Nashville union and dispatch. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1866-1868, 1868-05-30
+" EVERYTHING BY TURNS. AND
NOTHING LONG," 30
What Grant has Been, Is, Is Not, and
Wants 90 Re.

I " mat NaEaAA&A mas A1tths -. ~ NOds HaAS
Wants 90 Re.
There are many things to be learnet
from what the Radical papers do not say
in favor Of their candidate. Everything
truth will permit and absurdity not staml
will certainly appear But what is omit
ted'is more Insignificant than what is ut
tered. lE f... F.
Nobody Is hardy enough TO claim civil
capacity for Grant. Ont Of the army be
! has only been a bankrupt farmer, aiaeiturh
tanner, and a hard drinker. His literary
abilities were insufficient to secure him a
copyists stool in the Office of the ProthO-
notary Of st Louis in 1864, I
His most exaggerating praisers dare not
aver Ills instability to be less than his OBJ
tuseness. In politics he has always taken
up with the minds that mastered him. Dur
ing and after the Mexican war Gen. Har-
ney took pity on Lieut.: Grant, then The
butt OF every ones Joke, and used to remon-
strate with him on his wild courses. At
that time Grant was States Right Demo
crat, because Harney was, whose influence
was sufficient TO mould the opinions, but
could not restrain the appetite of the due
tale young man.
When Gen. Harney was finally forced to
shake him off whom he could not reform,
Gen. Dent, into whose family Grant mar
ried, persuaded him easily into Douglas
Democracy, and actually succeeded in get
ting him into a &c condition 10 vote for the
Little Giant in 1861, at GalenaA- During
the winter of 1862-l863, when Congress
men Washbnrne, of Illinois, and Rice, of
Massachusetts, visited Grant after the de-
feat at Shiloh, and told him ''if he did not
then and there sign the pledge, they would
drop him like a hot potato" the affrighted
man was cOerced into temporary temper
ance and al interim Repnblicanism, the
last Of which continued till the close Of the
var. Then, what with the influence of
President johnson and Mr.. Seward, Grant
lapsed into Conservatism and went his
"leYel best" for 'my poliey.p This and the
denunciatiOn he got for il from Summer,
Kelley, and others, are matters Of record.
His recent change into a full-blown negro
suffrage Radical left no more points in the
political compass TO be boxed by him, aud
is due 10 the influence exerted on him by
strOnger-minded associates. Thus il has |
always been that any man willing to as
sume the guardianship Of Grant has easily |
secured his uRreasoning acqniesence in all |
political questions. He has been mental |
GOpyist ever since he was rejected "for
want of capacity" as literal cOpyist four
teen years ago.
Again it has never been insisted upon.
we believe, that General Grant is exactly |
'the slave of his word" We lay little |
stress, to be sure, upon the repeated asser- |
tion of Radical leaders that he broke his |
total abstinence pledges made to Congress-
man Rice. Pledges of that sort are apt TO /
be lightly made, and they can hardly be |
said to involve the obligations of con-
tract, however their facile abandonment |
may be construed in governing our /
estimate Of the moral force of him who
makes and breaks them.
But there is one point on which both /
Radicals and Conservatives agree in find /
ing Grant guilty of more serious infdeli- /
ty to his word. That point is his wilful /
deception of the President and the coun-
try in the matter Of the War Department.
On Saturday he distinctly promised that /
he would not give up without notice to the
President, and that on Monday he would |
call on the President to confer. On Mon
day he did not call on the President TO |
confer, and be did give M the War Depart
ment without notice. No one denies this, /
just because nobody can deny it, nor can
the falsehood be smothered by silence, nor /
forgotten in time.
These few things which Grant is not are |
loo obvious for refutation and almost for
statement. Though they must be admit
ted by friends and will be hardly pressed
by his opponents, it is well to bear them in
mind, at the beginning the campaign of
criticism on whicn the country is enter
ing.-M y. World. ..-... {