentaiy committees everywhere since such 
 committees were known. The Committee on 
 Foreign Affairs, in either House of Congress, 
 ought not only, like other committees, to re 
 present the majority of the body, but, for pe-. 
 culiar reasons, it must be composed of men who 
 can and will consult freely with the President, 
 the Secretary of State, and their assistants. 
 This is especially true of the Chairman, he be 
 ing the organ of the Committee. 
 
 Mr. Sumner not only wielded his position 
 as Chairman in opposition to the majority of 
 the Senate upon several important questions, 
 and boasted in the Senate that the Committee 
 could not be changed, but his conduct and lan 
 guage in public and in private had rendered it 
 impossible for him to hold communication with 
 those whom it was indispensable to confer with, 
 and impossible for them to confer with him. 
 
 Men cannot do business conveniently with 
 those whom they denounce and insult continu 
 ally, nor with those toward whom they assume 
 offensive superiority ; and the time came, with 
 Mr. Sumner, as Chairman, when the Senate 
 was left in ignorance, and business delayed for 
 weeks, for lack of information from the State 
 Department, merely because Mr. Sumner did 
 not hold communication with it. The simple, 
 indeed the only, cure for all this, was to select 
 another Chairman. This was done, and nothing 
 more ; and it turned out that treaties, six or 
 seven in number, having long lain buried in the 
 Committee, after the change of Chairman were 
 at once brought up and ratified. 
 
 Yet this action of the Senate in managing and 
 expediting its own business, has been made a 
 grave matter for public consideration, and thrust 
 at the President, who had no more to do with 
 it than the Senate has to do with deciding 
 how many vegetables the President has on his 
 table. 
 
 I leave this matter after asking one question. 
 Is there one man on this continent, except Mr. 
 Sumner, who couM with propriety have clung 
 to a position after liis associates who conferred 
 it were unwilling he should retain it ; is there 
 one other man who would have supposed that 
 his being on this committee or on that, would 
 "jar the harmony of the universe " ? 
 
 "NEPOTISM." 
 
 Let me go on with the charges against the 
 President. Few of them figure more largely 
 than appointing relatives to offic-e. Mr. Sumner 
 has staggered the nation by the weight of the 
 dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other big books 
 which he has dumped upon us, to show what 
 "nepotism " is. He finds it charged that Popes 
 had Nephews, and lavished upon them the 
 moneys of the church ; and he thinks that where 
 a public office is to be filled, and a good man is 
 appointed at the same pay any other man would 
 receive, a case has occurred like that of the Popes, 
 provided the man who makes the appointment, 
 and the man who gets it, are related to each other. 
 This, if not a useful, is a wonderful discovery. 
 
Senator Conkling^s Great Speech at New York. 
 
 U 
 
 From the morning of time, common sense has 
 distinguished between creating a useless and lu 
 crative sinecure and bestowing it on a relative, 
 and selecting a relative to do a service required 
 to be done. When Hannibal and Frederick the 
 Great and Napoleon and Emperor William put 
 a brother or a son at the head of an army with 
 rank and titles, or even placed him on a throne, 
 the world never thought it was like a sinecure 
 for a Papal nephew. 
 
 On the contrary, in public and in private busi 
 ness, nothing has seemed more natural than for 
 those intrusted with affairs to employ and asso 
 ciate with themselves persons in whom they 
 most confided, whether relatives or not. In all 
 such cases, if the person be fit, little harm can 
 be done ; but if he is unfit, a great wrong is done 
 whether he be a relative or not. If the appoint 
 ment of relatives be a crime, a great many men, 
 including the busiest and most blatant Liber 
 als," must be great criminals. Andrew Johnson, 
 his Cabinet and chief officers, must have been 
 huge offenders, for reasons which no one thought 
 of at the time, though everybody knew of them. 
 
 President Johnson s son was his chief Private 
 Secretary. Gov. Seward s son was Assistant 
 Secretary of State. Edwin M. Stanton s son 
 was a Clerk in the War Department. Gideon 
 Welles s son was Chief Clerk of the Navy De 
 partment ; and when Gideon Welles employed a 
 relative at a great remuneration to buy ships, 
 the scandal was not that he paid just sums to a 
 relative, but that he paid such sums at all. 
 Reverdy Johnson, Minister to England, made 
 his son Assistant Secretary of Legation. John 
 A. Dix, Minister to France, did the same thing 
 with his son. All this was under Andrew John 
 son, but when a drag net of criticism and im 
 peachment was cast over him these things were 
 not caught up. 
 
 "LIBERAL" RELATIVES. 
 
 The rueful " Reformers " themselves will not 
 bear examination on this point. Mr. Schurz 
 pressed his brother-in-law upon the President, 
 and obtained for him a lucrative office, and 
 when Mr. Trumbull caused his removal up 
 on statements impeaching his fitness, Mr. 
 Schurz raged against the President for remov 
 ing his brother-in-law. Mr. Trumbull seems 
 to have procured appointments for his brother- 
 in-law, his sons, and his nephews, and he broke, 
 it his said, with the President because he re 
 fused to appoint Mr. Trumbull s son to an office. 
 That shrill and frisky " Reformer," Mr. Tipton, 
 although not collossal himself, would need a 
 hay-scales to be weighed along with all his re 
 latives he has helped to get office. Three 
 brothers-in-law, a nephew, and a son, in office, 
 with other things for other relatives, did not 
 satisfy his "liberal" inclinations; but he vig 
 orously plied the President and the Secretary of 
 State to give a valuable consulship to another 
 son, and after they declined he frequently avow 
 ed, once pipingly to the President himself, that 
 the refusal was the cause of his opposition. 
 
 Mr. Fenton saw no objection to giving his 
 adopted son his influence for an office, nor to 
 obtaining it from Tammany Hall, and keeping 
 it through all the exposures of Tweed and the 
 
 rest, although no service was attached to it equiv 
 alent to the pay. 
 
 Mr. Sumner, with a brother-in-law in offic 
 under Andrew Johnson, was inflamed by his re 
 moval, and did not hesitate to make known hi 
 displeasure. 
 
 Even Mr. Greeley did not scruple to counte 
 nance his brother-in-law in obtaining the mos 
 lucrative collectorship of internal revenue in th< 
 United States. Nor has he hesitated to urge ap 
 pointments clearly unfit, on the ground of th< 
 intimate terms between himself and those h< 
 urged. 
 
 DEMOCRATIC RELATIVES GOV. HOFFMAN. 
 
 Old-line Democrats are as weak as the ne\\ 
 and buzzing converts in regard to relatives, 
 Kentucky is the best example of a Democratk 
 State Government, pure and simple. She ha; 
 a Democratic Governor, Treasurer, Adjutant 
 General, Attorney- General, Clerk of the Couri 
 of Appeals, Auditor, and keeper of the Peniten 
 tiary, and of these, there is not one free from 
 appointing relatives to office, and the same thing 
 is true in numerous instances of members of th( 
 Kentucky Legislature. 
 
 The City of New York, with its unmitigated 
 Democratic government, is prolific beyond meas 
 ure in similar things. The Governor of New 
 York, having turned "reformer," must be con- 
 sidered high author ty. When Gov. Hoffman 
 was Mayor, his father-in-law, Henry Stark 
 weather, was appointed, May I, 1867, Collectoi 
 of "Assessments." In form, the appointmenl 
 was made by Street Commissioner McLean, bul 
 McLean was appointed by Hoffman. Tweed 
 succeeded McLean, but Starkweather was con 
 tinued by Tweed, and never relinquished his 
 place till the Spring of 1872. Up to July, 1871, 
 being four years and two months, Stark weathet 
 received in this office $560,824.59, as appeared 
 on the books of the office, Feb. 27, 1872. This 
 great sum was received under the influence ol 
 Hoffman by his father-in-law, and Hoffman s 
 wife is his father-in-law s only child. This 
 makes the arrangement a closer and snuggei 
 thing than can be found even in Sumner s history 
 of the Popes. 
 
 How far such a sum could fitly be taken by 
 Starkweather, appears from a report made on 
 the 4th of March, 1872, to the Board of Assist 
 ant Alderman, by its Committee of Finance ; 
 the report is signed by Charles P. Hartt and 
 Charles C. Pinckney, and relates to the Collec 
 tor of Assessments and his fees. I read from 
 the report these words : 
 
 Your Committee find that the entire duties of the Bu 
 reau are performed by the Collector of Assessments and 
 four or five employees : that these employees receive 
 compensation out of the fees of the office to the extent 
 of about $11,000 per annum, and that the remainder of 
 said fees is divided between the Collector and such Dep 
 uty Collectors as are from time to time appointed ; these 
 Deputy Collectors, however, perform no work, and ren 
 der no assistance whatever to the Collector in tkedutits 
 of the Bureau. 
 
 Again the report says : 
 
 If the Collector can, with credit to himself, manage 
 the affairs of his bureau by the annual expenditure for 
 clerk hire of $11,000, it must be evident that there can 
 exist no necessity whatever for its maintenance under its 
 present management, at an annual cost of more than 
 
14 
 
 Tfie President and His Slanderers. 
 
 $130,000. Its office accommodation, books, stationery, 
 safes, furniture, etc. , etc. , are all borne by the city. 
 
 Among the worthy and needy provided for 
 by Mr. Starkweather, was Wm. M. Tweed, 
 who received for nothing $101,978. 17. 
 
 Did you ever hear this reeking and festering 
 job talked about by the men or the papers now 
 shrieking about "nepotism?" While Governor 
 Hoffman was Mayor his Chief Clerk was his 
 brother-in-law, who at the same time was also 
 clerk of the Street Cleaning Commission of which 
 Hoffman was Chairman, thus holding two offices 
 under his brother-in-law, and at the same time 
 another relative of the Governor s held office at 
 his hands. 
 
 RELATIVES OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 But if Gen. Grant has done wrong, the crime 
 of others can not help him. Let us look into 
 his case. You might suppose from the noise, 
 that he had used a relative as a peg for every 
 hole in the country, and that he had put round 
 pegs in square holes, and square pegs in round 
 holes, everywhere. It has been said that he has 
 appointed fifty relatives, forty relatives, thirty 
 relatives, and Mr. Sumner estimates thirteen 
 relatives, to office. None of these statements 
 are true. Since President Grant came in, but 
 nine persons in all, connected in the remotest 
 degree with him or with his wife, have held po 
 litical office under the United States. 
 
 I have a list of them, and do not speak with 
 out information. Nine is the total number in 
 political office. This does not include a son of 
 the President sent as a pupil to West Point long 
 before his father became President ; nor does it 
 include his brother-in-law, Dent, who has long 
 held a commission in the army by the same ten 
 ure under which Sherman and Sheridan, and 
 every other officer of the army holds his place, 
 and which the President has no more power to 
 give or take away than the man in the moon. 
 
 Of the nine relatives or connections in office 
 two were appointed by Andrew Johnson, viz : 
 the President s father, Postmaster at Covington, 
 Ky., and his brother-in-law, the Rev. Mr. Cra 
 mer, Consul at Leipsic. Mr. Cramer was trans 
 ferred from Leipsic to Denmark by President 
 Grant, on the recommendation of Bishop Simp 
 son, Bishop Jayne, and many other well-known 
 persons, friends of Mr. Cramer. Being the 
 brother-in-law of the President, he of course be 
 came a mark for "Liberal" abuse, and was 
 charged with drinking beer and being refused 
 membership of a social club. 
 
 But now comes the Cincinnati Methodist Con 
 ference, about as respectable a body as has met 
 in Cincinnati lately, and certifies, after full in 
 vestigation, the utter falsity of the charges. 
 Their report is fortified by letters from Copenha 
 gen, and by statements of the official journal and 
 Other newspapers there, indignantly repelling the 
 aspersions cast at Mr. Cramer, and pronouncing 
 him a blameless officer and man. 
 
 Deducting Jesse R. Grant and M. J. Cramer, 
 appointed by Johnson, seven instances of rela 
 tives in political office remain, and of those but 
 two were in truth and in fact appointed by the 
 President, as 1 will show you. 
 
 Orlando H. Ross, a cousin of the President, 
 
 holds a clerkship under the Third Auditor of the 
 Treasury. He was a soldier in the war, and 
 Gen. Logan, as he stated in the Senate, procur 
 ed his appointment at the Treasury Department 
 without the knowledge of the President, who, in 
 fact, never heard of it, until he read it in a news 
 paper. This leaves six, and of these four hold 
 local offices, viz : Geo. W. Dent, Appraiser at 
 San Francisco ; James F. Casey, Collector at 
 New Orleans ; one a brother and the other a 
 brother-in-law of Mrs. Grant ; Peter Casey, 
 Postmaster at Vicksburg, Miss., a brother of a 
 brother-in-law of Mrs. Grant ; and George B, 
 Johnson, Assessor of the Third District of Ohio, 
 who married a third cousin of the President. 
 These men hold local offices, and were selected 
 and put forward, as has been universal in both 
 political parties for fifty years, by the local Repre 
 sentative. 
 
 When the member of Congress from a district 
 certifies the character of an applicant for a post- 
 office, or any othei- office local in his district, 
 and recommends his selection, the practice of 
 the Government has always been to rely and 
 act upon such representations, holding the mem 
 ber of Congress responsible to the Government 
 and to his constituents, if he obtains unfit ap 
 pointments. 
 
 It was in this way that the four persons just 
 named were selected, the President having no 
 part in the matter, if he believed the applicants 
 fit and worthy, except to consult the wishes of 
 the people, made known through their repre 
 sentatives, or else to overrule their wishes, upon 
 the ground that it might be better for himself 
 not to run the risk of having the matter some 
 time or other flung in his face. 
 
 Two appointments remain, and upon these 
 the President did undoubtedly exercise his own 
 choice and his own judgment. 
 
 The first is Alexander Sharp, a connection 
 of Mrs. Grant, who was appointed Marshal of 
 the District of Columbia. This officer is virtu 
 ally a member of the President s household he 
 receives company with the family, introduces vis 
 itors, and generally helps along. For these reas 
 ons some relative or near friend of the President s 
 family has always been found in this position. 
 
 The remaining relative is Silas Hudson, Min 
 ister to Guatemala. He is cousin to the Presi 
 dent. Iowa, the State in which he lives, had 
 the Mission to Guatemala before President 
 Grant came in ; Fitz Henry Warren held it, 
 and on his retirement Iowa claimed it still, and 
 presented Mr. Hudson, who is described as an 
 able and accomplished man. The President 
 might have refused to appoint him without giv 
 ing just offense to the Republicans of Iowa, be 
 cause he might have taken a man from some 
 other State ; but he did appoint him, and thus 
 he furnished the needy "Liberals" with one 
 awful example. 
 
 APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE NEW YORK AP 
 POINTMENTS. 
 
 But the President s selections for office gener 
 ally have, we are told, been partisan, personal 
 and ill-judged. I believe the reverse of all this 
 is true. He has appointed more Judges than 
 any of his predecessors were called upon to se- 
 
Senator ConkUng s Great Speech at New York. 
 
