The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-10-09
TIE purrs or a FOOL.

Southern rebel-that is TO say conservative
papers, are publishing Wendell Phillips's
abuse of Grant with evident relish, but they
are not convinced that Grant is the fool that
Phillips calls him."
What constitutes fool in the absolute sense
of the word, it is beyond the reach of mortal
man to say. In the Christian philosophy all
the wise conceits of this world are accounted
as foolishness, all the ambitions and glories of
this world as illusions that glitter along the
broad road that leadeth to destruction, and all
the honorable repute of this world as q whited
sepulchre. fair without, but full of death and
rottenness within. ~
"Talk of Grant being fool !" say the Rad
ical editors, with a leer that would well be-
come q German devil, and chuckle that
might well express the gusto of an ogre over
his feast could a fool have massed to-
gether and welded such an army as Grant led
against Richmond-eh? Could fool have
SO often precipitated that vast array of vul-
nerable humanity against the edge of death
as he did. marking his devious line with hum
bred golgothas from Spottsylvania to Peters
burg? Could fool have nerved his own mind
and the minds of others to the task of wading
to an objective point through blood poured
out like water on barren Virginia fields, until
those fields became fat with this red nutri-
ment, and gay with a CHASTITY luxuriance of
verdure? And, laying military enterprise
aside. conld a fool have nlayed so nimbly and
shrewdly the game of political chicane as
Grant did when he took the war Office, given
him to keep ad interim in the interest of the
Presidents conservative policy, and bartered
his good faith as custodian for the Rad
icsl nomination for the Presidency Could
fool have wrought out under an
exterior of leaden dulness, results that would
have done credit to the craft of Machiavelli
and to the subtle discrimination of Iago?' Per-
haps not, Messrs editors of the Radical press.
Perhaps not, we mean to say, according to
current notions of war, and the purposes of
war, and according to prevalent ideas among
Radical politicians as to what is shrewd, and
clever, and deserving of success in the sphere
of political maneuver and conflict But these
are slender and fragile criterions, and they
can guide us only to superficial and untrust-
worthy conclusions. There are deeds of
which time alone can reveal the intrinsic folly
or wickedness. The day may be near
at hand = who knows = when men, the
passions and illusions of war having sub.
sided, will look with unspeakable horror
upon the terrible and needless carnage SYM
bolized by the name of Grant, and with in
finite loathing upon the devices by which he
and others sought to devote the woful gains
of war to the work of making one section of
the country the seat of barbarism and desola-
ton, and of delivering both sections to the
mercy of an ignorant, heartless, sordid and
dismal despotism. Who knows, indeed, that
Grant himself does not experience, even now,
awful intervals of self-illumination in which
conscience bites him as an adder for the horrid
glory encircling his head-in which his
laurels, crimson with the blood of slaughtered
countrymen, do not burn his brow as though
every leaf were tongue of inextinguishable
flame? Who shall say that, in his Utmost
soul, he does not curse the day which saw him
foolishly fail to give all the weight OF MS name
and all the faculties of his mind to the benef-
4 cent purpose Ol NluulcdtiuB tuo Couoc VI PcoSO
and liberty as the only worthy and legitimate
| object of war, instead of coalescing with q
faction which has studiously aimed to exas-
perate the vengeance of the victors and to
embitter the lot of the vanquished?
But let these reflections pass for the pres
emit. A leading Radical paper in the West is
satisfied that Grant is no fool, as he is repre-
scented to be by Wendell Phillips. Then,
what follows? Why that Phillips, for SO
installing the presidential nominee of his
party, must be an sgregious fool. And who
is Phillips? He has been for years the
intellectual leader of the Radical editors
and demagogues of all denominations and
degrees. If Phillips is wrong about Grant
they have been the dupes and followers
\ of fool. If Phillips is right about Grant
they are the dupes and followers of fool
The dilemma has apparently two horns, but
in reality there is but one; and upon this
those who have been the disciples of Phillips
and are now the supporters of Grant, mus
inevitably be impaled.