The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-26 00:00:00

STORIES OF 71IE CANDIDATES.

General Grant's father sued Messrs. Mack
Brothers, in St. Louis, to recover his share of some
speculations in which that firm was engaged. Ac-
cording to Mr. Grant he obtained a permit from his
son for the Mack Brothers to trade in cotton with
the South, on condition that he received one-fourth
of the proceeds, but that the plaintiffs, after thus
realizing a large profit, refused to give him his pro-
per share of the spoil. Of course such a tale is '
eagerly seized on to show him up as using office
to make an illicit profit. Great play has already
been made with the Christian names of Grant, and
it would never do to let his rival, Seymour, off oo
this point. Why, it is asked, has he dropped the
second name of "Nelson," his true designation
being, it is said, Horatio Nelson S3ymour. It is
clear that his name, whether directly or indirectly,
reached him from the great English Admiral, and
that, coupled with his own " bloated" British aris-
tocratic appellation, might be offensive to a genuine
democratic mob. If Horatio Nelson Seymour be
not as English as Grant is Scotch there is no virtue
in a name, and even supposing that the Democra-
tic candidate was able to drop the " Nelson" it
would scarcely be possible to obliterate the English
of what remained to pit against the " Mailed Scotch
tyrant." We learn that in 1863 -Seymour nearly
filled (as the Nation says) " a bloody and dis-
honoured grave." A party of gentlemen, at lunch,
were drawn into the discussion of politics, when one,
a good Democrat, on being asked if he did not intend
to vote for Seymour, answered with a frown,
" Never." The speaker, among others, hid aided
to defend the Tribune buildings in the riots in 1863.
Horatio Seymour was addressing the infuriated
crowd, and the speaker, rifle in hand, mentally re-
solved, as he covered the Governor's heart, that he
would send a bullet through it if the mob should
leave Seymour to surge towards the buildings ; and
he added, "My bullet never fails."
General Grant has returned to the plains, and
will remain at Galena, Illinois, until December.
When at Benton, on the North Platte, he met
General Blair ! but notwithstanding the high ap-
preciation held of him by the latter, who said at
St. Louis that he was worth all the others " banged
into one," they did not rush into each other's arms,
but coldly saluted and passed on. At St. Joseph
a crowd assembled on the 29th July and shouted
for a speech from Grant. Both parties were pretty
equally represented in the mob, and so great
was the uproar around the hotel that Gen. Sher-
man appeared on the balcony and said—" Both
General Grant and myself are used to large crowds
and cannot be disconcerted ;" adding, " I think the
1 General acts the part of wisdom, considering the
position he occupies, in declining to make a
speech." As a man here called for three cheers for
Seymour, Sherman continued, " If I were a citizen
of St. Joseph I would duck that man in the
Missouri. We have fought rebels, and we thought
they had enough of fighting ; I am about to eat my
supper and go to bed, and you out there may do as
you please."
The following incident is said to have been
omitted from the many published biographies of
Grant. Of course its truth is vouched for :—" On
the evening of Sunday, after the firing had ceased
at Shiloh, and Buell had disposed of his forces for
the work of the ensuing day, he, for the first time,
expressed a desire to see General Grant, and an aid
being dispatched, that officer, attended by a few
members of his staff, made his appearance, Grant,
apparently unsteady, and this time minus the ever-
lasting cigar. Buell, almost bursting with indigna-
tion, drew aside from the mingled staffs, and
motioned Grant to follow him out of earshot, when
the following colloquy (as reported by two reposing
soldiers,one of them a drummer in an Ohio regiment,
and an intimate acquaintance of the narrator) took
place :—" General Buell—' Well, sir, is this a dis-
play of your generalship ; two-thirds of your army
retiring binne daylight, being almost massacred
by a superior enemy, and the remainder wan-
dering leisurely along the banks of the Ten-
nessee ?' (alluding to General Wallace's, which
comprised nearly one-third of Grant's army,
sand had not been the enemy during the day).'

but a treacherous Democrat has balanced this by thus
eulogizing the candidate of his party : "Mr. Seymour
is descended from the nobility of England and has
bright aristocratic blood in his veins !" Our readers
may imagine the horror with which Mr. Seymour
read those words. Although Blair is away. in Kan-
sas the penny-a-liners are busy with his name, and
have thrown in, as an apple of discord, that it was
he and his soldiers who burnt down Wade Hamp-
ton's house and stole his plate at the taking of
Columbia. Of course substantial proof is forthcoming
—at least enough for electioneering tactics. When
the war ended, Blair addressed a General Order to
his army corps, wherein he told them of the Roman
custom in conquered lands to give homesteads to
their brave soldiers, which the United States ought
to follow. The Government had ample means of
doing this from the lands of rebels it had seized, and
homesteads should be carved from them. After
some of his operations in Tennessee, in reply to
Grant's question whether he had taken any pri-
soners, he said " No, but he had burnt a sight of
houses." The investigations into his college career
have as yet only produced the assertion of a class-
mate, who states that " poor Blair's only distinc-
tion at college was the amputation of a class-mate's
nose with a carving-knife in a tipsy spree." Little
of late has been heard of Colfax, but the notion
gains ground among the Irish that his " Know-
Nothing" oath will prevent him from giving office to
a single citizen of foreign birth.