The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1868-08-08
Frank Blair.

the Vice Presidency The President by virtue
OF his office is commander in-chief OF the land
and naval forces of the Union,-Blair has shown
himself an able general, and it, Napoleon like
he can win the army over to his purpose, may
we not fear he will join hands with rebels and
make bold strike to overthrow our Liberties
and set up despotism in Washington. He has
the head to plan, the will TO execute, the Gun.
ming OF the serpent, the ambition of Lucifer-
Elect him to the Vice Presidency, and but a
single life bars the way to power such as no king
at the present day can WELD.
For eight years, from the birth of the Re-
publican party in 1856 to the close of Lincons
administration, Frank Blair was the especial
pet OF that party. For the four years of Lin
coins presidency, Blair was his bosom friend
and confidential adviser. Especially were the
two knit together in the closest sympathy in
their hostility to the mlscegenation and negro
equality doctrines which about that time be-
gan to be urged with threatening boldness by
the ultra radicals in and out of Congress-
Lincoln, amid all his vascillations to keep
peace with the Summers and Phillipses of his
party, never swerved a hair from the declara-
the social and political equality of the negroes
| and white men there was an impossible gulf; !"
and Frank Blair, amid all the temptations and
| threats by which he was assailed, never wav-
cred in his adherence to the same doctrine
and in advocating his Utopian idea of ulti-
mately colonizing the negroes in Central
America, scheme of which Lincoln had fIe-
quently expressed his approval, except that
he limited at Florida or Texas as possible
alternative for Central America
The paper from which we quote above says
"Blair deserted the republican party" It is
not true in any honest sense. He simply re-
fused to follow that party out of republican
ism into radicalism with all its atrocities and
denominations, as nearly all the other founders
and leaders of the republican party Of 1s566O
have been obliged to do. Instance Seward,
Doolittle, Cowan, Chase, Dixon, Fessenden,
Trumbull and a hundred more that we could
name. OF the hundred founders and lead
ers of that bold, aggressive and terribly earn
est republican party which elected Abraham
Lincoln in 1860, not three honest men of pro-
minence are left in its ranks but they have
been edged and driven out by the very scum
and rough-scuff of political prostitutes in the
old democratic party---men like, Butler.
Logan, Tremain, Dan Sickles and Joe Brown
Can brave, heightened, gallant man like Frank
Blair be expected to associate with men like
thesel
The danger Of electing man like Frank
Blair to the Vice Presidency, then, arises from
his unreliable character, as witnessed by his de-
sertion of the Republican party, and from the
fact of his having ''shown himself an able
general of great cunning and inordinate
ambition. If the political tergiversations of
Frank Blair, which have the extent above in
dicated and no more, are such evidences of his
abandoned and dangerous character, what has
the Lacon Journal to say of one Hiram t.
Grant! Up to the time when he entered the
army he had never voted any but the demo-
cratic ticket. When at the head of a regiment
in Missouri he told his men, that if the gov
eminent perverted this war to one tor freeing
the negro instead of the vindication of the
constitution and restoration of the Union, he
would join the other side. During the whole
war Grant was known to curse the radicals
and to be conservative in his political views.
At the end of the war, ard after the death of
Lincoln, he became heart and soul an Andrew
johnson man as against the radicals in con-
gress. At the instance of Andrew Johnson he
made a trip through the south in 1865, and to
give the lie to the radicals in congress, made
bis famous whitewashing report. With
Andrew johnson he "swung round the circle
in 1866, and though too drunk three-fourth of
the time to know what he was about, gave
public assent whenever he was sober enough
to do so, to what Seward said in his name as
to his detestation of the radicals. As John
son man he assented to the removal of Stanton
and took his place in the war department,
agreeing to hold on to the office until ousted
by the courts and it was only in February
1868, when the republicans first saw the utter
HoPetesslcsS Oh electihS one vi tHelr own
leaders to the presidency, and despairingly
offered the nomination to Grant, that he show
ed symptoms of radicalism; and it was then
only that, after having meanly broken faith
with johnson and lied to him and the whole
cabinet, and been kicked out of their society,
that he was received into the loving embrace
of the radical party.
If the political unreliability of Frank Blair.