The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-05-21

JANUARY, 1901. WHICH 6ApItbbou bh0 bdu1o
principles with added emphasis, was
carefully read over to him before it was
sent to Congress, and it received his un-
qualified assent. The existing evidence of
this can be easily adduced: it is direct as well
as circumstantial oral as we'll as document
ary, and some of it is in the handwriting of
Mr.. Stanton himself. If you are willing to
put the question into proper form for judi
cial investigation, will aid you in doing so,
and give you an opportunity to make out
your case before an impartial tribunal.
If your statement be true that Mr.. Stanton
disbelieved in the principles to which the ad-
ministration was unchangesbly pledged, how
did he come to take Office under it Was he
30 anxious for public employment that he
consented to give up his own convictions and
assist in carrying out measures which his
Judgment condemned as the offspring of
timidity and treason? Or, did he accept the
confidence of the President and the Cabinet
with q predetermined intent to betray it?
Either way you make him guilty of unspeak-
able baseness
But conceding that he would accept, why
did the President, with the consent of his ad-
visers, give the appointment to a man whom
they knew to be hostile to them upon points
SO vital not only to the public interests but
their own characters? That at such time
they would invite an undisguised enemy into
their counsels, is tale as wildly improbable
as any that ever was swallowed by the credu-
ity of the Salem witch-inders. Your own
consciousness of this compsls you to explain
by attributing it to q special intervention of
Divine Providence. Your impious theory is
that Almighty God procured this appointment
miraculously, in order that you, the enemies
of the American Constitution, might have n
spy in the camp of its friends. This will not
serve your turn. Reason never refers hu-
man event to supernatural agency, unless it
be impossible to account for it in any other
way. The mystery of this case is easily
cleared up by the hypothesis that you have
misrepresented it from beginning to end;
which is no miracle at all, but quite in the
natural order of things.
The truth is, Mr.. Stanton was in perfect
accord with the administration, before and
after he became part of it, on every ques-
ton of fundamental principle. He had
unlimited confidence in the men with
whom he was acting, and they confded
in him. For his chief and seme of his
colleagues he professed an attachment
literally boundless; for all of them who
stayed during the term, and for Thomp-
son, who did not stay, he was warm in his
friendship. You would now have us believe
that these were merely the arts of an accom-
plished impostor; that while he was, in ap-
pearance, zealously cooperating with us, he
was reporting to you that she saw treason ia
every part of the Governments" and that he
was secretly using all the means in his
power to stir up the vilest passions against u.s.
Some overt acts of the treachery you
ascribe to him are curious; for instance, the
Sumner story, which you tell with singular
brevity and GOODNESS. Mr.. Sumner called on
him at his Office, for what purpose you do
not disclose. Mr.. Stanton did not receive
mic oi{ ~, {Io, &C
tleman or the courtesy due to Senator, much
less with the cordiality of a friend; but hus-
tied him out of the building as if ashamed
to be seen with him in daylight. He
told him expressly that he did not dare to
converse with him there, but would see him
at one o'clock that night. The hour came,
and then, when the city was wrapped in
sleep, he skulked away to the meeting place,
where, under the cover of darkness, he whis-
pered the tales which he did not dare to utter
in the hearing of the parties they were
intended to ruin. And those parties were
his friends and benefaetors! Into what un-
fathomed gulf of moral degradation must the
man have fallen who could be guilty of this!
But remember, this is another secondhand
story, and you are not competent witness.
We will trouble you to call Mr. Sumner, if you
please. Let him testify what treason Stanton
disclosed, and explain, if he can, how this
midnight and secret information against men
whom he was afraid to confront is consistent
with Mr.. Stantons character as a courageous,
outspoken, and honest man.
He said nothing whatever to us about the
treason which he saw in every part of the
Government. He made no report of his dis
coveries to the President. He maintained
unbroken his fraternal relations with his col
leagues By your own account, he admitted
to Mr.. Sumner that he did not dare to speak
of such thing even in his own Office, lest it
might reach the ears of his associates in the
administration. Among the members of
Congress whom you name as the recipients
of his secret communications, not one man of
moderate views is included; much less did he
He cautiously selected their bitterest enemies,
and poured his venom into hearts already
fostering with spite. The House raised a
committee ''to investigate reasonable ma
chinations and conspiracies," upon which
there were members of both parties. Stanton
did not go before it and tell his story; nor did
he mention the subject to Cochrane, Rey-
nolds, or Branch; but he made an arrange
ment by which Messrs. Howard and Dawes
were informed" of whatever they wanted to
know. 1t appears, too, that a committee of
vigilance was organized by the more active
Republican members of Congress; in other
words, the extreme partisans of both houses
got up secret body of their own, not to
perform any legal duty pertaining to theiI
offices, not to devise public measures fol
ayerting the ruin which threatened the coun
| try, but to prowl about in the dark for some
thing to crafty personal malice or make G
little capital for their party. You were
member of that committee, as it was fl
you should be, and Mr.. Stanton gave
you warnings and suggestions" hoy
to proceed. This is what you call ''rising il
fhaf crisis ahnUa tho e