 15 
 
 lect, and his selections are such as to vindicate 
 him from the charge of making personal prefer 
 ence, or gratification of himself, the criterion. 
 When he came to select our members of the 
 Geneva Board he named Mr. Adams, whom he 
 had never seen, and who was neither his parti 
 san or his friend. As counsel before that high 
 tribunal, he selected Mr. Evarts, who was not 
 his partisan, and Mr. Curtis, and Mr. Gushing, 
 who were political opponents. What Demo 
 cratic President ever did the like ? Other cases 
 might be cited to show how unselfish and con 
 scientious he has been. 
 
 In the State of New York there was no com 
 plaint about appointments as long as particular 
 men were permitted to dictate them. 
 
 The hungry "Reformers" of today fattened 
 and exulted then. It was, in their estimation, 
 high merit and statesmanship for Senators and 
 others to crouch and prowl day and night around 
 the sources of power. No one overreached this 
 thriving business ; it overreached itself. 
 
 " Patronage" in the State of New York has 
 been a prolific theme of misrepresentation. The 
 public has been kept constantly advised of a 
 "quarrel between our Senators"; yet there has 
 been no such "quarrel." The fact is of a differ 
 ent kind. It is impossible to answer the clamor 
 on this subject without alluding to personal mat 
 ters which have not heretofore seemed to me 
 entitled to a public hearing; but now friends 
 insist that a statement should be made, and I 
 reluctantly comply. 
 
 Between Gov. Morgan and myself, while we 
 served together in the Senate, and between both 
 and our colleagues in the House, there was 
 always the best accord. For some reason dis 
 cordant action dates from the advent of Gov. 
 Morgan s successor. 
 
 For some time before the inauguration of 
 President Grant, as well as afterward, one Sena 
 tor from New York visited the President assid 
 uously, and claimed to be his special champion ; 
 the other Senator did neither of these things. 
 One Senator conspicuously busied himself in the 
 effort to repeal "The Tenure-of- Office act," 
 which the President was said to wish to have 
 repealed ; the other Senator opposed the repeal 
 throughout. One Senator appeared as the con 
 fidential representative of Mr. Stewart, in regard 
 to his entering upon the office of Secretary of the 
 Treasury ; the other Senator opposed the whole 
 project of repealing or evading the law, and so 
 told the President. 
 
 These and other incidents paved the way for 
 the impression that one of these Senators was not 
 to be regarded as a friend of the Administration. 
 The opportunity thus offered was seized with 
 avidity, and alleged acts of opposition were pa 
 raded, harped upon and distorted, till the dis 
 trust of the President and members of his Cabi 
 net was aroused. No attempt to counteract this 
 proceeding was made, but the matter was left 
 for time to set right. Meanwhile the supposed 
 friends of the unpliant Senator were pursued 
 with groundless allegations, carried to the ap 
 pointing power ; and, for a year, men who then 
 claimed to be "the exponents of Radical-Re 
 publicanism in New York " chuckled over the 
 
 well-worn witticism, "one of our Senators is a 
 figure 9 with the tail off." 
 
 During this long and somewhat annoying 
 manoeuvre, no one ever made war because of it, 
 in the party or out of the party no one ever 
 raised a note of discord. 
 
 The favored Senator, for weeks after President 
 Grant came in, was attended in Washington by 
 a pumerous band of friends, better known at 
 Albany than at Washington, who assumed to 
 speak for the Republican Party of the State. 
 They were all worshippers and defenders of the 
 Administration. They infested the White House 
 and the departments, and assisted in "distribu 
 ting the patronage. " 
 
 Under these auspices men were expelled from 
 office in Congressional districts having no Re 
 publican Representative to protect them, for the 
 reason, always denied to the President, that 
 they were the friends of Gov. Morgan, or of 
 the other Senator, or not the friends of Gov. 
 Fenton. 
 
 Men believed to be objectionable to leading 
 Republicans were put in place, and these pro 
 ceedings were cited to prove that to be " recog 
 nized," Republicans must be of a particular 
 stripe. 
 
 Among those thus selected were several per 
 sons whose unfitness soon ended in disgrace. 
 One instance of misconduct after another came 
 to the ears of the President, till, alarmed at 
 such occurrences, he began to suspect the dis 
 cernment or the sincerity of those to whom he 
 had listened. The result was that the Presi 
 dent grew more wary. It soon became known 
 that he had increased the number of those with 
 whom he had consulted, and had ceased to 
 make appointments upon the ipse dixit of any 
 individual. 
 
 The first symptom of an inclination to eman 
 cipate himself from the dictation which had be 
 set him, caused alarm and offense. 
 
 The President was expostulated with, and 
 hints were given him of formidable defections to 
 come, in the State of New York. It is even 
 said that a Senator addressed him a letter al 
 luding to his own aspirations for the Presidency 
 in 1872, and offering to withdraw and give the 
 State of New York to him, provided agreeable 
 understandings could be had in regard to "the 
 patronage." 
 
 ATTEMPTS TO CARRY STATE CONVENTIONS. 
 
 To impress and coerce the appointing power, 
 a herculean effort was made in 1870 to carry the 
 State Convention. 
 
 Tammany Hall, with all its pedal attachments 
 and whippers-in, came into the field. Money 
 was lavished, and the State was tramped from 
 end to end, to carry delegates who would "show 
 Grant where the power is." The Convention 
 met at Saratoga. The Senator who had headed 
 the hunt, and early procured himself to be made 
 a delegate, was to preside in the Convention, 
 and resolutions were to be adopted, and a State 
 Central Committee made, which would "bring 
 Grant to his milk." 
 
 The patriotism and good sense of the Conven 
 tion frowned down these schemes, and George 
 
16 
 
 The President and His Slanderers. 
 
 William Curtis, a friend of the Administration, 
 was chosen temporary Chairman. This secured 
 the organization, and, in the hope of allaying all 
 irritation, Mr. Van Wyck, who had been sup 
 ported by the anti- Administration element, was 
 made permanent President by acclamation ; and 
 the Senator who had made the issue was placed 
 by Mr. Curtis upon leading committees. To 
 the surprise of some the Senator did not serve 
 on these committees, but held himself aloof. 
 
 Many "office-holders" attended this Conven 
 tion and more than half aided the anti- Adminis 
 tration cause. Mr. Greeley was a candidate for 
 Governor, and was pertinaciously supported by 
 all those connected with the New York Custom 
 House ; he failed from a want of confidence in 
 him, so general among delegates, that election 
 eering and persuasion could not prevail against 
 it ; and even those who voted for him declared 
 in many instances that they did so as a harmless 
 compliment, knowing that he could not be 
 nominated. 
 
 The last duty of the Convention was to form 
 a State Central Committee ; this was done by 
 the delegation from each Congressional district 
 agreeing upon one member. The roll of dis 
 tricts being called, all, with one exception, pre 
 sented a name ; but when the district of Senator 
 Fenton was called, it turned out that divisions 
 between his colleagues and himself had pre 
 vented an agreement; and in consequence of 
 this the membership of the State Committee 
 from that district stood vacant during the cam 
 paign. Faithful Republicans throughout the 
 State labored hard in the canvass which ensued. 
 The hinge and hope of the canvass was the City 
 of New York. Congress had enacted an election 
 law, under which it was believed that the fraudu 
 lent majorities counted by Tammany agents 
 would be largely cut down. Our friends in the 
 ciy promised us in the country that 20,000 reduc 
 tion would surely take place ; this, with a full 
 vote in the rural districts, would give us the 
 State. A gain in the city was therefore the 
 pivot of the canvass, because Republicans in 
 districts sure to elect their local tickets, would 
 not exhaust themselves in piling up additional 
 majorities for the State ticket, if the majorities 
 were to be swamped by false counts in the City 
 of New York. 
 
 Gov. Fenton and his special friends were 
 lukewarm throughout the canvass, the Gover 
 nor absenting himself from the State much of 
 the time ; late in October he returned from 
 the Western States, and visited the City of 
 New York, where he was gazetted in the 
 newspapers as prospecting the result. Up to 
 this time, he had been silent, but on the 3ist 
 of October he spoke. This was five days be 
 fore the election, and the Governor had just re 
 turned from the city, where, if at all, the can 
 vass was to be saved ; he, therefore, was the 
 man, and then was the time, to tell the Repub 
 licans of the State, whether it was or was not 
 worth while to get out every vote. His speech 
 was sent at once throughout the Republican 
 Press of the State, appearing always in the 
 same words. As printed in the New York 
 Tribune, it contained this remarkable state 
 ment : Troubles came upon us unfortunately 
 
 in other districts, and now in the City of New 
 York our party are in confusion and discour 
 agement growing out of some unfortunate Fed 
 eral appointments" Had this been true, it is 
 hard to see how any Republican could have 
 felt called upon to cast such a wet blanket over 
 the party on the eve of an important election. 
 That it was not true is proved by the fact that 
 when election day came, not only twenty thou 
 sand, but twenty-six thousand, was struck from 
 the Democratic majority in the city of New York. 
 
 Had the Governor, instead of being devoted 
 to the Republican party, and religiously anxi 
 ous for its success, been in collusion with Tam 
 many Hall, what could he have done so useful 
 to the Democracy as the thing he did ? 
 
 The result was all that a Democrat could de 
 sire or a Republican deplore. We lost the State, 
 and 45-,ooo Republicans west of the Hudson 
 River who voted at the gubernatorial election 
 last before did not vote at all ; and this in a 
 season so fine that the corn was all husked, the 
 potatoes all dug, the buckwheat all gathered, 
 and the roads as good on election day as they 
 were in June. Hoffman s counted majority was 
 only 33,096 in the State, and the 45,000 Repub 
 licans discouraged to stay at home would have 
 elected Woodford by 12,000. 
 
 The succeeding year (1871) brought the same 
 attempt to carry the State Convention against 
 the National Administration. Again Tammany 
 men and money, volumes of Tribune slanders, 
 and tireless effort contested the primaries in 
 vain. The convention overlooked the irregular 
 and factional course of Mr. Greeley and his 
 Tammany allies, in calling local conventions to 
 forestall and defy the decision of the State Con 
 vention upon the reorganization of the party in 
 the city, and admitted both sets of delegates, 
 the only condition being that thereafter the 
 party should be one. Here was the rub ; the 
 men who have since thrown off the mask, and 
 revealed themselves as deserters, were determined 
 then to divide and destroy the party. They meant 
 then to wrest the State from President Grant, and 
 to pave the way for a contesting delegation to 
 the National Convention if they could not by 
 some artifice seize the delegation itself. 
 
 The good sense of the Convention frustrated 
 the scheme, and then came the sorry theatrical 
 of a secession from the Convention, led by fac- 
 tionists who have been in turn the friends of all 
 parties and the betrayers of all. 
 
 "PATRONAGE," AND REMOVALS. 
 
 The course of Mr. Greeley and its reference 
 to patronage and spoils, is visible in a letter he 
 wrote to Mr. Cornell after he made up his mind 
 to defeat, if possible, the weeding out of Tam 
 many men from the Republican organization. 
 Here is his letter, putting his action squarely on 
 the ground of dissatisfaction with the " appoint 
 ing power." 
 
 NEW YORK, April 9, 1871. 
 
 DEAR SIR : It gives me no pleasure to advise you, 
 and the Committee of which you are the head, that I am 
 obliged to decline the part assigned me by the State 
 Committee in the proposed reorganization of the Repub 
 lican Party of our city. Had a little forbearance and 
 conciliation been minced by the appointing power at 
 Washington, I think this might have been different. 
 
 Yours, HORACE GREELEY. , 
 
Senator Conkling s G-reat Speech at New York. 
 
 17 
 
 The sapping and mining begun in 1870, and 
 secretly continued ever since, has culminated in 
 the bolt no longer covered up, which has re 
 cently occurred ; its strength was in its secrecy 
 and in its denied existence ; its weakness is in 
 its being known of all men. 
 
 It has been said that the President removed 
 friends of Mr. Fenton ; if this were true, when 
 made an explanation of the betrayal or deser 
 tion of i the party, it sinks those who resort to 
 it to the lowest depth of sordid hypocrisy. But 
 it is not true. One friend of Mr. Fenton was 
 removed to gratify Mr. Moses H. Grinnell, and 
 in no other instance to my knowledge was a 
 friend of Mr. Fenton s displaced, except for 
 cause ; while to this day the great body of those 
 he recommended to office remain in office still. 
 To illustrate this, since President Grant came 
 in, not six Postmasters in the entire State have 
 been appointed at my instance ; more than two 
 hundred have been appointed at Senator Fen- 
 ton s instance, and not one has been disturbed 
 unless for official delinquency. 
 
 COLLECTOR MURPHY. 
 
 Mr. Murphy was appointed Collector of New 
 York, but not to gratify me or at my solicita 
 tion. He has been held up as a scoundrel, yet 
 the records conclusively prove that he increased 
 the collection of revenue and diminished the 
 percentage of cost. No act of dishonesty has 
 to my knowledge ever been proved against him. 
 I moved, and insisted upon, the investigation 
 which was lately made of the Custom House 
 the inquiry was conducted by some of the best 
 and ablest members of the Senate, and the re 
 port acquits Mr. Murphy of every charge im 
 pairing his integrity. I do not allude to the 
 matter, however, to go into Mr. Murphy s 
 merits ; I did not suggest his appointment, and 
 during his collectorship I never asked or rec 
 ommended an appointment at his hands, not 
 one. It was vainly hoped that there would be 
 less carping, if no favor to me was asked for ; 
 and none was ever asked or received. My ob 
 ject is to show you the wickedness of the charge 
 that the President appointed Mr. Murphy con 
 trary to the judgment of the best men in the 
 party, and for some unusual or improper reason. 
 
 Mr. Murphy was an experienced, successful 
 business man, at leisure, and vigorous enough to 
 endure the great strain and labor of the place ; if 
 the President was wrong in selecting him, let me 
 show you who else were wrong. 
 
 Here are some of those who, in writing, rec 
 ommended his nomination or confirmation. 
 Their signatures are in my possession. 
 
 Edwin D. Morgan, Spofford Brothers Co., 
 
 George Opdyke, John Hoey, 
 
 Henry Clews, Isaac Dayton, 
 
 John A. Griswold, George D. Morgan, 
 
 Chas. J. Folger, Thos. B. Van Buren, 
 
 Edwards Pierrepont, John H. Hall, 
 
 Isaac H. Bailey, * O. W. Joslyn, 
 
 Thos. C. Acton, R.W. Marlow.Jr. &Co., 
 
 Chas. W. Griswold, M. Mitchell, 
 
 Thos. Hillhouse, R. H. Arkenburgh, 
 
 S. H. Wales, F. Chandler, 
 
 Wm. A. Darling. R. W. Bleecker, 
 
 D. D. T. Marshall, Hooper C. Van Vorst, 
 
 Wm. Laimbeer, Jas. Struthers, 
 
 Brooks Brothers, Carolan O. B. Bryant, 
 
 A. S. Dodd, Thos. J. Owen & Co., 
 
 B. S. Luddington, J. E. de Rivera. 
 
 J. C. Churchill, M. C, John Bryan, 
 Orange Ferriss, M.C., Joseph Brockan, 
 Hamilton Ward, M.C , E. B. Wesley, 
 Giles W. Hotchkiss, M.C., Sixty-seven Members of 
 David S. Bennett, M.C., the Republican Gene- 
 William A. Whitbeck. ral Committee of New 
 Edward Haight, York, 
 George Bliss, Jr., Cornelius Bortle, 
 Van Schaich & Co , John M. Welch, 
 F. T. James & Co., Henry Tridler, 
 
 A. D. Williams & Co., H. V. Esselstyne, 
 Maxwell & Co., H. H. Rockfe ller, 
 Harney & Searles, P. E. Van Alstyne, 
 Daniel W. Adams, J. W. C. Hogeboom, 
 Hallgarten & Bro., Matthew Hale, 
 Drake Bros., E. M. Madden, 
 Edward Brandon, C. Esselstyne, 
 Closson & Hayes, George Dawson, 
 
 N. P. Stanton, Thomas Parsons, 
 
 Boyd, Falls & Vincent, Silas F. Smith, 
 
 Plane & Van Emburgh, N. Lapham, 
 
 Taylor Brothers, Republican General 
 
 John W. Brown, Committee of Kings 
 
 B. M. Nevas, County, New York, 
 Cornelius Esselstyne, and residents of 
 John R. Currie, Brooklyn, N. V., no 
 Hedden, Winchester & in number, 
 
 Co., E. W. Leavenworth, 
 
 Glendinning, Davis & and others, residents 
 
 Armory, of Syracuse. 
 
