The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-01-05
GRANT AND THE CAPITALISTS.

If the persons who are pressing the name
of General Grant for the presidency were
trying to find out chow not to do it," in the
surest manner, they could not have hit on a
more ingenious expedient than that of making
him the candidate Of the monied aristocracy.
1t is quite possible that the respectable old
| gentlemen who got up the meeting at Cooper
Institute, and who have formed themselves
into committee for the purpose Of forward
ing General Grants prospects, are really in
earnest. But they show verylittle sagacity in
assuming the leadership of the movement.
1t is tue that, wherever the radicals are APP
prebensive of defeat, they turn TO Grant for
succor, not because they like him; not be.
cause they think him fit to be president, but
because they fancy that the supposed strength
Of his name may compensate for their grow
ing weakness. If Grant really has any
strength at all, it resides in his mill
tary fame; in the hold which he is
presumed to have on the masses; and in
those passions and resentments, which, it is
hoped, may yet be stimulated into renewed
activity. Except for these circumstances
the radicals would no more think of Grant,
for president, than Of Spotted Tail or General
Pope. All the appeals of the gentlemen who
sell dry goods by the fifty million year, or
who run countless steamships to unnum-
bered ports, or who rule at the board of
brokers, or in the gold room, would fall on
needless ears. Those very respectable per-
sons may know how to make money. but
they do not know how to make presidents.
For practical purposes the support Of the
seventeenth ward of the city of New York
would be more valuable to an aspirant for
the presidency than the frantic efforts of all
the milionaires of the Grant committee
William b. Astor and Peter Cooper, and
Moses Taylor, and Moses H. Grinnell, and
Alexander Stewart, and Cornelius Vanderbilt,
are each worth from five to fifty million
dollars, and just one vote apiece. They
might perhaps, by concentrated effort, be
able to elect constable in New York, but
they would be sorely puzzled even to accom-
plish that object. Money, to be sure, goes a
great way in an election, as in all other
worldly affairs; but these respectable old gen.
tlemen seem to be inclined not to spend their
money, even to make Grant president, but to
persuade other people to help them save it.
Thus far they have got up a meeting, which |
was a fiat failure; have resolved to cut the |
politicians, to ignore the great political par
ties, and to issue a few thousand circulars.
Upon this latter expedient they rely with the |
simplicity of second childhood.
Through the medium of circular all other
presidential candidates are to be driven from
the field, the two great parties are to be terri
led into surrender, and the national con-
Tentions are to meet only to nominate Grant,
Who viii thus, having nobody to oppose him,
If course be triumphanHy elected The
wealth which the imaginative Anasschar was
o accumulate from his tray of precarious
Glassware was nothing in comparison with the
asst political capital which these extempore
tatesmen are to make out of few reams of
,rinting paper
But, after all, if Grant is to be nominated,
lis nomination will be due exclusively to his
enown as a military chieftain. Just to the
xtent that public attention is diverted from
his point, Just to that extent he is weakened
The attempt to convince people that he is a
reat statesman, only makes him ridiculous
n contrast with the eminent politicians of
he country. The moment that the people
re persuaded that he is the candidate of the
charlottesville men who, to use the idiom
f the day, are gathering up the gold for
and forcing paper on the people
hat moment he loses all the advantage of his
military prestige. If the rich men, the capt.
alists, the bond-holders, the manufacturers,
make an issue with the masses of the people,
hey are sure to lose. And nothing looks
more like an attempt of those classes to coerce
be public, for their own interests, than this
Movement of men like Aston, Dodge, Stewart
nd Grinrell to force Grant upon the party
onvent ms.