The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-08-19


had formerly delighted to honor him, he was
publicly hooted, refused hearing and the
hotel in which he lived was surrounded by a
multitude after midnight shouting exeora-
tions. Long had this man known that there
was a South and that the South governed the
country; he was now astonished to discover
that there was also North. The Republican
party sprang into being, formidable from birth,
and destined to victory. Nor did Mr.. Douglas
really strengthen his ground with his own
party. 1t has never been the policy of the
Democratic party in recent times to
nominate its EXTREMIST man - the man
peculiarly identified with the measures
most distasteiul to the opposition, and who
has made himself personally odous to them.
The Democratic Convention OF 1856 met in
Cincinnati It's results should be a warning
to all public men who are more ambitious for
themselves than for their country. James
Buchanan, an aged politician of Jackson's day,
whom Jackson had tolerated, but never liked
or trusted; who had been absent from the
country during the recent excitements
because he had been absent received the
nomination, and his young competitor was
again disappointed Upon the sixteenth bal
lot Buchanan received one hundred and sixty
eight votes Douglas one hundred and
twenty -one; Cass six. This display of strength
on the part of the aged functionary was pre-
| iminary to his unanimous nomination.
| part to play of extreme difficulty. In the
minds of some of the Southern leaders there
was always perhaps, lurking distrust of
| him. With all his apparent subserviency, he
| only stopped to conquer; he was not born to
be a tool. Reared in free, intelligent Yer
mont, a man of force, ideas, and courage, he
would 60 very far in pushing his own fortunes
and in serving his party; but there was
! point beyond which he would not have gone.
| The real object of the Southern politicians
was disunion, and the founding of Southern
| Confederacy. But, at the last moment, this
| son of Vermont would have recoied from trea-
son, and joined in crushing the traitors. He
was no coward If he had been President in
| 1860 and in the spring of 1861, he would not
have stood passive, and permitted fort of the
! United States, garrisOned by troops OF the
! United States, to be surrounded by hostile
works and menaced by hostile cannon. AT
! the last moment he would have thrown him
! self without reserve ON the side of his country,
and, using the forces she had placed at his
command, would have dealt with incipient
| treason as Andrew Jackson dealt with it thirty
years before. If he had not done this from
sense of duty, he would from sense of inte-
rest; for this man was as little of fool as he
was of coward. Southern members felt this
to be the case, and preferred man OF less
calibTe and less force.
We can also assert that among Northern
Democrats, especially among the grey-hairea
| sres who assumed to be the legitimate heirs
of Andrew Jackson, the "Little Giant
had several powerful and determined enc
mics, some of whom were willing to sacri-
| flee their party rather than consent to his ele-
vation. Mr. Van Buren, tells us, in his work
lately published that his candidate in 1852
was Chief Justice Taney; and the reader may
| have noticed that Colonel Benton, in his
Thirty Years. View,'' which relates events
down to 1850, scarcely mentions the name of
| the "Little Giant, and never mentions it with
| honor Indeed, the whole class of aged func-
tonaries regarded this man of forty years as
youthful interloper, and considered his Presl-
dental aspirations in the light of an imperti-
nence. This secret hostility was exceedingly
bitter, and would probably always have pre-
vented, or long postponed the qualification of
Mr.. Douglas ambition, even if he had not
destroyed himself.
remarkable triumph of e-pulling, pure
and simple, was the selection of John G. FIRE.
mont as the first candidate of the Republican
party. Outside of the little cotere of politi-
clans who placed him in nomination, not one
human being in the United States had ever so
much as thought of him in connection with
the Presidency. As a Lieutenant Colonel in
the army he had won some distinction as an
explorer, but was absolutely unknown in poll
tics. For precisely these reasons he was chosen
in preference to the many able and eminent
| men VINO were III lull BY yllphIuy WIFI Jne new
party, and who in reality had no expectation
of eecting their candidate. 1t was, perhaps,
a wise selection, because the object of the
movement was not to elect President, but to
form, strengthen, and educate party, and the
selection OF an unknown name tended to con-
fine the attention of voters to the princi-
Piles involved in the contest. Colonel
Benton, the father-in-law of the Republi-
can candidate, was too old a politician
not to understand that his daughters husband
was to be used, not elevated and he strenu-
ously objected to Colonel Fremont's accept
ance of the role. Colonel Fremont, however
did accept it, and issued unscathed from the
fiery ordeal of a Presidential canvass. If the
Republican chiefs had really wished him to be
President, they would have pressed his nomi,
nation in 1860. But his name was not men
toned in the Chicago Convention.
To return to Mr.. Douglas, who was neon
parably the most important person during the
years Immediately preceding the war. 1t was
his impatient ambition which split the Demo
cratic party and permitted the election o.
Abraham Lincoln. When he discovered
in 1856 that there was North, he
became also aware that his position a:
Senator representing Illinois was il
imminent peril. Then it was that he placed
himself in opposition to the Democratic ad
minstration on the test question of its whole
career-the Lecompton ConstitutiOn-and he
| opposed it on Just and unanswerable grounds
BY so doing he restored, in some degree his
| position at the North, but eternally estranged
the South. How curiously the ambition o.
| politicians sometimes defeats itself and what
unexpected obstacles itsometimes itself evokes