 Besides these many others recommended Mr. 
 Murphy s appointment ; this list includes only 
 those who addressed me. It does not include 
 any of the recommendations made to the Presi 
 dent or to the Secretary of the Treasury. 
 
 You will, I trust, pardon the time given to 
 these facts ; if it were right to detain you, many 
 others might be stated, showing the injustice 
 and falsehood which have been piled upon the 
 President, and upon me, in this regard. The 
 whole pretense, that the friends of Gov. Fenton 
 were ostracised because they were his friends, is 
 the veriest sham that could be palmed off upon 
 the public ; and yet the argument of spoils is 
 used without a blush to extenuate the acts of 
 those who, for two years, have been plotting the 
 destruction of the party. 
 
 This clap-trap about improper appointments 
 is the same in substance as that heard in the 
 time of Jackson, and of John Quincy Adams, 
 and there is less cause for it relatively now then 
 there was then. 
 
 MR. SUMNER AND MR. GREELEY HATE 
 
 "PRETENSION." 
 
 It is as untruthful, as the pretense that the 
 "President is a quarreler," that he insisted upon 
 a renomination, or that he is a pretentious man. 
 The President is charged with "pretension" by 
 Mr. Sumner in a speech written and printed be 
 forehand, in which Mr. Sumner speaks of him 
 self, and praises himself, one hundred and fifty- 
 six times, and flatters himself thoroughly and 
 copiously, twenty times. But Sumner is nothing 
 to Greeley. Greeley thinks Grant pretentious " 
 too, and Greeley at the Boston Jubilee, in ex 
 plaining his own fitness for the Presidency, 
 modestly spoke of himself twenty times in ten 
 minutes: this is twice a minute. Had Sumner 
 used the personal pronoun at the same rate no 
 printing office would have had big I s enough to 
 set up the speech. 
 
 THE "MILITARY RING." 
 
 But we may not stop here in counting the 
 President s crimes; he has, we are told, a 
 "military ring" at the White House, and turns 
 
18 
 
 The President and His Slanderers. 
 
 the White House into a "military barracks." 
 When he moved into the White House he heard 
 soldiers patroling in the hall, and when he asked 
 them what it meant, they said they were Presi 
 dent Johnson s body guard ; he told them he 
 wanted no guard, and sent them to their quar 
 ters. The next day he gave orders removing 
 all troops from Washington, and not a military 
 company has ever been there since. 
 
 The "military ring" consists of three young 
 men who write for the President without a 
 farthing of expense to the Treasury. The 
 President is authorized by law to employ and 
 pay Secretaries. The gentlemen who assist him 
 were on his staff in the war, and are now on the 
 staff of Gen. Sherman ; their commissions are 
 their own ; the President cannot take them 
 away ; and now, in time of peace, Gen. Sher 
 man does not require their services. One of 
 them is detailed to oversee the public parks, 
 and the other to assist the President, which 
 they do from love of the man, and without a 
 cent of pay beyond what they would draw if 
 they sat at Gen. Sherman s head -quarters, doing 
 nothing. This is the whole of it ; exactly like 
 the case of Col. Bliss and his father-in-law, 
 President Taylor, or the case of Donelson and 
 Jackson, or the case of Andrew Johnson and 
 the three or four army officers who assisted him. 
 It saves several thousand dollars a year, does 
 the public business, and nobody is harmed. 
 
 "SEA-SIDE LOITERINGS." 
 
 The catalogue of the President s atrocities 
 would be incomplete without one other thing. 
 During ten or twelve weeks of heat and fever 
 and ague at Washington, his family go to a 
 cottage at the sea-side, and he goes and comes 
 from there to the Capital. 
 
 It is eight hours from the White House to 
 the cottage, with two mails a day and a tele 
 graph every instant. Nothing can occur, how 
 ever suddenly, demanding his attention, with 
 out his being within immediate call ; yet this 
 is the occasion of constant hullabaloo. Gov. 
 Hoffman leaves his State and resides at New 
 port, R. I. , for the summer. Mr. James Brooks, 
 though member of Congress, goes to China 
 and Japan, not returning even when Congress 
 meets. Gen. Jackson used to spend weeks at 
 the Rip Raps in Hampton Roads, where no in 
 telligence could reach him from Washington in 
 days, and then only by special messenger, and 
 whence he could not return for days, if sent for. 
 No telegraph, railroad, daily mail, or even 
 steamboat, plied there then. President Adams, 
 separated from Massachusetts by a stage-coach 
 ride of many clays, used to spend weeks at his 
 home. Washington passed much of his time at 
 Mount Vernon, and even that was further re 
 moved in communication with the Capital then, 
 than Long Branch is now. 
 
 Rulers in all countries have felt at liberty to 
 tarry a distance from their official residence 
 during a portion of the year ; but no examples, 
 experience, or common sense stand in the way 
 of the crucifiers of Grant. 
 
 The public, however, will be satisfied with 
 one fact, viz : that no instance has yet been 
 discovered or pretended, in which anything, 
 
 however small, was neglected or left undone 
 because the President was absent. This one 
 fact answers a hurricane of abuse. 
 
 I have discussed, perhaps, at inexcusable 
 length, the paltry and personal slanders drag 
 ged into the campaign, and yet nothing has 
 been said of the blameless, simple, daily life 
 of the President, nor of his innocence of a quar 
 relsome disposition. 
 
 He quarreled with Lee, and every other rebel 
 while the rebellion lasted. He settled that 
 quarrel, and has never quarreled since, unless 
 it be quarreling not to obey intolerable dicta 
 tion, and simply to let alone men who oppose 
 and denounce him. 
 
 If there be any charge against the President 
 which have escaped me, I will speak of it, if 
 any one will bring it to mind. If there be 
 none, let us rise from gossip to history ; from 
 scandal to business. 
 
 Let us turn from the man to the magistrate, 
 and scan his official record and stewardship. 
 
 WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION HAS DONE 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 
 
 What has the Administration done in three 
 years? First, it has maintained our rights 
 with every foreign power, and kept the peace 
 with all the world. Gov. Seward said to me 
 last year after he had girdled the earth with his 
 travels, "How remarkable is our success in 
 foreign affairs ; but two years ago Russia was 
 our only friend in Christendom, and now America 
 has not an enemy in the world." He proceeded 
 to say that this good result came from the tem 
 perate and just course of our Government. Mr. 
 Sumner has lately told us that we are in a "mud 
 dle with everybody. " Can any of you tell with 
 whom we are in a "muddle?" Can any of 
 you name a sea, a continent, or an island where 
 our flag is not respected ? Can any of you name 
 a commercial centre in which our securities are 
 not sought ? Can any of you name a power 
 which denies a right to one American citizen ? 
 Spain s release of Dr. Houard, whose American 
 citizenship is very doubtful, leaves no contro 
 versy, no contested matter, with any power on 
 earth, save England. 
 
 With England, preceding Administrations 
 failed to settle large and dangerous questions. 
 This Administration has composed them all in 
 one treaty, applauded by the country and the 
 world as one of the best products of statesman 
 ship and civilization. Recently, a difference 
 arose as to the construction of the treaty, and 
 England was unwilling and afraid to submit 
 the question to the tribunal to which it plainly 
 belonged. The British Government took the 
 ground that they had agreed to a treaty which 
 did not contain what they intended ; that their 
 meaning was not set down in language so plain 
 that they were willing to trust it to the arbitra 
 tion at Geneva ; and they insisted that we should 
 withdraw part of our claims. This was a strange 
 position, and involved a humiliating admission ; 
 it was saying virtually that their agents had not 
 been able to cope with ours. Indeed this was 
 said without disguise, and with taunts, in the 
 British Parliament. There is nothing here 
 surely to wound American pride. 
 
Senator Conklintfs Great Speech at Neio York. 
 
 19 
 
 England, with a Parliament eight hundred 
 years old, renowned for centuries in exploits of 
 diplomacy, sent five of her trained men to bar 
 gain with an infant nation scarce out of its 
 swaddling clothes ; an agreement was made, 
 written and signed, and afterward England dis 
 covered that it did not read as she says she 
 thought it did, and so she threw up the sponge, 
 and cried out that she had been outfought and 
 outwitted in her o\vn field of law and diplomacy. 
 Noblemen and University men were England s 
 Commissioners they sealed the treaty with 
 signet rings bearing ancient coats-of-arms ; but 
 the gossips said thgt one of our unfilled and 
 self-educated Commissioners had nothing to seal 
 with except a button. This seems the story 
 over again of the poor boy with a pin-hook and 
 twine, who caught more fish than the rich boy 
 with the rod, the reel, the line of silk, and the 
 best of fish-hooks. 
 
 England s refusal to go to trial, unless we 
 would agree not to prove or argue part of our 
 case, was met on our side by the statement that 
 we insisted upon having the law settled for 
 the future in regard to indirect damages so 
 called. 
 
 Our Government insisted that hereafter Eng 
 land should never demand any damages from us, 
 except such as she admitted to be within the law 
 of nations now. Upon this ground the Presi 
 dent declined to withdraw any of our claims, 
 saying, however, that indirect losses would not 
 le pressed, provided by agreement between the 
 parties, or by a decision of the Court, we could 
 be guaranteed for the future against similar lia 
 bilities. Negotiations ensued, resulting in a 
 supplemental article or clause of the treaty, and 
 before this was finally accepted the tribunal at 
 Geneva did, what we all the while maintained 
 its right to do, and made a decision good for the fu 
 ture as well as the present, and good for us as well 
 as for England, denying the right of one nation 
 to recover certain kinds of damage from another. 
 By this rule we will settle with England as often 
 as she is a belligerent and we a neutral ; and if 
 she is content, we should be. We are to be the 
 neutral hereafter ; we shall have no more rebel 
 lions; no foreign power will be impatient to get 
 up a war with us ; but England, differently 
 situated, with her elbows hitting the elbows of 
 other nations, may not be so fortunate ; and 
 when her commerce and her cause suffers from 
 American citizens, or from cruisers or privateers 
 built in America, we will measure to her the rule 
 of damages she asks for now. Whether England 
 keeps or breaks the treaty, it will remain the 
 greatest event of diplomacy in our history. Had 
 Hamilton Fish rendered no other public service 
 in his life, his ability, devotion and success in 
 this great matter would inscribe his name high 
 up on the roll of illustrious names. The only 
 error pretended in the management of the Ala 
 bama claims has been the maintenance of views 
 of which the noisiest advocate always has been 
 Mr. Sumner ; but even he has not succeeded in 
 producing a "muddle" with any foreign power, 
 not even with the aid of his friend Schurz, 
 by his romances and vagaries, touching the 
 sale, by American merchants, of arms to 
 France. 
 
 FINANCES, DEBT, TAXES, RETRENCHMENT. 
 
 The public debt has been paid as no one 
 dared expect or hope. The present Adminis 
 tration found a national debt of $2,700,000,000. 
 During Andrew Johnson s Administration the 
 whole reduction of this debt was $13,655,668. 
 The annual interest account was $128,502,- 
 102.24. The annual expense account averaged 
 $179,271,680; making an annual draft upon the 
 Treasury of $307,773,782.24. This annual 
 draft was met by internal taxes and customs 
 duties. 
 
 Under Andrew Johnson annual taxes aver 
 aged as follows : 
 
 Internal taxes $162,194,491 29 
 
 Customs duties . . . . . . 193,691,069 70 
 
 The country was flooded with paper money, 
 and trade deranged with inflated prices. Cur 
 rency ranged from thirty-five to seventy-one 
 cents on the dollar. Our opponents scouted our 
 ability to reduce the debt ; they said that no 
 such debt ever had been paid or ever would be. 
 
 The National Democratic Convention of 1868 
 declared against its payment in coin and in 
 favor of subjecting it to taxation. 
 
 Such was the condition of things confronting 
 us in March, 1869. Up to July i, 1872, there 
 has been paid of principal of the debt $333,976,- 
 916.39. This is a payment every month of 
 $8, 349, 422. It is a payment already of 1 3 2 1 - IOO 
 per cent, of the whole debt, and at the same 
 rate of payment not a dollar would remain in 
 twenty-one years. 
 
 Saving of annual interest in coin, $20,000,000. 
 
 About $300,000,000 has been refunded, at 4^ 
 and 5 per cent., saving an annual interest of 
 $3,000,000, and up to the maturity of the new 
 bonds $20,000,000, and paving the way to refund 
 ing $1,000,000,000 more at still lower interest. 
 
 The premium on gold has been reduced from 
 forty per cent, to twelve per cent. 
 
 Great reduction of taxes preceded and fol 
 lowed Gen. Grant s inauguration. 
 
 Since he came in, and prior to the last session 
 of Congress, annual internal taxes were reduced 
 $55,212,000. Tariff annually reduced $29, 526,- 
 409,09. Total, $84,738,409.09. Despite these 
 reductions, the increase of revenue accounted for 
 under Gen. Grant over the same period preced 
 ing is $84,994,049.74. At the last session of 
 Congress taxes were further reduced (annually) 
 $62,000,000. 
 
 This cuts off pretty much all internal taxes, 
 except on whiskey, beer, tobacco and banks, 
 and a portion of the stamp tax ; the income tax 
 dies this year. Tea and coffee, for the first 
 time in our memory, are wholly free. The 
 people have paid heretofore $18,000,000 annu 
 ally on tea and coffee. 
 
 At the same time, with this work of reduction, 
 pensions to soldiers have been largely increased, 
 and large appropriations made to improve rivers 
 and harbors. At their wits end how to meet 
 these facts, our enemies have started a new idea. 
 
 WHAT HAS THE ADMINISTRATION TO DO 
 WITH PAYING THE DEBT? 
 
