The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1870-12-12

clean sweep, as political sensation, would
wake up the sleepy heads throughout the
country; but even partial reconstruction
with some new pieces of timber OF the Old
Hickory quality would be great hit. For
example, John w. Forney, backed by that
skilful veteran politician, General Cameron,
is spoken of for Postmaster General Why
not? Is not Forney, looking to the necessities
of Grant and his party, the very man for the
time and the place? Was 1t not Forney who
saved the democratic party in 1856, by saving
Buchanan in the Pennsylvania October cleo
ton Of that year? 1t was; and how did he
save Buchanan? By . judicious application
of some two hundred thousand dollars, more
or less, raised in New York In the buying up
certain hungry Fillmore journals and cliques
in the Keystone State. Those journals and
cliques were In the market, and II Greeley
had been as smart as Forney in securing that
Pennsylvania Fillmore balance Of power by .
larger bid than Fcrney's Fremont might have
been elected. Who knows?
Forney, as an active party engineer, at all
events, would be at this time to General Grant
worth dozen Greeleys In the Post Ofioe De-
partment. Greeley has always been, is and
always will be too crotchety and too full Of
what he knows about farming for . party
manager. Lincoln smoked him and joked him
in that Niagara Falls diplomacy and in other
things to his hearts content; and everybody
was delighted with ''Old Abe's" hearty jokes,
and Lincoln's was the true conception Of
Greeley. Even Thurlow Weed, with all his
"reminiscences and all his now harmless ego
tisms, has been a bungling political manager
compared with Forney and very small
potato compared with Cameron. And who is
John Covsde, who insists that Cameron is not
the man for the confidence of Grant, Covode,
we believe, is the photographer who originally
spelled Congress with X, and is an old worn
out political fossil, defeated for Congress IN
the late Pennsylvania election. And can any
one suppose that with the republican rein
forcement of thirty thousand negro votes in the
late Maryland election Forney, as Postmaster
General, would have been as unlucky as Cres-
well? No; for Forney would have carried the
State We know, from what we know ofTam-
many Hall, how the thing would have been
done, and Forney, graduate of Tammany,
knows how to do it,
There is no use in being thin skinned in deal
ing with the rhinoceroses of party politics. A
party, like an army, must have disciplinarian
at the head of it, or it will become demoralzed
and an easy prey to disciplined enemy.
Look at the Prussians and then at the French.
Look at Tammany Hall and then at the repub-
lican party of New York General Grant,
then, can do nothing better than to initiate the
party policy of General Jackson, beginning
with his Cabinet His programme as states
man is safe enough, but it has neither the
sound Of the trumpet nor the roll of the drum.
AS politician, therefore, General Grant must
look to the discipline Of his party and call his
best generals around him, or in his next ad-
vance to the Rhine he may fail, like Napoleon,
with all his troops of the line and all his Afri-
can legions.