The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1871-04-04
The Carnival of Revenge.
PORTLAND

The Carnival OF Revenge |
This CHASTITY festival, at which every man
who has a grievance against the Republican
party or grudge against President Grant, is
an earnest and ostentatious assistant, should |
be entirely satisfactory to its conductors-ior |
they have every thing in their own way.
General Grant is not seen there, nor are us |
ceremonies disturbed by any discordaht voices
from the White House. While MI. sumner
is denouncing him, even before the represent
atyes of foreign nations, as guilty OF crimes
which deserve impeachment, while in the
Senate and before the world .he persists in
describing him as a leader of Ku Klux, CT in
other words as being a deliberate murderer,
while in his own house and to his personal
friends he declares him 10 be another Tiber-
MS. which is to say that be is a monster of
wickedness unsurpassed in history; while
Senator Schurz of Missouri, happy in having
given that State over to the Copperheads, is
by his bitter arraignment of the Republican
administration, doing his best to transfer all
the States to them; while the New YORK
Sun, of which it is enough to say that Charles
"A. LANA Is us euitOi, ohc WV ~''
Evening Post, whose columns are ABOUT
equally divided between efforts to strike down
President Grant aud to set up William M.
Tweed, and the Chicago Tribune, whose
faith consists in believing that Satan is God,
and that Horace White is his prophet, and
other journals like these, having with them.
entered into contract to destroy the Repub-
lican party, are unceasing and INSCRIPTIONS
in their assaults upon the President; while
that wing of the army Of Washington cores
pondents which fights only in the cause that
pays, disguised and enraged that ii was not
one accord fall upon General Grant and snarl
at him with such malignity as injured impo-
tence and impecuniosity can inspire; while ex-
rebels and their sympathizers at Washington
storm their applauses upon Senators Sumner
and Schurz from the galleries of the Senate
as they formerly Missed at them their hatred;
while every Copperhead and every follower OF
Andrew johnson in the United States con-
tributes his best that the dithyrambic of Hate
may want nothing either in hideouSness or
rage, not word of complaint, not a syllable
of defence, not even q whisper of reviling
comes from the strong and patient man who
has been thus foully assaulted and outraged.
No grander sight has been witnessed for GEN.
turtles. He biles his time and he can afford
to. He, at least, keeps the peace. He may
remember, as the country will not forget, that
this is not the first time that he has had to
encounter the misconceptions, the jealousies
and the hates of men whom his own superb
GRITTY or his virtue has offended. 1t has not
yet faded from the memory of his country
men that after he had taken Forts Henry and
Donaldson and the city of Nashville had fail
en- into his hands, the first considerable sue
cesses achieved by the national arms in the
war Of the rebellion, an order was prepared
by his immediate superior for his removal
from the command OF the army by which
such results had been accomplished, and by
which, soon afterwards the important victory
of Corinth was won-that during the seige of
Vicksburg the murmurs for his removal were
loud and constant that in the Wilderness
and through the entire campaign which end
ed in the capitulation of Richmond, the sur
render of Lee and the restoration of the
Union, there were no seasons when the faint
hearted and the false were not caIping at
him, and the malignant were not plotting his
humiliation and disgrace. And they will re-
member, too, that taking no notice of these
maligners and enemies he kept steadily at his
work, hearing nothing, needing nothing but
the calls OF duty; that when the great hour
of victory struck he took no airs upon him.
self as conqueror, but gave the credit to his
generals and the army; that declining to visit
Richmond and receive an ovation at the CAPT
tai of the dead confederacy, he unostenta-
tiously and as only great man could, returned
to Washington and there at once and quietly
employed himself in the routine discharge Of
the duties pertaining TO his Office. His fellow
citizens will bear these things In their hearts,
and they will feel that, whether bis judgment
has been right or wrong in regard to the ac-
quisition of San Domingo, he has been "cear
in his great Office" that he has done nothing
for lucre, nothing for ambition and nothing
for revenge, but all for his country, her pros
perity and her glory, that he has consciously
in no way, in fact or in thought, violated the
Constitution or the laws of his country, and
that he has attempted nothing for which he
had not the well considered and approved
precedents of other administrations than his
own. And so they will not doubt that when
the hour of passion has passed and the facts are
fully understood by the people, as they will be,
his character as a magistrate and his integrity
as man, will be not only unframed, for they
are unharmed now, but unsuled by even
suspicion Of wrong.
The world will admire and wonder when it
understands that all this storm of denuncia-
ton and opprobrum had its origin in the
fact that upon question of international law
affecting the conduct of England towards the
United States in our late civil war, the Presi-
dent could not agree with Senator Sumner
a question upon which every first class states.
man and every able publicist in Europe and
America are with the President and against
the Senator, and that q decision of it in ac-
cordance with the views of the latter would
have placed in jeopardy one of the most sa-
cred rights of the nation. The President
would not consent to recognize principle
which would preclude this country from de.
Gliding for itself when il should or should not
extend to other powers the rights of belliger-
ancy. A nation which does not reserve this
power surrenders part of its sovereignty.
and is no longer independent. That Presi.
dent Grant, new to political life and unedu.
Gated in the arts of craftsmanship should diff
fer from the Senate's chairman of the Com
mittee on Foreign Relations was too bad, but
that he should differ and be right was inioler-
able. Mr.. Summers amour propre had been
wounded. The offense was objectionable by
gods or men. Hence this .fete of the re-
venges in which are illustrated the crimes OF
our modern fiberius of the Chief of the Ku
Klux Of the Isles, compared to whose sins.
those of the Ku Klux leaders of the Carroll
mas, scarlet though they may be, are white as
snow.
The DisaHectiOn of an Exp ostnaster.
INSTRUCTIVE CORRESPONDENCE.
The public are not unfamiliar with the fire.
quently recurring phenomena of Office hold.
ers who receive startling revelations concern
ing the weakness, wickedness aud uselessness
of the party with which they have acted, i'm
mediately upon their compulsory retirement
to private life. A pretty correct estimate is
commonly put upon these sudden CONVEX
sions and the real animus of the persons who
experience them is. generally understood.