 From Washington down, every Administration 
 has been tried by its financial results. But now 
 
The President and His Slanderers. 
 
 we hear that the authorities deserve no credit for 
 paying the debt, that the people, have paid it. 
 Of course the people have paid it, but who has 
 honestly collected and accounted for the money ? 
 Who has reduced the expenses ? Who has up 
 held the public credit? Who has cheapened 
 the interest? Who has wisely applied the 
 money ? Who has made the greenback in your 
 pocket, that used to be worth only half its face, 
 almost as good as gold ? The people paid taxes 
 under Andrew Johnson twice as great as they 
 pay now. Why was not twice as much of the 
 debt paid then? Why was only $13,000,000 
 of the debt paid then, with extravagant taxa 
 tion? Under Andrew Johnson, the whiskey 
 ring, the contractors, and other "Liberals," 
 preyed upon the revenue so, that it is calculated 
 one-quarter of the whole was lost. Under the 
 present Administration, after taxes were lessened 
 $84,000,000 a year, collections increased $84,- 
 000,000. Did the people do that? 
 
 If one of your agents made a given amount of 
 money go twice as far as an agent before him 
 had done, would it be you, or the agent to be 
 credited or blamed? 
 
 But look a little further. The expenses every 
 where have been reduced, and so reduced that 
 they are less per capita this year than they were 
 under Washington, and less than they were un 
 der any Administration since, with only four ex 
 ceptions, and in case of these four the advantage 
 is only apparent and but a few cents. Com 
 pare the year 1860 under Buchanan, with last 
 year, 1871. In 1860, the population being 
 31,443,321, the expenses were $1.95 for each 
 person ; 1871, population 38,555,983, expenses 
 $1.76 for each person. There is one great dif 
 ference between these two years not shown by 
 the figures. 
 
 In 1860, the whole amount expended for 
 public buildings, improvements of rivers and 
 harbors, and other public works throughout the 
 CQuntry, was only $2,913,371.48. 
 
 In 1871, such public improvements were made 
 and paid for, to the amount of $10,733,759.05. 
 
 If allowance be made for these lasting im 
 provements, greater during the last two years 
 than before, the actual cost per head of govern 
 ing the country under Grant, is as small as it 
 ever was since the foundation of the Government. 
 
 In 1858, the War Department cost $25,679,- 
 121.63. In 1859, it cost $23,154,720.53. 
 
 In 1860, under Floyd, the accounts of the 
 Department were not closed, but went over in 
 part to Lincoln s Administration. 
 
 In 1871, the War Department cost $22,376,- 
 981.28. 
 
 Taking the whole running expenses of the 
 Government, for the Executive, Legislative and 
 Judicial Departments, including the Army and 
 Navy, and Foreign Ministers, Consuls, and 
 Agents, the cost in 1860 was $61,402,408.64. 
 
 The same account in 1 87 1 was $68, 684, 6 1 3.92. 
 
 With new States and Territories, with seven 
 millions more population, with new Courts, 
 and the Internal Revenue establishment, the 
 whole excess of cost in 1871, over 1860, was 
 $7,282,205.28. 
 
 Here is an increase of thirteen per cent, of 
 cost, with an increase of twenty-five per cent. 
 
 of population, saying nothing of increased de 
 mands. 
 
 The "Reformers" had not looked up these 
 figures when Mr. Trumbull stated at Cooper 
 Institute, that the expenses of the Government, 
 aside from interest and pensions, ought to be 
 not more than thirty-three per cent, greater now 
 than before the war ; it turns out that the in 
 crease is only about one-third as much as he 
 thinks it should be. 
 
 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 
 
 During the present year large additional re 
 ductions are to come ; internal revenue districts 
 are to be reduced to eighty in all ; supervisors 
 of revenue to ten in all ; deputies and assistants 
 will vanish -\vith the taxes they heretofore col 
 lected, and only a skeleton of the revenue es 
 tablishment will be left. Four millions and a 
 half will be saved this year in the cost of con 
 ducting the Internal Revenue Bureau. 
 
 The Freedmen s Bureau, established by Lin 
 coln and Stanton, and Sherman and Howard, 
 and vetoed by Andrew Johnson, which has cost 
 much money and done much good, is this year 
 to be finally wound up. 
 
 These things added to the pruning which the 
 army and navy and Indian and revenue service 
 have undergone, make this the best Adminis 
 tration in civil service reform the country ever 
 had. In civil service reform Grant is the pio 
 neer President. No one before him inaugura 
 ted or proposed it. Andrew Johnson, a deser 
 ter from his party, had, by using appointments 
 as bribes and threats, made patronage a mere 
 corruption fund. Who found fault then ? The 
 whole Democratic party justified and applauded 
 it. Where were our virtuous and edifying Re 
 formers then, Trumbull and the rest? The 
 Tenure of Office act only required the assent of 
 the Senate to removals, but the Democrats 
 made war even upon that, holding that the Pres 
 ident should be left absolute and unfettered. 
 When Grant came in he help to perfect the pre 
 sent Tenure of Office law, so as to put a check 
 upon himself. In three Messages the President 
 has urged civil service reform, and has given it 
 his whole influence. Under a mere permission 
 not requiring anything of him, he appointed a 
 Board to prepare rules and regulations govern 
 ing appointments, and establishing competitive 
 examinations ; and these rules he has diligently 
 put in force ; and yet he is railed at by men 
 who quarreled with him, merely because they 
 could not control more patronage. Could any 
 President have done more ? 
 
 He might have appointed his enemies, and 
 turned out his friends. Nothing else would 
 have silenced the pack now barking at his heels. 
 
 DEFAULTERS DETECTED AND PUNISHED. 
 
 Remorseless rigor has ferreted out and pun 
 ished delinquents and defaulters. Most of them 
 have not been men appointed by Grant, but 
 those whose crimes began under past Adminis 
 trations ; some of them have been men, recom 
 mended by " Reformers," now mouthing about 
 bad appointments ; but wherever found, they 
 have been caught, if possible, and when caught, 
 nothing has protected them. , 
 
Senator Conkling s Great Speech at New York. 
 
 Hodge, a Paymaster, and a Democrat in 
 politics, embezzled for years under Andrew 
 Johnson, but was never detected till after Grant 
 came in; then he was hurried to a penitentiary. 
 Norton, Money-Order Superintendent in the 
 New York Post-office, began his depredations 
 under Andrew Johnson, and took more than 
 $30,000, but was never found out till last year ; 
 then he was arrested, and it turned out that 
 Horace Greeley was one of the postmaster s 
 bondsmen. A prosecution is in progress, and if 
 Mr. Greeley shouldn t happen to be elected, he 
 will be obliged to pay up the amount is $i 15,- 
 428. 7 1 and interest. It is upon such facts as these 
 that "Reformers" and other Democrats make 
 hue and cry about defalcations under Gen. Grant. 
 Will any of you name the Democratic official 
 thief who was ever punished by Democrats ? 
 
 The City of New York has swarmed with 
 plunderers, from the Big "Boss" to the littlest 
 wiggler of Tammany Hall ; they are all Demo 
 crats, and their guilt of stealing tens of millions 
 has been notorious for more than a year. Gov 
 ernor, Judges, District Attorney, Sheriff, po 
 lice, all are Democrats, but not a thief has 
 been punished, nor a stolen dollar recovered 
 back. All these thieves are for Greeley ; they 
 all shout for Greeley and "Reform," and all 
 curse Grant. 
 
 The Homestead policy has been extended so 
 as to give a hundred and sixty acres of land to 
 every soldier and sailor who served for ninety 
 days, and was honorably discharged. 
 
 American ship-building has received the first 
 real encouragement for years. By the recent 
 Tariff act, all materials for ship-building will, 
 by means of drawback, come in duty free, and 
 thus American ship-yards will be enabled to 
 compete, as to materials, with the ship-yards of 
 the world. 
 
 "CENTRALISM." HOW CONGRESS HAS CEN 
 TRALIZED. 
 
 American citizens, high and low, rich and 
 poor, black and white, whether in Spain, on the 
 high seas, or in the South, have been protected. 
 But this is called centralism." Every civilized 
 government may protect its citizens in the utter 
 most ends of the earth, but when the United 
 States interposes to check murders, and burn 
 ings, and barbarities at which humanity shudders, 
 perpetrated by thousands, and overawing all 
 local authority, it is suddenly discovered that we 
 are in danger of "centralism." This discovery 
 is made by Mr. Greeley and the very men who 
 cried the loudest for the Ku-klux law. Here are 
 Greeley s words, spoken June 12, 1871, after he 
 came back from the South : 
 
 " I hold our Government bound by its duty of pro 
 tecting our citizens in their fundamental rights, to pass 
 and enforce laws for the extirpation of the execrable Ku- 
 klux conspiracy ; and if it has not the power to do it, 
 then I say our Government is no Government, but a 
 sham. I therefore, on every proper occasion, advocated 
 and justified the Ku-klux act. I hold it especially desi 
 rable for the South ; and if it does not prove strong 
 enough to effect its purpose, I hope it will be made 
 stronger and stronger." 
 
 The law here spoken of is the law exactly as 
 it exists today, including the habeas corpus 
 suspension, which has now expired by its own 
 limitation. 
 
 No other act of "centralism" has been en 
 acted of late, unless it is an amendment of the 
 Election law, vehemently demanded and ap 
 proved by Mr. Greeley. Hear what he said 
 about it only a few months ago : 
 
 " It is urged by the Democratic organs that the law is 
 to be enforced in State and municipal elections. This is 
 done to make it more obnoxious, if that be possible, to 
 their party. But, unfortunately this is an error. The 
 law applies only to Presidential and Congressional elec 
 tions, though we heartily wish it could be made to apply 
 to all others." 
 
 The "centralism" of this law consists in al 
 lowing the Courts, upon the application of ten 
 citizens, to appoint two persons, one from each 
 political party, to watch the polls at which 
 members of Congress and Presidential electors 
 are to be chosen. These watchers have no 
 power to arrest any one or to do anything ex 
 cept to look on as witnesses and see whether 
 fraud takes place and this without a farthing 
 of compensation or expense. Do you think any 
 honest voter will be offended by this ? Will 
 any honest man object to so harmless a safe 
 guard against fraudulent voting and fraudulent 
 counting? Since the Tammany exposures no man 
 doubts that the voice of the ballot-box has been 
 stifled for years by election frauds ; and here is 
 a law which can do no harm, and under which 
 the Democrats themselves said, we had the only 
 approach to a fair election in New York that had 
 happened for years. 
 
 REAL DANGERS ARE STATE RIGHTS AND 
 REBEL CLAIMS. 
 
 No, my friends, the cry of "centralism" is a 
 mere fetch; the real danger is the other way. De 
 centralization, which means State Rights in the 
 old pestilent secession sense, is the real danger. 
 You need to stand guard against the doctrine of 
 paramount State sovereignty which ushered in 
 rebellion, and which, if it gain head, will usher 
 in the payment of the rebel debt, the payment 
 of rebel pensions, the payment of losses from 
 the ravages of the war, and a brood of dire 
 heresies. 
 
 This is no chimera. Democrats and "Re 
 formers " struck hands, at the last session, in 
 admitting rebels to the Court of Claims, to re 
 cover for their cotton captured in the war; and 
 every Democrat, with most of the new converts 
 in the Senate, voted to pay from the Treasury 
 rebel claimants, for carrying the mail in the 
 Southern States after they went into rebellion ; 
 an act which Republicans prevented after a 
 weary contest. 
 
 "Centralism" is a mere goblin. Whenever 
 Congress transcends the Constitution the Court 
 will so decide, and the people will apply the 
 corrective. But watch you, and pray to be de 
 livered from that dogma of State independence, 
 which once drenched the land in blood and 
 covered it with taxes and with mourning. All 
 the "centralism" we have now is a strong and 
 stable Government, under which the nation pros 
 pers, with safety to property, labor, liberty and 
 hfe. Woe to the day, and woe to the hour, 
 when the people change it off, for, they know 
 not what. 
 
 A contented mind is great riches ; and to let 
 well enough alone is the sum of wisdom. 
 
22 
 
 The President and His Slanderers. 
 
 CANT ABOUT INVESTIGATIONS. 
 
 With some minds the greater the humbug, 
 the greater the sensation. The country is filled 
 with factional out-cry, and one of the catch- 
 Avords is "investigations." "Reformers" in 
 the Senate wasted weeks and months in at 
 tempting to mislead the public in this respect. 
 It was brazenly pretended that men like Buck 
 ingham of Connecticut, and Hamlin of Maine, 
 and Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, and Howe 
 of Wisconsin, and Anthony of Rhode Island, 
 and other of the best and purest statesmen of 
 the nation, attempted to cloak fraud and stifle 
 inquiry. The New York Tribune and other 
 unprincipled newspapers published pretended 
 speeches which were never made, put into the 
 mouths of Administration Senators, as uttered 
 in caucus, by myself among others, declaring 
 that the Administration should not be investi 
 gated. Nothing could be more false. No 
 friend of the Administration ever objected to 
 the most searching and sweeping investigation, 
 but always the contrary. The only men who 
 thwarted or delayed investigation were our 
 opponents. They did, as I will show you. 
 
 On the first day of the session I offered a re 
 solution instructing the Military Committee to 
 investigate the case of Hodge, and see whether 
 anybody else was at fault, and what could be 
 done to close the door for the future. Mr. 
 Trumbull insisted that there should be one and 
 the same committee to investigate everything. 
 He moved such an amendment, and in such 
 form as to make Carl Schurz Chairman, the 
 plan of the "Liberals" being to make Mr. 
 Schurz charioteer of a mud-machine to befoul 
 the party during this canvass in the name of the 
 Senate. 
 
 We urged that one committee could not in 
 vestigate everything, and that to make the 
 work thorough it must be parcelled out to dif 
 ferent committees. This was met with a storm 
 of electioneering flings and insinuations, which 
 consumed days. Finally, to bring the matter 
 to an end, we acquiesced in having a single 
 committee to which all investigations should go. 
 Every man of sense must see that if the object 
 was full and speedy inquiry , this was not the 
 way, and so the event proved. 
 
 When the Committee was raised, I moved 
 an investigation of the New York Custom 
 House ; Mr. Trumbull passionately objected, 
 and through the resolution over by a point of 
 order. As soon as a majority could do so, it 
 was taken up and passed ; the Hodge resolution 
 followed, and other resolutions, and what was 
 the result ? The Committee, thus over-loaded, 
 was able only to complete the Custom House 
 inquiry, and this snowed under everything else. 
 The Hodge matter, and other things, wait ; and 
 when the Presidential election is over, and there 
 is nothing to be made by clap-trap and bun 
 combe, we shall be permitted probably to refer 
 them to appropriate committees. When the 
 French arms resolution was offered by Mr. 
 Sumner, the Republican Senators offered to 
 vote the investigation instantly ; but Mr. Sum 
 ner objected, and asked its postponement. 
 When h moved it again, all other business 
 
 was at once laid aside, and again the majority 
 offered to vote for the inquiry. But Mr. Sum 
 ner insisted upon speech-making, and he and 
 Schurz went at it, attempting to prove in advance 
 all the dismal rigmarole of a false and foolish 
 preamble. 
 
 Of course, their speeches could not go un 
 answered to the counrty, lest silence should 
 seem to give consent ; and so days and weeks 
 were wasted, when in five minutes the pre 
 tended object could have been accomplished. 
 The pretended object was not the real object, 
 as everybody knew ; the aim was political 
 effect, and for this the " Reformers " would be 
 smirch the Government, even though the cru 
 sade disgraced us, or involved us with foreign 
 Powers. 
 
