The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-02-28

partisan malice, dared him to the worst,
skunk back like a whipped cur into the re-
cesses of the State Department, under cover
of its then congenial chief clerk.
There are Democrats who remember how
that Seward endeavored to make Stanton
''divine. sanctioned all his deeds of infamy,
and endorsed to the utmost all his dogmas in
respect to the authority of the Federal Gov
eminent, under the WdT poaoer, to strip away
from a civilian, troublesome to the admins
tration in political sense, all the guarantees
of the Constitution in respect to individual
rights, wrest him from his home, deprive
him of his property, and cast him into dun
geons so fetid and filthy that those of Venice
under ground we're airy palaces in COM
parison.I
If there be any Democrat who has ceased
to be mindful of what Seward and Stanton
together did in that hour of woe, let him turn
to the Bureau of Military Justice for decisions
of that plant tool of both, Judge Advocate
General Holt, and read how q civil court in
a loyal State had no jurisdiction, in time of
war, to try a soldier for murder, burglary,
or larceny; that persons accused of inter
ference with voting by soldiers could be
tried by military court; that trial by jury in
Indiana must give way to the war power;
that the authority of the administration to
suppress by force a Democratic newspaper
in New York rested on as solid
foundations as the right to lombard the
enemys fort at Richmond; that military
commission was useful in civil causes, be-
cause of 'the extended reach" and wide
scope" it could cover, and could make ''the
most complete and reliable disclosure of the
inner life" of witnesses. Much of all of this
was swept away by the Supreme Court in
Milligans case; but it still lives to show what
ideas of civil liberty Seward and Stanton
aonb had lot fhoca xuho oonnfiop oYIob
trines make haste to fall down in alteration
before their co-originator, administrator,
and, for all the public knows, their vindicator
ever since the Supreme Court has stamped
them out.
In respect to Mr.. Stewards eminent SER
vices to his country while Secretary of State
in what great acts do they consist? That his
writings in the Department of State were
great in quantity we admit But in what else?
Certainly not in literary merit. In all the
voluminous dispatches which he addressed
to his diplomatic agents abroad, touching
the origin and effect of the great Rebellion,
there is not one which, in precision, clear
ness, directness, earnestness, and elevated
patriotism, compares with that from Secre-
rary Black, dated February 2S, 1861, in which
he calls the attention of our foreign minis
ters to the great social and political convul-
sion then felt to be imminent and prescribed
their duty. In the early part of Mr.. Stewards
labers as Secretary of State there were TWO
objects desirable to be attained by this coun-
try: one was to prevent the recognition of the
seeded States as belligcrents, and the other
to effect complete prohibition of privateer-
ing, with immunity of private property on
the high seas. In both of these Mr.. Seward
pitiably failed.
For Mr.. Stewards conduct in the matter of
the Trent, we are at loss to see how Demo-
Gratis are to render to him distin guished
honor The seizure of the Rebel commits
sioners was formally approved at the time by
Edward Everett, Lewis Cass, and Caleb Cush-
ing. Moreover, Secretary Welles congratu-
lated Captain Wilkes (November 80, 1861,
by public order, for the great public service
which he had rendered in ''the capture of the
Rebel emissaries." This order could not
have been issued without advice of the then
Attorney General. But yet Mr.. Seward,
when the peremptory demand came from
England to apologize or adopt the act aoithin
SeUen days, our Secretary of State backed
down upon the lawyers dodge that Wilkes
did not bring in the steamer for adjudication.
In the management of the Alabama claims
his conduct could not command the approba-
ton of even one of his Republican friends in
the Senate. Indeed, but one Senator of any
political party undertook to vindicate it..
Certainly that affords not much claim to civic
glory.
Do our fellow-citizens of Irish extraction
find anything to applaud in his treatment
of Fenian prisoners in Great Britain or do
law-respecting citizens, of any race, intend to
sing plaudits to the kidnapping extradition Of
Arguelles?
AS for the brutal injuries Mr.. Seward re.
ceived in Washington by an assassin's hand,
we would hasten to express our denunciation
of the crime and sympathy for the victim.
But that has been already done in no half.
way manner, and is an affair quite different
from Democratic approval of Mr. Stewards
political acts as Secretary of State and as
Senator.