The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-03-17
Som. Men who Are Not In the Cabinet.

Soma Men who Are Not In the Cabinet.
Pfo1, the ~. y. World.
We are among those who are willing to bs
pleased, and, as we can find little to approve
in the Cabinet which President Grant has Sc
lected, we will try to console ourselves by the
coDtemplst on of some OF the names he has
omitted. Bad as the Cabinet is, it might have
been worse. The new Cabinet is merely weak,
whereas IL might have been wicked. Among
the cons picuous Republicans who have bsen
omitted from it, there is no one whose reiec.
ton gives greater satisfaction to Democrats
than Edwin M. Stanton.
Stanton made stump speeches for Grant,
and, during the early part of the winter, his
name appeared on all the Cabinet states.
Nobody seemed quite sure whether he was to
be the head of the State or of the Treasury
Department; but his friends credited him
with go much administrative energy that they
supposed the new President could hardly get
Oh without him. And it is true enough that
this impetuous bad man is an abls executive
officer. Gratifying as it is to Democrats that
Stanton is not appointed, his rejection reflects
no great credit upon General Grant. He is SO
much abler an administrator than General
Grant himself that the new President would
have been eclipsed by his own satellite and if
there be any one principle on which he has con-
structed his Cabinet it is that he will tolerate no
man in it who could ever become his
rival. Stanton's impetuous efficiency
would therefore have excluded him, even
if General Grant had had no other obieo-
tioDs to him. But Stanton had shown, in his
treatment of President Johnson, that he was
totally destitute of loyalty to his official chief.
General Grant very properly did not wish to
have such character among his confidential
advisers; and, in the course of the winter, it
came out through General Banks that Stanton
had intrigued against Grant himself previous
to the capture OF Vlcksourg. The zeal with
which General Grant rewards his friends and
pays his debts OF personal gratitude at the
public expense, made it impossible for him to
bestOw office upon Stanton after he discovered
that he had intrigued to deprive him of his
command and arrest him in what proved to
be great career. But, whatever may have
been the motives for excluding Stanton, it is
a satisfaction to see that bold, faithless man
reduced to hopeless insignifcance.
For year or two, the Republican party
made Stanton the chief pivot of the politics of
the country. By his intTigues with leading
members OF Congress he satisfied them that
he was the enemy of President Johnson
and spy upon his actions; and it was solely
with view to retain him at the head of the
War Department that the Tenure of. 0 flee act
was extended TO members of the Cabinet.
Stanton, the better to conc sal the double part
he was playing, gave an opinion in the Cabi-
though intending at the time TO use it for the
destruction of the President. When asked to
resign, he refused; when suspended, he said
he yielded only TO superior force and when,
after his restoration by the Senate, the order
| was issued for his removal, he forthwith sent
| it to the House of Representatives as a basis
| of impeachment. The whole impeachment
| trial was battle fought by Republicans in
| behalf of Stanton. But the new President
| who protested against his removal and aided
in his restoration, has deserted and ignored
him, and treats him with contempt. Having
| lent himsel to base uses to ingratiate himself
| with the Republicans, and even aspred to be
their candidate for the Presidency, Stanton is
now flung aside as he deserves. He will have
ample time to consider whether treachery aud
baseness have improved his position before
| the country. We have reason to be thankful
that General Grant has motives of some kind
for negleotipg and repudiating Stanton.
| Another man who was talked of promi-
nently in connection with place in the
Cabinet, for the last month or two before the
Inauguration, was Joseph Holt. Holt is an
ADLER man than majority of the Cabinet; but
all honorable men should rejoice that he is
excluded, even though he is supplanted by
men of ofmoderate capacity and no experience.
| There are few men who made themselves more
| odiOus during the war, and Immediately after
its close, than this man Holt. The appoint
ment either ofhim or Of Stanton to place in
the Cabinet would have been gross and
gratuitous insult to the South, as we'll as a
fout at a great political party nearly as large
as that by which General Grant was elected.
Although there are two stiff radicals in the
Cabinet, there is no man who has made him
self particularly odious to Democrats. With
Stanton, and Holt, and Butler excluded, we
are saved from the most insulting appoint
mepts that could have been made. We must
! do General Grant the justice to say that, in
making his Cabinet, he has not gone out Of
his way to find men offensive to the Demo-
cratic party. Our objection to the new Cabi-
net is, that il does not carry heavy guns
enough that it is deficient in capacity and
experience; not that men have been selected
whom the Democratic party regards with
loathipg.
The Opposition to the Fifteenth Amen ].
! ment.
| "