 The result, as you know, was ruinous to those 
 who began it. The French arms investigation 
 is a fair sample of the rest. We had, in all, 
 in the two Houses, fourteen committees set on 
 the Administration. Such a thing was never 
 heard of before. No Administration was ever so 
 put under a microscope; or pried into with mali 
 cious eyes. What did it all amount to? Direct 
 ly and indirectly, these investigations probably 
 cost, in time, money, and neglect of legislation, 
 millions of dollars and who is benefited ? No 
 body, but the Administration they were intend 
 ing to destroy. The President, and those for 
 whom he is responsible, have come out like 
 pure gold tried by the fire, brighter than be 
 fore the country pays the bills, and the " Re 
 formers " curse in their sleeves at their ill-luck. 
 
 KU-KLUX DOINGS. 
 
 The only investigation of value related to the 
 condition of the South. The Committee on 
 Southern Outrages made a report full of fright 
 ful lessons. In ten States an organization exists 
 known as the "Ku-Klux Klan," or "Invisible 
 Empire of the South. " It is a resurrection of the 
 remains of the rebel army. Gen. Forrest, of 
 Fort Pillow, was its chief head, or "Grand Cy 
 clops." It is a secret oath-bound band. Its 
 object is to kill and drive out "Radicals" and 
 "carpet-baggers," and to intimidate the blacks 
 from voting against the Democratic party. 
 Speaking to those who have not read the evi 
 dence, the existence, the nature and the deeds 
 of these assassins are so incredible, that I dare 
 not ask you to accept them on my word. Let 
 me state a few things contained in the report, 
 and proved by much testimony. 
 
 Gen. Forrest admits his belief that the order 
 is 500,000 strong. In the two Carolinas, Geor 
 gia, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, 100 
 counties have been kept under a reign of terror. 
 One of the obligations of membership is to com 
 mit perjury as a witness or a juror. Many lead 
 ing wealthy men are among the actors, and until 
 Congress interfered, the State authorities were 
 powerless, or unwilling to enforce the laws ; 
 barbarous atrocities occurred nightly, but no one 
 was punished or even arrested. Whites and 
 blacks were murdered and robbed, their houses 
 burned, and nameless deeds done by disguised 
 bands. 
 
 In fourteen counties of North Carolina, eigh 
 teen murders were done, smd 315 whippings oc- 
 
Senator Conkling^s Great Speech at New York. 
 
 curred. In nine counties in South Carolina, 
 forty murders and over two thousand other out 
 rages. In twenty-nine counties of Georgia sev 
 enty-two murders and 126 whippings. In 
 twenty-six counties of Alabama 215 murders, 
 and 116 other outrages. In twenty counties of 
 Mississippi twenty-three murders, and seventy- 
 six other outrages, and in a single county of 
 Florida 153 murders. 
 
 In these ninety-nine counties 426 murders 
 were done, and 2,909 other acts of violence. 
 
 The object in all this, as extorted from many 
 witnessess, was "to put down Radical rule and 
 negro suffrage." Thus scourged, the people of 
 the South piteously appealed to Congress for pro 
 tection. A committee was sent to the Southern 
 States to learn the facts, and a law was passed 
 authorizing the United States Courts to act in 
 the matter. The same law authorized the sus 
 pension, fora limited space, of the habeas cor- 
 PUS, in case it should be necessary. Under this 
 act of Congress, at the January term of Court in 
 South Carolina, 501 men were indicted by the 
 Grand Jury for these crimes of violence. In the 
 Northern District of Mississippi, 490 were indict 
 ed, and in the Southern District of Mississippi, 
 152. In North Carolina, 981 men were indicted. 
 In South Carolina, five of these culprits were 
 immediately tried and convicted, and fifty-three 
 of them pleaded guilty. At the next term others 
 were tried, and many more pleaded guilty. In 
 the other States the Courts are at work meting 
 out justice. These are the offenders in whose 
 behalf Wade Hampton and others raised money 
 arid employed counsel. 
 
 Reverdy Johnson and Henry Stanbery were 
 the counsel, and I read a passage from Mr. 
 Johnson s argument to the jury : 
 
 But Mr. Attorney-General has remarked, and would 
 have you suppose, that my friend and myself are here to 
 defend, to justify, or to palliate the outrages that may 
 have been perpetrated in your State by this association 
 of Ku-klux. H e makes a great mistake as to both of us. I 
 have listened with unmixed horror to some of the testi 
 mony which has been brought before you. The outrages 
 proved are shocking to hum inity ; they admit of neither 
 excuse nor justification ; they violate every obligation 
 which law and nature impose upon man ; they show that 
 the parties engaged were brutes, insensible to the obliga 
 tion of humanity and religion. 
 
 The action of Congress and the President has 
 put an end to much of this bloody business ; 
 but stopping murder is called " centralism," and 
 we ar being stoned for that. 
 
 SOUTHERN STATE GOVERNMENTS AMNESTY. 
 
 The South has been for years a fertile field 
 for electioneering sensations. The State Gov 
 ernments in some of the Southern States have 
 been weak and bad, and the " Liberals " want 
 to try us for that. What have we to do with 
 it ? Why, they say we irnposed political disa 
 bilities on the rebels. Who imposed political 
 disabilities on rebels ? We are told the people 
 pay the debt, but we never hear that the peo 
 ple imposed the disabilities ; yet they did. The 
 Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, 
 ratified by the Legislatures of three-quarters of 
 the States, is the disability under which rebels 
 have been. That amendment does not touch 
 the right to vote, but leaves every rebel a voter. 
 It touches only the right to hold office. It pro 
 
 vides that the men who took an oath to support 
 the Constitution, and then fought against it, 
 thus adding perjury to treason, shall not hold 
 office ; and it further provides that Congress, 
 by a two-third vote, may relieve them. It is 
 foolish to pretend, all being allowed to vote, 
 that the majority could not rule ; it is absurd to 
 pretend that the few rebels, who are perjured 
 as well as traitors, were the only fit men to 
 elect State officers and legislators. It follows 
 that the Fourteenth Amendment is not the cause 
 of bad men being elected to office in the Southern 
 States. The truth is, as was abundantly proved 
 before the Ku-Klux Committee, that capable, 
 educated men, eligible to office, refused to ac 
 cept it, and refused to vote, and persuaded the 
 rebels generally not to vote, all for the purpose 
 of frustrating reconstruction in the South, and 
 making it odious. 
 
 Amnesty or want of amnesty had nothing to 
 do with jobs in Southern Legislatures, any 
 more than in our own. No man has ever asked 
 to be relieved who has not been relieved prompt 
 ly ; indeed, history has no instance of such for 
 bearance and mercy as has been granted to the 
 ringleaders of rebellion. 
 
 Not one was ever visited with the least pen 
 alty, except being barred from office, for com 
 mitting perjury as well as treason, and bills for 
 relief began at once, and all who asked soon re 
 ceived forgiveness. Whether a general act, nam 
 ing no one, but covering rebels in a body, was a 
 compliance with the Fourteenth Amendment, 
 may well be doubted ; be this as it may, the 
 President recommended, and Congress on the 
 2 ist of last May adopted, such an act. It would 
 have passed weeks earlier, but that "Liberals" 
 who pretended to be for a "Civil Rights bill " 
 by itself, voted avowedly to make it as obnoxious 
 as possible, and then, when it became part of 
 the Amnesty bill, some of them voted against it 
 and others dodged and this when two votes 
 would have carried it. And now, when not 
 more than one or two hundred men in the whole 
 South are left ineligible to office, and these are 
 men who still defy and spurn the Constitution, 
 we are gravely told that "amnesty " is a great 
 issue before the American people. 
 
 Amnesty, as an issue, is as dead as the politi 
 cians who prate about it. It is about as vital 
 as Mr. Sumner s published reason for supporting 
 Mr. Greeley, namely, that Greeley was bom 
 the same year that he was himself. 
 
 "Peace, good will toward men," have been 
 for three years national watch-words. Even the 
 old Indian scares have failed to bring on Indian 
 wars, which were always contractors wars. For 
 the first time in our history an Indian peace pol 
 icy has triumphed, massacres have been prevent 
 ed, the whites and the Indians alike have been 
 spared, and millions saved to the nation. 
 
 WHY CHANGE? WHO ASKS IT? 
 
 Such is the Administration, and such the 
 stable prosperity and the wholesome condition 
 of things, at home and abroad, which we are 
 asked to trade off for we know not what. To 
 suppose it will be done would be to brand free 
 government as a failure, and to insult the sense 
 of the American people. 
 
The President and Ills Slanderers. 
 
 What is the change offered us ? Does any 
 body know ? When did the necessity for any 
 change arise ? Certainly not when in Septem 
 ber, 1870, Mr. Greeley called the Reform 
 movement "a conspiracy to destroy the Repub 
 lican party;" not in September, 1871, when 
 Mr. Greeley drew resolutions fully endorsing 
 the present Administration; not on the 5th of Jan 
 uary, 1871, when in a speech Mr. Greeley said, 
 I venture to suggest that Gen. Grant will be 
 far better qualified for that momentous trust in 
 1872 than he was in 1868 ;" not when in Feb 
 ruary, 1871, Mr. Greeley said that a defeat of 
 the Republican party in the nation would be a 
 "disgrace and humiliation"; not only a year 
 ago, when Mr. Greeley said : 
 
 When a Republican Convention, fairly chosen after 
 free consultation and the frank interchange of opinion, 
 shall have nominated Republican candidates for Presi 
 dent and Vice-President, we shall expect to urge all Re 
 publicans to give them a hearty, effective support, whe 
 ther they be or be not of those whose eriginal preference 
 has been gratified. 
 
 Not on the 25th of April, 1872, when Mr. 
 Greeley placed his hostility to President Grant 
 squarely and solely on the ground of certain ap 
 pointments in the City of New York. 
 
 Who were the discoverers of the need, of a 
 change? Who called the Cincinnati Convention ? 
 Did the business men of the country call it ? 
 Did the public-spirited, the unselfish, and the 
 patriotic call it ? Every one knows that it was 
 the work of the political "outs." A few re 
 spectable men were drawn in, but the great body 
 of the movers were, as Greeley used to say of 
 the Democrats, "the very scum" of politics. 
 
 Nearly every man whose name appeared was 
 either a disappointed office-seeker, a man with 
 a grievance, or a man of bad character. Such a 
 "reform" movement will never be seen again, 
 unless the disreputable women of the laad 
 should strike and start a "liberal" movement 
 to reform the virtuous women of the land. 
 There is an effrontery bordering the sublime in 
 professional corruptionists, the worst and most 
 notorious, starting up to berate honest people. 
 From such effrontery came a convention, which, 
 from beginning to end, was managed to cheat 
 and defraud the respectable men who were 
 drawn into it and the public generally. That 
 the nomination was bartered and bellowed 
 through we are assured by the best who were 
 present; and now the Democratic party has 
 died by its own hand, and gone for eternal pun 
 ishment to Horace Greeley. 
 
 MR. GREELEY AND HIS "CLAIMS." 
 
 An examination of the fitness of Mr. Greeley, 
 and his claims to public confidence, is the duty 
 of every citizen. That he has shown great 
 talent as an editor and writer, all admit, but 
 nearly all else claimed for him now, I deny. 
 The very talents he has shown unfit him for the 
 Presidency. 
 
 It is said that a great debt is due and unpaid 
 by the Republican party to Mr. Greeley. The 
 account stands very differently, as most persons 
 understand it. 
 
 Does not Mr. Greeley owe much to the Re 
 publican party? That party gave him wealth, 
 fame jind influence. His talent and industry 
 
 were his own; but the Tribune was sustained 
 as a party organ, and was made a mine of 
 wealth by the Republican party. Who does 
 not know that Republicans, whether private 
 citizens or postmasters, or other "office-holders," 
 or country editors, or committee-men, have made 
 common cause for years for the Tribune, have 
 organized clubs, pushed and begged for subscrip 
 tions, and made the Tribune, what it was ? 
 
 Who does not know that this year tens of 
 thousands of Republicans paid their money in 
 advance for the Tribune, while yet its claws 
 were half concealed, holding itself out as a 
 Republican paper, and that the money thus ob 
 tained by false pretense is kept to sustain the 
 paper in its present gross and knavish course. 
 Who does not know that the position given 
 Mr. Greeley by the Republican party, did more 
 than all else to make the sale of his book called 
 the " American Conflict" which is said to have 
 paid him more than a hundred thousand dollars. 
 He sent canvassers to solicit subscribers for this 
 book, and who subscribed, who paid him a 
 fortune for it? Was it the Democrats or the 
 no-party men, or was it those to whom he now 
 says "he owes nothing?" 
 
 It is true that Mr. Greeley has seldom been 
 intrusted with office, though he has long sought 
 office from the Whig and Republican parties. 
 This, however, is simply from want of confidence 
 in his practical judgment and consistency. 
 
 Prior to 1854, Mr. Greeley s extreme craving 
 for office was not understood, and his letter to 
 Gov. Seward, November II, 1854, dissolving 
 the "political firm of Seward, Weed & Greeley, 
 because office had not been given him, amazed 
 the public. 
 
 In this letter, after referring to some of the 
 offices he wanted from the Whig party, and 
 vipbraiding Gov. Seward for not appointing him 
 to some office in 1837, he says : 
 
 Now came the great scramble of the swell-meb of 
 coon minstrels and cider-suckers at Washington, I not 
 being counted in. Several regiments of them went on 
 from this city ; but no one of the whole crowd though 
 I say it who should not had done so much toward Gen. 
 Harrison s nomination and election as yours respectfully. 
 I asked nothing, expected nothing ; but y<m, Gov. Sew- 
 ard, ought to have asked that I be Postmaster of New 
 York. ****** 
 
 Let me speak of the late canvass. I was once sent 
 to Congress for ninety days, merely to enable Jim Brooks 
 to secure a seat therein for four years. 
 
 ******* 
 
 But this last Spring, after the Nebraska question had 
 created a pew state of things at the North, one or two 
 personal friends, of no political consideration, suggested 
 my name as a candidate for Governor, and I did not dis 
 courage them. 
 
 I am sure Weed did not mean to humiliate me, but he 
 did it. The upshot of his discourse (very cautiously 
 stated) was this : if I were a candidate for Governor, I 
 should beat not myself only but you. Perhaps that was 
 true. But, as I had in nq manner solicited his or your 
 support, I thought this might have been said to my friends 
 rather than to me. I suspect it is true that I could not 
 have been elected Governor as a Whig. But had he and 
 you been favorable, there -would have been a party in 
 the State, ere this, which could and would have elected 
 me to any post, without injuring myself or endangering 
 your election. 
 
 It was in vain that I urged that I had in no manner 
 asked a nomination. At length. I was nettled by his 
 language well intended, but very cutting, as addressed 
 by him to me to bay, in substance, "Well, then, make 
 Patterson Governor, and try my name for Lieutenant. 
 To lose this place is a matter of no importance, and we 
 can see whether I am really so odious." 
 
Senator ConJcling s Great Speech at New York. 
 
