The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-10-24
PERPETUAL DICTATOR.

Even in the Radical version of Gen. Blairs
late speech at st. Louis, he said nothing
which, construed with the context, conveys
the idea that Gen. Grant, if elected, would
perish by violence before leaving the presiden-
tial mansion. Nothing is more natural than
that the elevation Of such man to the presi-
dency, in such an anomalous and postentous
conjuncture as the present. should have been
referred to as the probable, nay the almost
certain, Inauguration of perpetual dictator
ship terminable only with the ise of the dicta-
tor. The thought has occurred to thousands
besides Gen. Blair. Indeed, It is familiar, no
doubt, to every rejecting person in this coun-
try who has candidly contemplated the poll
teal situstion. That Grant should have deli
berately coalesced with revolutionary faction
which was openly trampling on the Constitu-
ton, and co-operated with it in reducing ten
States to the permanent condition of con-
quered provinces, might well excite
the suspicion that he would be quite
ready, upon occasion, to bring all the rest
of the Union into similar subsection,
and that he would, if opportunity favored,
make the Presidency stepping-stone to abso-
lutc pOMOi h1lu q lAC-lOLS IL 10 pOS-
sible, however, that such an idea has not yet
come over the dreams of the Radical oil
garchs. Blinded with self-conceit they all
probably agree with Wendell Phillips, that
Grant will be dull, unthinking, and yet
effectual tool for the execution of their de-
signs; that he is. politically. incapable of
leading anybody, or in anything and that
they can lay him aside when they have suf-
fciently used him, as easily as he himself
might discharge from his service superan-
nuated horse, or as his genealogical friend,
Marshal Brown, might drown in the Potomac
supernumerary supply. Yet, while thus
eSteeming, or dis-esteeming, Grant, it is not
strange if they are really disposed to resent as
rank treason any expression which may i'm
ply, as the language of Gen. Blair does imply,
the possibility of a presidential tool of the
Radical oligarcby leaving the White House be-
fore the expiration of his official term or of
his natural life. They will concede that
Nero or Borgia, a Sejanus or Gesler,
may justly perish by the hand of violence
but they abhor, as atrocious and sacrilegeous,
the notion that the precious agents and in
carnations of Radical despotism are vulner-
able and perishable precisely as vulgar NOR
tails are. In this, of course, as they must
sooner or later learn, they simply kick against
nature and all history. Radical tyrants, after
all, are made, as all other tyrants have been
made, out Of penetrable stuff Even the
most fragrant pink of carpet-baggery does
not bloom in sacred circle which Death,
at the bidding of Nemesis, will not dare to |
cross.
But while the Radicals are dear lovers of |
despotism, they are the last to think of tolera-
ting any but Radical despots. Hence, should |
Gen. Grant, on becoming President, prove
not to be servile tool of Radicalism, and |
should be grasp absolute power of his own mo-
ton and for his own purposes, his bitterest and |
most INSCRIPTIONS enemies would be these
disappointed, baffled and fallen oligarchs
They would be the loudest in truculent init
nation that he would not leave the White
House alive. Only lack of pluck-for mob
of tyrants are never individually bold
would deter them from attempting openly
to try the issue of force against the longev-
ity of the president-dictator as the measure of
his official tenure. The only resort left them
would be secret assassination. As to the
country at large, it would infinitely prefer the
dictatorship of Grant, pure and simple in its
despotism, to the indefinite, horrid and dis
gushing tyranny of the Radical oligarchy-if
forced to choose between the two.