The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-15
sP1Rxr or THE PRESS.
Editorial Opinions ofthe Leading Journals
upon Current Topios-Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
THE PHILADELPHIA FESTIVAL.

From ths N. Y. World.
Some eighty odd years ago, when a few
hundred officers of the Continental army of
the Revolution, at the close of the war, or
ganized q social reunion, with a mild dis
finctive badge and the slightest possible sus-
picion of inheritance" the sensibilities of
party, if not Of the people, were aroused,
and the thing was regarded as dangerous.
al look upon it" wrote Mr.. jefferson,
gravely, to General Washington in 1856,
''as the germ whose development is one
day to destroy the fabric we have reared"
One smiles in reading this who nowadays
sees on the Fourth of July the feeble rem
nants and inheritors of this association
with q bit of blue ribbon in their button
holes. Still, whether it was an honest,
oreditable distrust, or an idle, causeless
suspicion, we have gotten bravely over it;
and now we have around US military associa-
tions of all kinds and description" Grand
Armies" and "Great Reunions" armies of
the Cumberland" and "Armies of the Poto-
mac"-designed avowedly to embalm the
memories, not as with our ancestors, of q
war against oppression, real or imaginary,
but of ''that worst of wars, a war of brethren"
and not merely that, but if such orators as
Martindale are to have their say, of the sec
tional and doctrinal antipathies in which the
war originated. As.social reunion-nay, even
days of peril and hardship no one can object
to; but when the development of per-
sonal sympathy ripens into a huge parade,
on which are engrafted political ha-
rangues and acrid, though monstously
stupid, poetry and the expression
of professional animosities, the thing is very
different. Such we find, from the reported
proceedings and the concurrent testimony of
gallant men who come discontented from the
xuoc tho raooDf potnrs,o ~,
Philadelphia, at which Sheridan, as if in
fnockery of all Quaker tradition, with the
fresh blood of the Piegan pappooses on his
hands, presided, and Grant assisted, and
Sherman, who had as little to do with the
Army of the Potomac as he has with the noble
army of the liturgy, took part, and Meade,
surrounded by his enemies, played second
fiddle, and Franklin safe unnoticed, and
Mcclellan was barely mentioned - though
when he was there was an outburst from the
masses which the party managers, civil and
military, could not control.
1t must have been a curious sight, this
gathering in the Philadelphia Academy of
Music that accursed building whence, but
q week before, Revels had been excluded,
and across whose polluted threshold-so says
q radical newspaper now before us-''no de-
cent man ought ever again to put his foot" I"
1t is not easy, looking at what was said and
Oouo, W Say why IL was uelu III fuIauelpnla
at all, or even in Pennsylvania, when we
note that the Governor of the Commonwealth
(of whom we are no partisans), though him
self soldier of the Army of the Potomac, and
wounded on the field of Gettysburg on Penn
sylvania soil, was not invited to be present,
and the native-born soldiers of the State and
city were not noticed, or, worse, sneered at.
General Meade, albeit not native-born, but
native-brea, was there and is spoken of by
our neighbor of the Tribune, who had an
ecstatic reporter on hand, las having the face
of an aristocratic Philadelphian, graduated
out of one of the medical schools, with a
touch of Dundreary in his stoop and dim
eyes," while Sheridan's ''cheery countenance
and bright face gathering rather too much
BLOOD" is, alphabetically inclined-is
commemorated. Meade, we repeat. was
there, with his modest right-hand man,
Andrew Humphreys; and as he looked
round he saw, besides Sheridan, by whom
he was overslaughed, not Sickles, trans
lated to higher sphere, nor Butterfeld,
absent for different reason, but Pleasonton,
the most active of the conspirators against
him, and crowd of others who had tried to
blast the laurels when they were fresh upon
his brow. So much for Gettysburg, which
saved Philadelphia; but what of Antietam;
what of him-native of Philadelphia, whom
his venerable mother and all his near kindred
love-who saved the Army of the Potomac
for which Lincoln, not much addicted to
reverential supplication, begged that ''God
would bless him?" If invited to Join them
majority of the rivals around rejoiced il
his absence, and his name was grudgingly
mentioned.
But then, besides a speech, of which WE
have once spoken, there was a poem and 6
poet The latter is thus described by the
1T16ane;-"Boker, the war poet-the hand
some Boxer, as they call him in Philadel
phia, and picture to themselves kind Of
Dutch Byron, too drowsy to be gra ID anG
too well-behaved to be wicked-a lyric poet
whose noblest and boldest fire only
shoulders amid such an oratorica verse
essay as he read" Now, from this higl
praise, though perhaps little unintelligible
we do not wish to detract title; but duty t.
truth compels us to say that on this occasion
the ''war poet" played the Army of the Poto
mac what, in no personal disparagement, W,
must describe as a scurvy trick. Like ''Mrs
Cole, in Foote'S farce, 'she tipped them al
old trader, and actually read to them as fres
poem which was in print certainly 81
months ago, and is contained ia Mr.. Boxer
last volume. Now, while it may be admitte
that Homer and Horace, and Virgil and Mi
ton, and the more direct prototype of all
Pindar are always fresh, the antiseptic pro
cess has not yet touched Boxer Nearly yea
ago we read, on very nice letter-press of MI
Lippincott, such lines as these, which las
week were recited as new in the Academy {
Music:-
'With growing courage day by day. | hung
Above the soldier OF the quiet tongue;
Sneers Kissed about him, penmen fought his war,
Here he was lacking, there he went too far:
Alas, how bloody! But, alack how tame!
o for Lees talentl-o ye, Tools Tor shame!