 Having quoted from the early letters of Presi 
 dent Grant, it seems but fair that I should read 
 from an early effusion of Mr. Greeley s also, and 
 beside, I want you to see how the keenest men 
 in the Whig Party regarded Mr. Greeley s aspira 
 tions and qualifications. Job once expressed a 
 wish that his "adversary had written a book"; 
 had Mr. Greeley been the adversary then, a 
 letter would have satisfied Job just as well. 
 
 While he belonged to the Republican Party, 
 Mr. Greeley was a candidate for Governor several 
 times, for Senator, for Representative, and for 
 other offices ; always being defeated in the nom 
 ination or election, except when once chosen for 
 a ninety-days term in Congress, when made Presi 
 dential elector in 1864, and when he ran for the 
 Constitutional Convention under a law insuring 
 his election, without regard to the number of 
 votes. 
 
 WHAT MR. GREELEY DID WHEN IN OFFICE. 
 
 The Republican Party has been blamed for 
 not gratifying Mr. Greeley s ambition for office, 
 but the mass of the party, though appreciating 
 his eccentric genius, has believed him erratic, 
 and not possessed of the practical wisdom, mod 
 eration, or business capacity to make a useful or 
 safe official. As often as he has been tried in 
 public station he has failed. His brief career 
 in Congress was a sad fiasco ; he more than 
 once excused his course by saying that he voted 
 without understanding the question, and had 
 voted as he did not mean to. (Congressional 
 Globe, 1848-49, vol. 20, pp. 269, 336). He in 
 volved himself in questions of veracity, which 
 compelled him to retreat from his statements ; 
 and on one occasion was confronted on the 
 floor by members, who flatly testified to the 
 untruthfulness of what he said. (Globe, as 
 above.) Libels, published in his paper, sub 
 jected him to indignities, and even to worse 
 embarrassments. 
 
 His course in the Constitutional Convention 
 was a series of peevish attempts to assume 
 everything and do everything, and resulted in 
 his impatiently and prematurely quitting his 
 post, after pouring upon members a volley of 
 oaths. Even the task of acting as chairman of 
 a local committee, last year, brought him into 
 dilemmas and apparent breaches of his word, 
 which a man of common discretion would have 
 avoided. 
 
 His affiliations with men have shown him a 
 poor judge of human nature, and the ease with 
 which the designing impose upon him has always 
 excited the sympathy of his friends. The worst 
 men have stuck to him and used him, with no 
 more power on his part to shake them off than 
 a ship has to shake off its barnacles. His man 
 agement of every business, except editing a news 
 paper, has shown him wanting in business capa 
 city ; and as an editor he has always lacked a 
 balance wheel to keep him from absurd incon 
 sistencies. 
 
 His investments of money with the shiftless 
 and the dishonest ; his embarking in ventures 
 with Tweed, and lending his name to men un 
 worthy of trust, can be excused only on the 
 ground of want of sound judgment. His Four- 
 ierism, and Agrarianism, attest a mind given to 
 
 vagaries like this : on one occasion he insisted 
 that there could be no property in land, because 
 property was the product of human labor, and 
 that land, like air, belonged to God Almighty, 
 and could not be owned by man. 
 
 Building a barn where a man could not stand, 
 and was washed away, planting turnips where 
 turnips could not grow, trying to substitute cab 
 bages for tobacco, and then assuming to teach 
 farmers in all the varying climates and soils of 
 the continent, what to raise, and how to plow, 
 and when to hoe, can only pass as the grotesque 
 and harmless antics of a man of oddities, nat 
 tered by many, and most of all by himself. 
 " A jack of all trades is master of none," and 
 "what he knows about farming," would show 
 Mr. Greeley a universal genius, if it were not 
 for what he could learn from those he assumes 
 to teach. 
 
 The overweening confidence with which he 
 holds his opinions, and the rude vehemence with 
 which he utters them, make the suddenness 
 with which he changes them the plainest proof 
 of insincerity or unsoundness ; while the epithets 
 and libels with which he pursues those he hates 
 or envies, shows a strangely unchristian and un 
 bridled nature. 
 
 Mr. Greeley s own traits of character, as seen 
 by his party associates, have made it better for 
 him and for the public that he should not hold 
 office, and when Andrew Johnson nominated 
 him after he bailed Jefferson Davis, as Minister 
 to Austria, rumor is greatly at fault if Senators 
 who now support him, even all those who then 
 belonged to the Republican party, could be in 
 duced to vote for his confirmation. 
 
 Truthful history will never record that whea 
 Horace Greeley deserted the Republican Party 
 for a Presidential nomination, he owed the party 
 nothing ; or that the party owed him a great 
 and unpaid debt ; or that the party was wrong 
 in not selecting such a man for high public 
 trusts. The verdict will be rather that he spoke 
 like a scheming ingrate, when on the I2th of 
 June, 1871, he said to a street audience, " I 
 am perfectly willing to pass receipts with the 
 Republican Party, and say that our accounts 
 are now settled and closed." 
 
 MR. GREELEY S RECORD DID HE HELP SE 
 CESSION. 
 
 Mr. Greeley s deeds are all to be found i 
 words. His record has not been written for him 
 by false and hostile hands ; he has written it 
 himself. How far it is the record of a man fit to 
 be trusted, in peace and possibly war, with the 
 affairs of this great nation, will appear sufficiently 
 without going back of the rebellion. 
 
 In 1860 Mr. Lincoln was elected, and before 
 he was inaugurated seven States seceded from 
 the Union. They did not secede believing that 
 the twenty-one millions of the North would de 
 ny their right, and desolate their land by war. 
 Common sense proves that they relied upon a 
 divided sentiment in the Northern States. 
 
 They thought the Democratic party, in part 
 at least, would maintain their right ; and they 
 thought also with good reason, that the Repub 
 lican party could not be brought to coerce them, 
 or make war upon them. This expectation of 
 
The President and His Slanderers. 
 
 sympathy in the North while the Gulf States 
 were hesitating, turned the scales in favor of se 
 cession ; and no man in all the land did, or 
 could do, so much as Horace Greeley to create 
 the expectation upon which secession took place. 
 The New York Tribune was at that time the 
 leading Republican organ, and beyond and 
 above all other papers, it spoke for the Repub 
 lican party. Its editor claimed the credit of 
 having just overthrown Gov. Seward at Chicago, 
 and this, for the time being, completed its su 
 premacy in the Republican party. Holding 
 this position of unchallenged authority, hear 
 what it said to men not yet daring to plunge into 
 the Red Sea of Revolution. 
 
 The election returns in 1860 had not come 
 in when the Tribu)i<; began to incite secession. 
 On the Qth of November, 1860, Horace Greeley 
 published this editorial : 
 
 And now, if the Cotton States consider the value of 
 the Union debatable, we maintain their perfect right to 
 discuss it. Nay, we hold with Jefferson to the inalien 
 able right of communities to alter or abolish forms of 
 government that have become oppressive or injurious ; 
 and if the Cotton States shall decide that they can do 
 better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting 
 them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revo 
 lutionary one, but it exists nevertheless ; and we do not 
 see how one party can have a right to do what another 
 party has a right to prevent. We must ever resist the 
 asserted right of any State to remain in the Union, and 
 nullify or defy the laws thereof : to withdraw from the 
 Union is quite another matter. And, whenever a con 
 siderable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve 
 to go. out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed 
 to keep it in. We hope never to live in a Republic 
 whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets. 
 
 On the i yth of December, 1860, just before 
 South Carolina seceded, South Carolina being 
 the first State to go, Mr. Greeley published the 
 following editorial : 
 
 _ We have repeatedly asked those who dissent from our 
 views of this matter to tell us frankly whether they do or 
 do not assent to Mr. Jefferson s statement in the De 
 claration of Independence that Governments "derive 
 their just powers from the consent of the governed ; and 
 that whenever any form of government becomes destruc 
 tive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or 
 abolish it, and to institute a new government," &c. , &c. 
 We do heartily accept this doctrine, believing it intrins 
 ically sound, beneficent, and one that, universally ac 
 cepted, is calculated to prevent the shedding of seas of 
 human blood. And if- it justified the secession from the 
 British Empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we 
 do not see why it would not justify the secession of 
 five millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 
 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not 
 some one attempt to show wherein and why ? For our 
 own part, while we deny the right of slave-holders to 
 hold slaves against the will of the latter, we cannot see 
 how twenty millions of people can rightfully hold ten or 
 even five, in a detested Union with them by military 
 force. 
 
 ****** 
 
 We could not stand up for coercion, for subjugation, 
 for we do not think it would be just. We hold the right 
 of self-government sacred, even when evoked in behalf 
 of those who deny it to others. So much for the ques 
 tion of principle. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 We fully realize that the dilemma of the incoming Ad 
 ministration will be a critical one. 1 1 must endeavor to up 
 hold and enforce the laws as well against rebellious slave 
 holders as fugitive slaves. The new President must fulfil the 
 obligations assumed in his inauguration oath, no matter 
 how shamefully his predecessor may have defied them. We 
 fear that Southern madness may precipitate a bloody 
 collision that all must deplore. But if ever "seven or 
 eight States" send agents to Washington to say, "We 
 want to go out of the Union," we shall feel constrained 
 by devotion to human liberty to say, let them go ! And 
 we do not see how we could take the other side, without 
 
 coming in direct conflict with those rights of man which 
 we hold paramount to all political arrangements, how 
 ever convenient and advantageous. 
 
 On the 24* of December, 1860, Mr. Greeley 
 published the following editorial : 
 
 Most certainly we believe that Governments are made 
 for peoples, not peoples for Governments that the " lat 
 ter derive their just power from the consent of the gov 
 erned :" and whenever a portion of this Union, large 
 enough to form an independent, self-subsisting nation, 
 shall see fit to say authentically to the residue, "We 
 want to get away from you," \VE SHALL SAY AND WE 
 
 TRUST SELF-RESPECT, IF NOT REGARD FOR THE 
 PRINCIPLE OF SELF-GOVKRNMENT, WILL CONSTRAIN 
 THE RESIDUE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO SAY 
 
 "GO !" We never yet had so poor an opinion of our 
 selves or our neighbors as to wish to hold Others in a 
 hated connection with us. 
 
 Two months later, Feb. 23, 1861, five days 
 after the inauguration of Jeff. Davis as Presi 
 dent, Mr. Greeley published the following 
 editorial : 
 
 We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist, that 
 the great principle embodied by JEFFERSON in the Dec 
 laration of American Independence, that Governments 
 derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, 
 is sound and just ; AND THAT IF THE SLAVE STATES, 
 
 THE COTTON STATES, OR THE GULF STATES ONLY, 
 CHOOSE TO FORM AN INDEPENDENT NATION THEY 
 HAVE A CLEAR MORAL RIGHT TO DO SO. \Ve have 
 
 said, and still maintain, that, provided the Cotton States 
 have fully and definitely made up their minds to go by 
 themselves, THERE is NO NEED OF FIGHTING ABOUT 
 IT ; for they have only to exercise reasonable patience, 
 and they will be let off in peace and goodwill. When- 
 mer it sJuill be clear that the great body of Southern 
 people have become conclusively alienated from the 
 Union, and anxious to escape from it, WE WILL DO OUR 
 
 BEST TO FORWARD THEIR VIEWS. 
 
 Are not these manifestoes sickening when we 
 remember the furious cries of war by which 
 they were followed ? Can any man doubt the 
 great part they played in fomenting secession 
 and stimulating rebellion? When Alexander 
 H. Stephens, in the Georgia Convention, which 
 passed the ordiuance of secession, attempted to 
 stem the secession tide, Robert Toombs put 
 him down, and carried the Convention, by 
 reading these Tribune articles. Union men who 
 resisted secession were silenced throughout the 
 South by these and similar quotations from Mr. 
 Greeley ; the Tribune became the hand-book 
 to "lire the Southern heart." 
 
 FRANK BLAIR S TESTIMONY AGAINST MR. 
 
 GREELEY. 
 
 I do not ask Democrats to take my word for 
 this ; let me call their last candidate for Vice- 
 President to the stand, and make him testify. 
 Here is what Gen. Frank P. Blair said in the 
 Senate, February 17, 1871, when explaining 
 how secession gained the upper hand in the 
 South : 
 
 We all know the instance of a very distinguished man, 
 Alexander H. Stephens. We all know that, as a mem 
 ber of the Georgia Convention, he contended with 
 eloquence and ability in favor of the Government of the 
 United States ; and 1 have been informed that the only re 
 ply which was made to that eloquent appeal of his to 
 support the Government was the reading, by Mr. 
 Toombs, of a paragraph from ;he New York Tribune, in 
 which it was declared that if the Southern people chose 
 to secede they had as much right to separate themselves 
 from the Northern States as our ancestors had in 1776 to 
 separate themselves from the mother country. 
 
 That paragraph did appear in the Tribune, and every 
 Senator here will bear it in his recollection. I remember 
 to have seen it, and I remember the discouragement 
 which fell upon us in Missouri and throughout the other 
 
Senator ConUin^s Great Speech at New York. 
 
 Southern States where Union men were attempting to 
 band themselves together and to maintain the Govern 
 ment, when it was announced by that paper, a leading 
 paper in the Republican party at that time, that the Se 
 cessionists had as much right to separate themselves 
 from the Northern States as had our ancestors in 1776 to 
 abandon the mother country. 
 
 I remark upon the case of Mr. Stephens, who was a 
 zealous friend of the Union, who spoke in the Georgia 
 Convention ably and eloquently against the secession of 
 his State, and who was responded to in that Convention 
 simply by the reading of a paragraph from the New York 
 Tribune, which -was as much as to say that they had 
 nothing to apprehend from tlie North if they decided to 
 go out of the Union, because here was one of the leaders 
 of the Republican party of t/ie North announcing to 
 them that if they desired to gJ out they could do so, and 
 had as much right to do so as our forefathers had to 
 separate themselves from the mother country. 
 
 Mr. HOWARD May I ask the Senator from Missouri 
 whether, in his opinion, the paragraph in the New York 
 Tribune to which he refers was a justification, in whole 
 w in part, for the treason of Mr. Stephens? 
 
 Mr. BLAIR I will reply that I do not consider that 
 anything justifies treason, and I do not think the conduct 
 of the Secessionists of the South/ ustified that traitorous 
 expression of opinion on the part of the Tribune, for I 
 regard it as traitorous. I say, Sir, that it did as much 
 to discourage the efforts of the Union men in the South 
 as anything that occurred at that period. It was simply 
 a declaration which those accepted, I suppose, and were 
 glad to accept, who wished to rid themselves of the 
 Union, that they might go out in peace, that they would 
 not be pursued, that war would not follow their step ; and 
 this did a great deal to prevent resistance on the part of the 
 Union men at the South at the time to the establishment 
 of the de facto Government to which they were subjected. 
 Congressional Globe, Part 2, 3d Session 4ist Congress ; 
 pp. i, 24}, 1,345. 
 
