The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-02-28
1HE NEW YoRK PREss.
EDITORIAL OPINIONS OF THE LEADrNG JOURNALS
UPON CURRENT ToPIos-eoMPIhED EVERY
DAY FOR THE EVENING TELEGBAPH.
r,o11t.eaI Recon OnstructtOn-Th Impend-
ing Crisis In Connecticut.


deas is carrying everything before it. It is
he momentum of heavy railway train de-
bending one of those long sweeps of the Allie
phenies, and the cry is "Clear the track ~
The patriarch Noah, the builder of the original
Great Eastern, the chosen vessel of the Lord
old Noah who lived six hundred years before
the food, who sailed his big ship over the
Aood and who survived three hundred and
fifty years after the flood-passed, we dare say,
through small experience in the progress of
ideas compared with that, for instance, Of
William Lloyd Garrison or Wendell Phillips.
The ancient patriarch, it is true, passed
through great deluge of water, but Garrison
and Phillips have passed through deluge of
fire. the most terrible in the worlds history,
and they still live.
Only look at it. In October, 1885, female
anti-slavery society was riotously broken up
in Boston by collection of conservatives de-
sCribed as gentlemen Of property and stand
ing" and Mr. Garrison, who went to the
meeting to deliver an address, after attempting
to conceal himself in a carpenters shop from
the fury of the mob was captured, had his
clothes torn off and was dragged through the
streets with rope around his neck. And for
whatY For preaching in Boston negro eman-
oipation. Cotton then was king even among
the Puritans. Still later in the day, in New
York, the famous Democratic Empire Club an
nually set apart contingent fund for the recep-
tion Of the abolitionist Phillips with welcome
of rotten eggs. Now, mark the change. Gar
risOn is hailed as a public benefactor every
where. He has had jubilee in Charleston.
He is the object of fifty thousand dollar sub
scription fund; and as for Phillips, if he now
becomes comparatively tame in his philippics
it is because he misses the inspiration of
Captain Rynders and his shower of eggs. Are
not these among the wonders wrought in Israel
in these latter days
Who can tell what next is coming? With
the country turned upside down and inside
out, there is no telling what may come to the
surface. In the work of political reconstruc-
tiOn the materials at hand must be used. Thus
our hard-set Democracy in our last November
election were compelled to take a new depar-
ture. At Chicago they were headed by the
banker Belmont and his coach and six; two
years later in New York, the ex-ponnder of
Yankee Sullivan, the banker Morrissey (faro
and keno) is called to the rescue. He pays
his way and goes into Congress, but his friend
Hoffman, of the old Democratic pattern, is left
in the lurch. He was not sufficiently recon-
structed like Morrissey, to win. He was, in
fact, behind the drift of events and the spirit
of the age. He was still running the old go
cart of the Dred Scott decision against the
steam engine of emancipation, and so Hoffman
was capsized, while Morrissey is hailed as
the new Democratic champion for the belt in
Congress against the mighty Ben Butler.
Profting from this example of a new expert
ment to meet the new order of things, the radi-
Gals of Connecticut have struck upon a still
bolder adventure. They have made the ire
pressible p. T. Barnum, the living embodi-
ment of Yankee notions, their champion and
their new platform, against William II. Bar
mum, an old fogy, famous only for those old
fashioned virtues of times gone by and for his
well-earned success in the iron business. But
he and all the other Barnums must give way
to The Barnum, as all the O'Donoghues stand
back in the presence of The O'Donoghue.
And what are Garrison and Phillips COM
pared with this Barnum Men of one
idea against man of ten thousand
ideas. Take, for example, twenty-five years
of the career of Phillips and twenty-five of The
Barnum, and mark the contrast. Phillips
begins, with some silver and gold in his pos
session, to preach emancipation; Bamum begins
his negotiations for the old American Museum
with nothing but brass; Phillips continues,
year after year, out of pocket, harping, like
Paganini, on one string; Banum plays on a
harp of thousand strings and thousand
different tunes, all in the same key. Yet he,
too, has had all along one grand idea. Old
style people might call it the idea of obtaining
money on false pretenses; but it is more than
that. Its4Was the poets idea of mermaid
painted on canvas outside the museum and
the dried-up head and arms of a monkey
deity joined to the tail of Goldfish inside the
museum; it was a dray load of old bones
transformed into a Greenland whale; it was q
woolly horse from an ash-cart changed into a
ferocious nOndescript captured by Colonel
Fremont on the ella river after three days
chase with a squad of dragoons il was in the
day when Santa Anna was a mighty hero, the
transformation of an article, bought perhaps
next door, into Santa Anua's wooden leg; it
was in the person of a leprous African, the
living embodiment of the negro turning white,
point of philanthropy in behalf of Sambo
which Phillips and Garrison have never tried
TO reach.
Nor does the record of The Barnum stop
here. Sir Philip Jones says that men consti-
tute State. They are certainly the strength
of State. In this view, while Barnum has
sought the improvement of the various breeds
of dogs and chickens in his dog shows and
chicken shows he has also sought the inn
provement of man, and the white man, in his
baby shows and has, perhaps, 'dOne the
State some service" in his premiums for the
lady honoring her delighted spouse with the
product at one birth of the best four, the best
three, or the best two babies in the market.
what a contrast in this encouragement of popu-
latlon is thus presented by Barnum against
the original ruling idea of John Morrissey O
pounding the life out of men for premium
Against this Barnum and the progressive
radicals, what chance has the other Barnun
in Connecticut None. The other BaInun
is behind the age The Hon. Ben. Wood him
self would stand no chance against the Barnun
who commenced the lottery business 'on hi