The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-12-04


II viii be seen by notice in another column
that public meeting is TO be held at Cooper
Institute, to present General Grant as a Candi-
date for President. The call is signed by a
large number of our most substantial and in
fluential citizens, of both political parties.
The most significant feature of the proposed
meeting is that it ignores political parties alto
gether. It tacitly assumes that General
Grant is to be the candidate of the people,
without regard to- party; that, as candidate
and as President, he is not to be the repre-
sentative, nor to act in the interest, of either
party to the necessary exclusion of the other;
but that in making up his Cabinet, in disPen-
sing the patronage of his Office, and in shaping
the policy of his Administration, he will be
free to act upon his own convictions of what
the public good requires. As a mater Of
course such position as this will be very
strongly contested. Neither Of the two great
political parties, acting as party organizations,
will concede it. Parties live partly upon prin-
ciple and partly upon interest; partly because
their members deem certain doctrines and
measures essential to the public good, and
partly because their active managers oovet
the control of the vast patronage which goes
with administration. Both parties, acting
from both motives, resent the election of
tion to either.
The Republican party seems resolved to
insist upon reconstruction on the basis of
universal negro suffrage, as the cardinal
measure of its policy, and will make General
Grant its nominee If he will accept the posi-
tion as the representative of that principle
The Democratic party will nominate him if he
will repudiate it. And each party thinks it
can preserve its consistency, and promote the
public welfare, only by insisting upon con-
formity to its creed as the sine qua non OF
nomination. A nomination by one party, on
a party platform, of course renders nomina-
tion by the other quite out of the question.
The gentlemen who have called the Grant
meeting evidently assume that there is q pub
lie sentiment stronger than party, and that the
crisis of the country is grave enough to evoke
it and give it commanding and controlling
power. The great evil Of the day-the por-
tentous fact, as full Of future peril as it is of
present disasters, that though the war has
ended, peace has not been secured. The
Union, for which the war was fought has not
been restored. The Constitution has not been
reinstated in the paramount authority which
the Rebellion menaced and for time inter-
rupted. Bitter sectional feeling is growing out
of the very facts which should have banished
it forever. The extirpation Of slavery is
threatening the country with greater evils
than slavery itself involved. A war of races,
full of disaster to both and Of ruin to the coun-
try, treads hard on the heels of the war of sec
tions, and threatens the nation with tenfold
greater calamity. A mere party victory in
the coming contest-no matter which party
may be the victor--will aggravate the evil
instead of removing it. 1t will increase the
danger rather than relieve it.
What is needed most of all is a President in
whose patriotic wisdom the whole country has
confidence, and from whom it will accept
policy in the interest of the country and not
of party or a section. II there is any man
in the nation who can command that conf
dence, it is unquestionably General Grant. If
the people are prepared to forego party inte-
rests and party feeling, either in whole or in
part, and to accept as guide through the
menacing complications and embarrassments
which surround the country, some one man
Independent of all parties, they will accept
General Grant. The whole North and West
will accept him as the leader who gave the
Union its victory in arms over the Rebellion,
and who has evinced an unfaltering purpose
to maintain the principles which were thus
vindicated.
The South will Accept him as the man who
remembered to be magnanimous in the hour
of victory and who would have our repuo-
lican institutions rooted in the love and attach
ment Of all our people. And all sections
and all parties would feel assured that Gene-
raj Grant would enter upon the Executive
office without resentment or rancor-Wnh
"neither friends to reward nor enemies to
punish" and with no motives but those
which have always animated him in his
past career-the purpose to serve his country,
to perpetuate her liberties and promote her
prosperity. - 4,,.
whether the people are prepared to take
such a stand in entering upon the Presidential
canvass NAV. perhaps, be doubted. But no one
can doubt that if they were, the future welfare
of the republic would seem more assured
than it does at present.
VVhv Not James M. AahIevF