 These statements, made by Gen. Blair, created 
 some sensation. The Tribune tried to break 
 their force, and on the 2Oth of February, 1871, 
 Gen. Blair returned to the charge prepared with 
 proof. Here is what he said : 
 
 When speaking on this subject the other day, I gave 
 from memory certain deductions of the New York Tri 
 bune, then as now the most influential organ of public 
 opinion in the Republican party in this country, and 
 spoke of the unhappy influence of this paper at that 
 time, in giving encouragement to the Secessionists and 
 in discouraging the efforts of the Union men in the 
 South. ***** 
 
 I now quote the extracts from that paper to which I 
 referred, and the Senate and the country can judge 
 whether my statement or that of the Senator is the cor 
 rect one. On the gth of November, 1860, the New York 
 Tribune said : 
 
 [Here he read some of the articles already 
 quoted, and resumed :] 
 
 Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, and many others who have 
 since been disfranchised, breasted the storm with heroic 
 courage. Regardless of popularity, and thinking only of 
 the peace and happiness of the country, they struggled 
 against secession, and warned the people of the disaster 
 they would encounter. On the other hand, Mr. Greeley 
 assured them these dangers were all imaginary, and in 
 sisted that "they should go in peace," that they had a 
 clear " moral right to go." 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Words were never uttered more fatal than these to the 
 peace of the country. Mr. Stephens was defeated in tiks 
 effort to prevent secession in Georgia by a few votes only, 
 and nothing is more certain than that these were obtained 
 by Mr. Greeley s declaration that secession was rightful 
 and would be peaceable. I have been informed that 
 these declarations were read in the Georgia Convention 
 as a full reply to the warnings of Mr. Stephens. The 
 refusal of Georgia would undoubtedly have arrested the 
 movement. Who, then, is more directly responsible than 
 Mr. Greeley, and those who acted with him at the 
 North, for the blood which has drenched this land ; and 
 who is more directly responsible than Mr. Greeley for the 
 vindictive spirit which animates the dominant party in 
 the proscription which has pursued and is still pursuing 
 the whole people of the South ? 
 
 Nor was Mr. Greeley s reiterated advice the result of 
 
 an honest error. No man understood better than he 
 did the use that would be made of his declarations, and 
 how effective they would be in promoting disunion. 
 
 The editor of the Tribune co-operated with the seces 
 sion movement, not because he sympathised with the ob 
 jects of its authors, but because he and those for whom 
 he spoke preferred parting with the South to partnership 
 and equality under the Constitution. Congressional 
 Globe, same volume ; pp. 1,426, 1,427. 
 
 Whoever reads Mr. Greeley s utterances, now 
 in question, will see that he assumed to give 
 advice in a supreme public emergency ; that at 
 the critical and vital point, which must decide 
 between union and disunion, between peace" and 
 war, Mr. Greeley threw his whole weight and 
 influence on the fatal side. He upheld the full 
 right of secession ; he denied the whole right 
 of coercion ; he insisted that slaves fleeing from 
 masters in arms against the Government must 
 be captured and returned ; and he protested 
 against the continuance of the Union, after 
 force was needed to preserve it. 
 
 MR. GREELEY ORGANIZES VICTORY. 
 
 Advancing to the next step in Mr. Greeley s 
 career, we find him on the war-path. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had called for troops, and youths 
 untrained and untaught in war, and unseasoned 
 to hardships, flocked to Washington. General 
 Scott, then the oldest and foremost soldier of 
 the Republic, was in command. He had around 
 him all the men whom the nation had educated 
 as soldiers, except those who forsook the flag, 
 and in the judgment of them all, time was need 
 ed to drill men and horses, before ventur 
 ing an onward movement upon an entrenched 
 and fortified foe. Mr. Greeley, an editor, who 
 had never seen a battle, or studied a campaign, 
 or learned anything of war, assumed the office 
 of dictator. With his great engine, the Tribune, 
 he fanned the flame of popular impatience and 
 overbore the authority and the judgment of 
 military men by a hurricane of clamor for an 
 instant movement. "On to Richmond!" daily 
 clanged out with great shocks of sound from the 
 Tribune, and drove the army headlong to Bull 
 Run. 
 
 Men who had not learned to limber or unlim- 
 ber guns, and horses unbroken to manoeuvre 
 artillery, were driven pell mell upon the masked 
 battery of the rebels. James S. Wadsworth 
 had gathered up many of these green horses, on 
 the spur of the occasion, and paid for them 
 himself. Wadsworth went with them to the 
 fated field, and there, bareheaded, with his 
 white locks streaming in the winds, tried by 
 heroic daring to supply the want of drill. But 
 patriotism, and bravery, and dash, would not 
 avail; the attack was premature "some one 
 had blundered" a meddler had blundered, and 
 had wrecked an army. 
 
 "On to Richmond "was the incarnation of 
 conceit and folly, as it was the slogan of head 
 long war ; and yet it was the shout of the same 
 man who, a few short weeks before, by the cry 
 of secession and of anti-coercion, had lured and 
 bated millions with mad hopes and promises. 
 
 Let me read you the motto flung out by the 
 Tribune]\Ay 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th, the order for Bull 
 Run : 
 
 THF NATION S WAR-CRY ! Forward to Richmond ! 
 Forward to Richmond ! The Rebel Congress must not 
 
The President and His Slanderers. 
 
 be allowed to meet there on the zoth of July ! BY THAT 
 DATE THE PLACE MUST BE HELD BY THE NATIONAL 
 ARMY. 
 
 On the ist of July, twenty days before Bull 
 Run, Mr. Greeley cast upon Gen. Scott the im 
 putation of treason to his flag, in these words : 
 
 "Did you pretend to know more about military matters 
 than General Scott?" asked a few knaves, whom a great 
 many simpletons know no better than to echo. 
 
 "No, sir! we know very little of -the art of war, 
 and Gen. Scott knows a great deal. There is no ques 
 tion on this point and never has been." 
 
 The real question which the above is asked only to 
 shuffle out of sight is this : Does Gen. Scott (or whoever 
 it may be) contemplate the same ends, and is he ani 
 mated by like impulses and purposes with the great 
 body of the loyal, liberty-loving people of this country ? 
 Does he stand up square on the line of 54 deg. 40 min., 
 or is he squinting towards 36 deg. 30 min. ? Does he 
 want the rebels routed, or would he prefer to have them 
 conciliated ? When you answer these questions, you 
 touch the marrow of the problem, which all the gas about 
 Gen. Scott s military knowledge and our want of it is in 
 tended to dodge. 
 
 ATTEMPTS TO SHIFT BLAME TO OTHERS. 
 
 When tidings came of the defeat and carnage 
 at Bull Run, Mr. Greeley sank under the weight 
 of his fearful responsibility. The first symptom 
 of recovering his self-possession was a frothy 
 effort to lay the blame at the door of others. 
 On the 23d of July, two days after the 
 battle, he said : 
 
 We have fought and been beaten. God forgive our 
 rulers that this is so, but it is true, and cannot be dis 
 guised. The Cabinet, recently expressing in rhetoric 
 better adapted to a love-letter, a fear of being drowned 
 in its own honey, is now nearly drowned in gore; while 
 our honor on the high seas has only been saved by one 
 daring and desperate negro, and he belonging to the 
 merchant marine. The "sacred soil" of Virginia is 
 crimson and wet with the blood of thousands of Northern 
 men, needlessly shed. The great and universal question 
 pervading the public mind is : " Shall this condition of 
 things continue ?" 
 
 A decimited and indignant people will demand the 
 immediate retirement of the present Cabinet from the 
 high places of power, which, for one reason or another, 
 they have shown themselves incompetent to fill. Give 
 us for the President capable advisers, who comprehend 
 the requirements of the crisis, and are equal to them ; 
 and for the army, leaders worthy of the rank and file, 
 and our banner, now drooping, will soon float once more 
 in triumph over the whole land. With the right men to 
 lead, our people will show themselves unconquerable. 
 
 Caught and impaled in this attempt to roll 
 his own guilt upon the shoulders of others, here 
 is his next explanation. Observe how, on the 
 2yth of July, he coddles up to Gen. Scott, whom 
 he had tried to dishonor less than four weeks 
 before : 
 
 We have confessed our own terrible mistake in the 
 premises, and are trying to amend it. Gen. Scott has 
 been equally ingenuous and candid. " It was a miscal 
 culation of forces," he says of the recent disaster. That 
 is the real truth. None of us had any idea of the im 
 mense numbers and tremendous enginery of war that the 
 rebels had silently collected around their position at 
 Manassas Junction. Whoever ordered or planned the 
 attack on that position was utterly unaware of their 
 strength. 
 
 See again, how, eighteen months later, he 
 sought in another way to lay the ghost of Bull 
 Run : 
 
 I did urge that the great Union Army, rotting in idle 
 ness and debauchery about Washington, should advance 
 upon the rebellion it was called put to put down. It 
 ought to have done so a month earlier than it did not a 
 part of it, but the whole, and it might have been tri 
 umphantly in Richmond, and the rebellion half sup 
 pressed before the day of Bull Run. How needless, 
 
 how wanton, was that disaster how disgraceful to those 
 who might and should have prevented it, history will 
 establish. Tribune, Feb. 2, 1863. 
 
 This is not all of this lamentable record it 
 contains yet other pitiable things, but these 
 will do. 
 
 It was in the agony of a later hour, tortured 
 by dire meddling again, that Lincoln is said 
 to have exclaimed, "What will quiet Horace 
 Greeley, he gives me more distress, and does 
 the country more harm than Jefferson Davis." 
 
 How Mr. Greeley s interference tortured Mr. 
 Lincoln, may be gathered from a letter written 
 by Mr. Lincoln, Aug. 22, 1862. Here it is: 
 
 HON. HORACE GREELEY. Dear Sir : I have just 
 read yours of tbe igth inst., addressed to myself through 
 the New York Tribune. If there be in it any state 
 ments or assumptions of fact which I may know to be 
 erroneous, I do not now and here controvert them. If 
 there be any inferences which I may believe to be falsely 
 drawn, I do not now and here argue against them. If 
 there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial 
 tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend whose heart 
 I have always supposed to be right. As to the policy I 
 " seem to be pursuing," as you say, I have not meant to 
 leave any one in doubt. . * * * 
 
 NIAGARA FALLS "PEACE NEGOTIATIONS." 
 
 Mr. Greeley, early in Mr. Lincoln s Admin 
 istration, became his enemy. This Mr. Lin 
 coln knew and was ever on his guard. This is 
 noticeable in the Niagara Falls peace affair. 
 Mr. Greeley had been for secession when seces 
 sion might have been avoided, he had been for 
 battle when the time had not come, he had 
 been in turn for war and peace when each was 
 impossible, and early in 1864, when the rebel 
 lion was about to collapse, and when everything 
 depended upon keeping the North erect with 
 united and undaunted front, Mr. Greeley fell 
 into a swoon of despondency and blamed our 
 authorities for not trying to make peace. 
 
 From the beginning of the war, Canada has 
 been the refuge of the spies, detectives, and 
 hangers-on of the rebellion. On the 5th of 
 July, 1864, one W. Cornell Jewett, an irre 
 sponsible and half insane adventurer, wrote Mr. 
 Greeley a letter, saying that Geo. N. Sanders 
 wanted him to come to Niagara Falls and hold 
 a private interview with those authorized to 
 make peace. Mr. Greeley, the day after he re 
 ceived the letter, wrote to Mr. Lincoln. His 
 letter shows him full of the subject, and com 
 pletely persuaded that he had received a great 
 and genuine revelation. He inclosed, ready- 
 made, his "plan of adjustment." He was go 
 ing to wind up the whole rebellion by paying 
 $400, 000,000 to the slave States, "loyal and seces 
 sion alike" for slaves, and by several other things, 
 closing his plan with these words : "It may save 
 us from a Northern insurrection." In his letter he 
 said: "A wide-spread conviction that the Gov 
 ernment and its prominent supporters are not 
 anxious for peace, and do not improve proffered 
 opportunities to achieve it, is doing great harm 
 now, and is morally certain, unless removed, to 
 do far greater in the approaching elections." 
 He also put in his letter exaggerated statements 
 of the extremity to which the country had come, 
 and appealed to Mr. Lincoln to enter into the 
 negotiation. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln saw through the whole thing at 
 
Senator Conkling^s Great Speech at New York. 
 
 a glance ; he saw that Mr. Greeley had been 
 gulled, and he saw that he must humor him or 
 rouse his ire. Accordingly he wrote to him as 
 follows : "If you find any person, anywhere, 
 professing to have any proposition of Jefferson 
 Davis, in writing, for peace, embracing the res 
 toration of the Union and the abandonment of 
 slavery, whatever else it embraces, say to him he 
 may come to me with you," etc. Mr. Greeley 
 replied, caviling with the President s letter, say 
 ing that they would not show their credentials, 
 etc., and using these words : "Green as I may 
 be, I am not quite so verdant as to imagine any 
 thing of the sort." 
 
 Receiving no answer from the President, three 
 days afterward, July 13, he wrote: "I have 
 now information on which I can rely, that two 
 persons duly commissioned, and empowered to 
 negotiate for peace, are, at this moment, not far 
 from Niagara Falls," etc. In this letter he ap 
 peals to Mr. Lincoln "to act in the premises, 
 and to act so promptly that a good influence may 
 even yet be exerted in the North Carolina elec 
 tion next month." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln replied, "I am disappointed 
 that you have not already reached here with 
 those Commissioners. If they would consent to 
 come on being shown my letter to you on the 
 9th inst., show that and this to them, and if 
 they will come on the terms stated in the former, 
 bring them. I not only intend a sincere effort 
 for peace, but I intend that you shall be a per 
 sonal witness that it is made. " 
 
 Mr. Greeley applied for "safe conduct" for 
 four persons, and this being granted, he set sail 
 on his mission, never^ suspecting he was the 
 victim of a fraud, and nq seeing how Mr. Lincoln 
 regarded it. n< 
 
 HOW MR. LINCOLN VAS FALSELY PLACED. 
 
 Reaching Niagara^ i*e instantly put himself 
 into communication *nth Sanders, Thompson & 
 Co., who at once informed him that they had no 
 authority whatever to make peace, or to talk 
 about it, but they were pleased that the United 
 States had at last come forward proposing terms; 
 and they graciously offered Mr. Greeley, if the 
 President would protect them, to go through the 
 United States down to Richmond, and see what 
 the rebels would do about it. Mr. Greeley, in 
 place of denouncing the cheat and repelling the 
 impertinence, and clearing the President s skirts 
 by showing the two letters which he had been 
 instructed to show, went into a correspondence 
 with these brazen impostors. Learning what 
 was going on, Mr. Lincoln dispatched a confi 
 dential messenger post haste with a document 
 dated July 1 8, 1864, signed by himself and ad 
 dressed To whom it may concern. " This doc 
 ument stated that authorized propositions of 
 peace would be fairly met, provided "the integ 
 rity of the whole Union and the abandonment 
 of slavery" was embraced. The messenger, by 
 order of the President, hastened to Niagara Falls, 
 and, taking Mr. Greeley with him, crossed the 
 river, and delivered the paper in his presence to 
 the rebel tricksters. 
 
 It contained exactly what the President di 
 rected Mr. Greeley to show them in the first in 
 
 stance, yet it was the first notice given them of 
 the President sv^equirements. 
 - Taking advantage of this concealment by Mr. 
 Greeley, Thompson & Co. pretended to be taken 
 by surprise, and wrote Mr. Greeley a long letter, 
 full of insolent and electioneering denunciation 
 of Mr. Lincoln and the Government. They 
 stated that Mr. Greeley made the first advance 
 to them, which they say was accepted by us 
 as the evidence of. an unexpected but most grati 
 fying change in the policy of the President ! " 
 They further say, that they had believed "that 
 this conciliatory manifestation on the part of the 
 President of the United States would be met by 
 them (Jeff. Davis & Co.) in a temper of equal 
 magnanimity ! They then denounced the Presi 
 dent for changing his mind, and not doing what 
 Mr. Greeley had been led to expect. 
 
