The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1871-07-04

Quincy Adams.
The letter which we published yesterday
from John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts.
to the editor of the Augusta ARK Bulletin on
! the political situation and the new departure
is highly charged with the Esprit of 76."
Our Arkansas contemporary had written
letter to Mr.. Adams, expressing, among other
things, the apprehension that, with Grants
| vast patronage most unscrupulously used,
he would not yield the Presidential chair even
if defeated before the people in 1872 General
Blairs old idea), and that orr republic, like
its predecessors of old, is so rapidly drifting
into the channels Of corruption that the people
in despair may look to one military leader as
the only means Of saving them from the utter
ruin threatened by another" and in reply to
this letter Mr.. Adams, rs democratic fellow
citizen, pleads substantially that on the ''new
departure" the Southern States may escape
from the pressure Of a military despotism, and
that the blessings of constitutional government
may be restored to the whole country.
First, in endeavoring to place himself in the
situation of suffering democrat in the ''sub-
ject States" Mr.. Adams says, II do try to
take it home to myself, and / do not doubt
that in similar circumstances I should to-day
be an 'unrepentant REBEL sore, angry, beaten
and defiant. With me it would doubtless have
been as it has been with you, that the tender
mercies of reconstruction had been harder to
bear than all the horrors of invasive war.
should have been CALLED by misgovernment
robbed by imported knavery Of the pittance
which the war had spared, exasperated by
wilful and persistent Misrepresentation and
cruelty condemned to hopeless impotence for
the imputed guilt of cowardly crimes
abhorred." All this he can clearly under
stand; and, furthermore, he says, in the posi-
ton of Southern democrat, 81 should have
been Condemned, too, to hold my personal
liberty at the nod of mercenary carpet-bag
ger or the within Of a military satrap. I fear
that should have been an 'irreconcilable;'
l think should be sulky; but know I should
be silly if yielded to the feeling" This is
the essential point in the case. Admitting all
the wrongs of which Southern ''unrepentant
rebels" complain, and fully sympathizng with
these ''irreconcilables, Mr.. Adams, in effect,
admonishes them of the folly of repining over
the '1ost cause" and of the Stiffness of sulkily
waiting and trusting that some day ''some-
thing may turn up" to revive and give the
victory to q Southern confederacy.
On this question Mr. Adams wishes it, no
doubt, to be clearly and universally under
stood that Mr.. Jefferson Davis is all wrong;
that his high hopes of the final success of the
''lost cause" are vain decisions; for, says the
| sagacous young statesman of Quincy, ''the
war has confirmed, beyond the shadow of a
| turning, the destiny which decreed that there
| shall be but one confcderated people of the
| North American Union. No. Rebellious l
| might be, but not weak enough to await the
| resurrection of secession" What, then,
would he do? He is an ULTRA red hot demo-
crat against the party in power He says ''the
whole internal policy of the present admins
| tration" means, not peace and sectional har-
mony. ''but war; :" that Reconstruction meant
war !" that ''the Ku Klux bill declared war"
and that ''this Union is now held together by
force" What, then, is the remedy which Mr..
He simply proposes the new departu re-
| the acceptance of the constitution as it is
thirteenth. fourteenth and fifteenth amend
ments, and all therein contained, from negro
emancipation TO negro suffrage. And he is Of
the opinion, on this new departure, that sit
matters not what man may be chosen to lead
us, so long as his heart is large enough to
hold the whole country, his soul brave
enough to embrace a Confederate as a
brother, and his platform wide enough for
every American citizen to stand upon" or
course, ''to compass this end something Of
control is demanded of the South !" but still If
the attempt suggested is made, "and honestly
and in earnest, it cannot fail" Such are the
salient points and such is the conclusion of
this second chapter of good advice in 1871
from this wise young Massachusetts states
man and democratic politician, Mr.. John
Quincy Adams. What astonishing changes
| we have from this whirligig, this revolutionary
| lottery wheel of American politics From
| 1924 down to 1910 John Quincy Adams, of
Massachusetts grandfather of the present
John Quincy, was fought and denounced by
the old Jacksonan democracy as the living
| embodiment of tie old federal party, its alien
and sedition laws and all its despotic abomina-
TONS: but in 1871, the John Quincy Adams,
of Massachusetts "a chip of the old block,
appears as the foremost and ablest champion
| of the democracy against the party in power,
although on the slavery and the negro ques-
tons the achievements of this party cover the
whole programme Of the first John Quincy
Adams. He died in Congress fighting for the
abolition of slavery-a forlorn hope against
/ AL a4t hat dow undar the ahaolute