 On receipt of this letter, in place of setting 
 the President right, by telling them that from the 
 beginning he had held throughout but one and 
 the same position, Mr. Greeley left the President 
 to rest under the imputation of bad faith. 
 
 Before taking his departure, Mr. Greeley sent 
 word to the rebel "Commissioners" "that he 
 regrets the sad termination of the initiatory 
 steps taken for peace, in consequence of the 
 change made by the President" &c. No change 
 had in truth been made by the President, and 
 first and last there was no room to charge bad 
 faith or a change of mind, excepting the false 
 position in which Mr. Greeley had placed the 
 President, by disobeying his instructions, and 
 failing to exhibit his shrewd and guarded letter. 
 
 When Mr. Lincoln came to know what had 
 been done, feeling indignant at the way his con 
 fidence had been abused, he wrote to Mr. Gree 
 ley for permission to publish the correspondence, 
 omitting only such points as carried an exag 
 gerated idea of our military and political condi 
 tion ; this request Mr. Greeley refused, unless 
 all parts of the letters were published. Upon 
 this conduct of Mr. Greeley, Mr. Lincoln com 
 mented in these words : "I have concluded that 
 it is better for me to submit for the time to the 
 consequences of the false position in which I 
 consider he (Greeley) has placed me, than to 
 subject the country to the consequences of pub 
 lishing these discouraging and injurious parts." 
 
 After Mr. Lincoln s death these facts and 
 letters all came out. Mr. Lincoln had delivered 
 them in confidence to Mr. Raymond, who, in 
 his life of Lincoln, exposes Mr. Greeley with a 
 severity from which I abstain. 
 
 But several things are undeniable. First, 
 Mr. Greeley was gulled by a shallow swindle ; 
 second, he not only bit at the bait, but pressed 
 the matter upon Lincoln, in a manner snowing 
 his intention to carp at him unless he yielded to 
 his views ; third, Lincoln punctured the fraud 
 at a glance, and yet Greeley did not see it ; 
 fourth, Greeley bungled the whole affair at 
 Niagara, or else purposely violated the repeated 
 instructions of the President ; fifth, he tamely 
 submitted to the most unblushing effrontery and 
 imposition from the rebels ; sixth, he expressly 
 admitted and stated that Lincoln had been fickle 
 or untruthful, when he knew he had not ; and, 
 finally, when Lincoln sought to vindicate him- 
 
30 
 
 The President and His Slanderers. 
 
 self by making the truth public, Greeley stifled 
 the truth by threatening if it was told, to publish 
 matters having no bearing on the case, but 
 which would deeply wound the public interest. 
 Who can wonder that Mr. Stanton proposed 
 the arrest of Mr. Greeley for holding unauthor 
 ized and injurious intercourse with the enemy ? 
 
 MR. GREELEY AS FINANCIER. 
 
 War and diplomacy were not enough for Mr. 
 Greeley, and he soon turned financier, and 
 assumed to dictate the financial policy. He 
 first opposed the Legal Tender act, but unex 
 pectedly came out in its favor, and continued to 
 advocate paper money, until the channels of 
 trade were glutted with it, and gold went up to 
 280. To guard against injustice to Mr. Greeley, 
 at this point let me read you his own words, on 
 the loth of February, 1862 : 
 
 " We shiver on the brink of a bottomless abyss of Shin- 
 plaster circulation. Congress must provide funds for the 
 vigorous and immediate prosecution of the war for the 
 Union, and it seems to have been settled that it shall 
 take the short and easy method of making treasury notes 
 a legal tender. We utterly dissent from this conclusion," 
 etc. 
 
 After he had changed his mind, and as late 
 as February 19, 1864, he would charge sym 
 pathy with the rebellion upon a man who op 
 posed greenbacks, or advocated specie payment. 
 Here is an editorial of February 1 9th, 1864, in 
 which Mr. Greeley says : 
 
 "When, therefore, we hear that the Government ought 
 to have maintained, or ought now to resume, specie pay 
 ments, we know that the speaker means that it ought to 
 give up the contest and let the rebels triumph." 
 
 With the vast issue of Legal Tender" notes, 
 business, of course, expanded, and merchandise 
 and property were bought at double and treble 
 their old prices, to be paid for in paper. In 
 this condition of things Mr. Greeley violently 
 demanded the resumption of specie payments. 
 Practical men saw, as the event has proved, the 
 wisdom of a gradual approach to a specie basis ; 
 it was as certain then as it is now, that to com 
 pel payment in gold of debts contracted in 
 paper worth less than half as much as gold, 
 would be to strew our land with wreck and 
 ruin. Moreover, it would have been impossible, 
 without a miracle, for Government, banks, or 
 people to pay specie when Mr. Greeley de 
 manded it. Men of sense everywhere cried out 
 against such an attempt, and demanded to know 
 how we could suddenly resume. Mr. Greeley 
 was ready with answers. The chief answer was : 
 "The way to resume is to resume !" On the 
 I2th of January, 1866, he said that more "six 
 per cent, untaxed bonds " should have been put 
 out, and in that way, " every obstacle on tlie part 
 of the treasury to an instant resumption should 
 have been, overcome. " 
 
 On the 5th of June, 1867, he came out with 
 this staggering programme. I commend it to 
 free-traders, property owners, anti-income tax 
 men, and all men blest with no better sense than 
 common sense : 
 
 We believe in taxing so as to pay the debt in ten 
 years. To do this, the national revenue should be about 
 $.500,000,000 per annum, or the same as in 1866. Had 
 it been kept there, we might have celebrated our country s 
 centenary on the 4th of July, 1876, completely out of 
 debt. And we hold that this might have been done, by 
 
 taxing with steady purpose to diminish the number 
 idlers, or uselessly employed persons, and increase I 
 proportion of productive workers, without prejudice 
 the national growth or prosperity. Here, for examp 
 are a good many thousands of our people who have 
 comes of $10,000 up to $1,000,000 per annum. Supp* 
 these -were to pay ten per cent, income tax, -what of; 
 They will live less sumptuously, or board less bounteou: 
 for a few years that is all. They will still enjoy eve 
 comfort, and will be growing richer if they choose. 
 
 Of late, Mr. Greeley has outrun everybody 
 denouncing the income tax ; but hear what . 
 used to say. Here are his views, June I 
 1863: . 
 
 One of the fairest and most productive sources 
 British revenue is the income tax assessed on all incoir 
 in the United Kingdom above $750 per annum. 
 corresponding tax exempts incomes from taxation to t 
 amount of $600, but exacts three per cent, on all abo 
 that amount, and five per cent, on all excess Q\ 
 $10,000 per annum. In other words : "here is a t 
 which does not at all affect the laboring class, I 
 which reaches nearly every one above them." 
 
 Compare this with what he said Dec. I 
 1869: 
 
 We do not believe there is a tax levied by the Govei 
 ment so onerous upon so large a class of people as t 
 income tax. It is not equal its exactions are unjus 
 and it discriminates against persons of limited means. 
 
 Again, June 26, 1869, he thus delivered hir 
 self: 
 
 The income tax is one of the worst ever levied, inqu 
 itorial, unequal, and offering a premium for perjur 
 We trust its days are nearly numbered that it will 
 the very next of our heavy war burdens removed. 
 
 These are a few of the gems of Mr. Greeley 
 financial theories, and those who did not acce] 
 them were visited with epithets and reproach, 
 ^ I ask business men to look back now, ar 
 think what would have happened had Horai 
 Greeley been President ( ien. 
 
 With this one passage Before you, would yc 
 as business men, trust ^jr. Greeley to run 
 cider mill and financier f4t? 
 
 In case of war, how all ^-ould lean on him ; 
 Commander-in- Chief of the Army and Nav; 
 In case of a financial crisis how steady he woui 
 be. 
 
 In case of riot in New York, or outbreak i 
 the South, how his name would strike tern 
 into babes and men. 
 
 In case of storm, next to going to sea in 
 wash-tub, what would be so safe as the admii 
 istration of such a man ? 
 
 He who changes his mind often, upon th 
 greatest matters, should be tolerant of differena 
 of opinion. 
 
 HOW MR. GREELEY TREATS THOSE WHO 
 DIFFER FROM HIM. 
 
 See how Mr. Greeley deals with those wh 
 differ with him. Here are specimens of h: 
 editorials interesting to Democrats : 
 
 All do know that there are several hundred thousan 
 mulattoes in this country ; and we presume that no or 
 has any serious doubt that the fathers of at least nim 
 tenths of them are white Democrats, and we are to! 
 that those Democrats, if they will have yellow childrei 
 might better than otherwise treat the mothers respec 
 ively as wives after the laudable pattern of that eminei 
 Democrat, Vice-President Richard M. Johnson. De< 
 10, 1867. 
 
 Every one who chooses to live by pugilism, or gaml 
 ling, or harlotry, with nearly every keeper of a tipplinj 
 house, is politically a Democrat, Jan. 7, 1868. 
 
Senator Conldintfs Great Speech at New York. 
 
 31 
 
 Point where er you please to an election district which 
 you will pronunce morally rotten, given up in great 
 part to debmchcry and vice, whose voters subsist 
 mainly by keping policy offices, gambling houses, grog 
 shops and d.rker dens of infamy, and that district will 
 be found at learly or quite nearly every election giving 
 a majority fr that which styles itself the " Democratic 
 party. Tale all the haunt s of debauchery in the land, 
 and you \vll find nine-tenths of their master-spirits 
 active parti.ans of that same Democracy. What is the 
 instinct, th: sympathetic cord, which attaches them so 
 uniformly o this party ? Will you consider? 
 
 We thereupon ask our contemporary to state frankly 
 whether t!.e pugilists, blacklegs, thieves, burglars, keep 
 ers of ders of prostitution, etc., etc., were not almost 
 unanimously Democrats. 
 
 A pure.y selfish interest attaches the lewd, ruffianly, 
 
 criminal and dangerous classes to the Democratic party. 
 
 ./This would amount to six in a bed, exclusive of any 
 
 other vennin, for every Democratic couch in the State of 
 
 New York, including those at Sing Sing aid Auburn. 
 
 When the rebellious traitors are overwhelmed in the 
 field and scattered like leaves before an angry wind, it 
 must not be to return to peaceful and contented homes, 
 they must find poverty at their firesides and privation in 
 the anxious eyes of mothers and the rags of children ! 
 
 MR- GREELEY AS A POLITICIAN. 
 
 Eccentricity and fickleness are Mr. Greeley s 
 traits. As a politician, he has bolted and ad 
 vised bolting ; he has opposed the nomination 
 or election of every President who has been 
 chosen for thirty years ; he has quarreled with 
 every Administration ; he has assailed the char 
 acter of those he differed with wantonly and 
 savagely ; he has imputed corruption to others 
 merely for not voting or thinking as he did ; he 
 sought by intrigue the defeat of Mr. Lincoln 
 after he was nominated the second time, and as 
 late as September 2, 1864, wrote secret letters, 
 which have since come to light, to concoct mea 
 sures to prevent Lincoln s election ; he strove 
 to poison President Grant against capable and 
 honest Republicans, and advised him to exclude 
 from his councils men trained in public affairs ; 
 he has recommended unfit men for office, and 
 insisted on their appointment ; after endorsing 
 and applauding everything involving principle, 
 or relating to the public interest done by the 
 Administration, he has struck at the President 
 on account of "patronage," and bolted the 
 party, after manoeuvring more than a year to 
 get its nomination. 
 
 On the 4th of May, 1871, he wrote William 
 Laraiore, who had inquired- whether he would 
 be a candidate for President before the Republi 
 can Covention this year : " I fully propose also 
 never to decline any duty or responsibility which 
 my political friends see fit to devolve upon 
 me," and having thus put himself in the field, 
 he started for the South to make speeches, in 
 one of which he asserted over again the right of 
 secession, and in another hoped for the time 
 when his countrymen would feel pride in Lee 
 and Stonewall Jackson. 
 
 He apologized for Tammany robbers, enjoy 
 ing from them at the same time an immense ad 
 vertising patronage, and blocking the wheels of 
 reform after the Tammany frauds were known 
 to the whole nation ; he colluded with men 
 known to be in the interest of Tammany Hall, 
 and whom he had previously so branded himself, 
 
 to prevent the Republican party being purged 
 of Tammany influence ; for two years before his 
 open desertion, he sought to divide and destroy 
 the Republican party of New York, and traduc 
 ed many upright men because of their resistance 
 to the domination of corruptionists ; and, finally, 
 in signing the call for the Cincinnati Convention, 
 which adopted the Free Trade Missouri Plat 
 form, he turned his back on the only political 
 principle or idea prominent for the last ten years, 
 of which he had not before been on both sides. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Yat in the blind staggers of faction the Amer 
 ican people are challenged to scan and decide 
 upon this record. 
 
 Such a coalition, and such a nomination, 
 mean chaos and disorder. You see this already 
 in North Carolina, where the American flag is 
 showered with stale eggs, and where the mob 
 refuses to allow honored citizens born there to 
 "speak ; and you will see it at every step until the 
 curtain falls in November. 
 
 "Liberal Republican" movements have been 
 tried in other States, and, until the results were 
 felt, they succeeded. They tried in Virginia 
 nominating a Republican for Governor, on a 
 bargain with the Democrats; many Republicans 
 were entrapped and Virginia is cursed with a 
 rule which the best Democrats are ashamed of. 
 
 They tried in West Virginia a fusion between 
 "outs" and Democrats, and now West Virginia 
 holds debate in her Constitutional Convention on 
 the question of nullifying the Constitution of the 
 United States, and depriving the blacks of the 
 right to vote. They tried in Tennessee a move 
 ment of bolters and Democrats, and the result is 
 the destruction of common schools, in which 
 190,000 children were cultured. 
 
 They tried the experiment in Missouri, and 
 the fruit it lxn - e is a Democratic State Govern 
 ment and Frank Blair in the Senate. 
 
 In all these cases, one side or the other was 
 cheated, and the public interest was harmed, 
 and now it is proposed to attempt the same 
 thing on a national scale. 
 
 No wonder that leading Democratic journals 
 and a large body of Democrats refuse to be 
 parties to such chicanery, and no wonder that 
 it draws to itself, as no other movement ever 
 did, the very worst elements, North and South. 
 
 The issue stands before you. On the one 
 side is safe, tried and stable Government ; peace 
 with all nations, and prosperity at home, with 
 business thriving, and debt and taxes melting 
 away. 
 
 On the other side is a hybrid conglomeration 
 made up of the crotchets, distempers, and per 
 sonal aims of restless and disappointed men. 
 What ills might come of committing to them 
 the affairs of the nation no judgment can fathom, 
 no prophecy can foretell. 
 
 The result is very safe, because it rests with 
 the same generation which was given by Provi 
 dence to see through the darkness of the rebel 
 lion, and that generation cannot be blinded now. 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY