The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1871-04-29
George T. Downing ON rho Radical Party
BivuIvular Boomerang.

inSsou' otrauSey pOrtent0uS sounds are those
we hear issuing from the great polyglot camp
OF the republican party. The elements are
out OF harmony, the machinery cut Of joint,
ana there is rasping and q cracking and
croaking that bode bad weather ahead for the
radical rowboat. In another column we give
Q long blast from the lusty trombone Of George
I. Downing, the great oysterman IF Washing
ton and Newport. whose skill in combining the
stew political with the stew bivalvular has
never been excelled in any age or cline.
Andrew johnson few years ago set up for
being the colored mans Moses, and bewildered
every darby in the South with his figures of
fancy about leading him to t'other side of Jor-
dan, to land flowing with milk and molasses.
1t was a weak invention. 1t was q bubble
that George I. Downing pricked with the
point of his oyster knife and for the wondrous
penetration then shown and since sustained on
every great crisis and occasion George has
been awarded the champion belt, and no other
Moses is now recognized by the coored race
True, Fred Douglass played Moses for while,
but played it badly. Had he been
brought up, like George, in the atmos-
phere OF Fulton Market in the busy
mart of men, where humanity is catered for,
classified and codided, and where opening
oysters Is step to opening path to fame
and fortune, he might have cleaned the
experience necessary to be at oncs useful
and an elegant Moses. George graduated at
the best school on the Continent, and now he
has come to look upon the world as his oyster,
which he can at any time open, lay on the half
shell, and toss off as comfortably as If i! were
Shrewsbury or Cherrystone. There is
philosophy in this business which George
himself could well and amply explain, spoon
in hand, over simmering saucepan of
stews. AS we said beforehand it can't be
too well understood-George is now the bona
tide Moses, and has a right to be. As such his
utterances on any subject concerning the
tribes under his charge have weight and a
significance that cannot be questioned.
Figuratively he has gone up the mountain or
to the top of the Capitol, and with meta
phorcal forty-foot telescope swept the politi-
cal horizon. He reports that things are not
as they ought to be. We refrain from infring-
ing on the copyright of his rhetoric, but he
declares substantially and emphatically that
the republican party is not treating the negro
as man and brother. This is his entire
complaint crystallized in line, and if the
republican party continue this treatment
George very broadly hints that ''the man and
brother" will seek for sympathy and rela-
tionship among the democracy. Nobody can
contradict the fact that the republican party
has treated the negro shamefully. After
emancipating him, giving him the bootless
ballot and few offices not worth noticing,
there they leave him-there they drop him, in
the words of Abraham Lincoln, 'ike a hot
potato" Was it for this the colored troops
fought nobly, for this they moved forward to
the polls like the Macedonian Phalanx, and
for this they bear with the temper-trying
tricks of the Ku Klux at the South?
cit is painfully evidenA" says George,
shat there is lack of due respect for colored
men on the part of the republican party" Of
course there Is, and George is in a position
to know it. Beneath the floor where the four
teenth and fifteenth amendments were started
on their troublesome journey George keeps
his restaurant. From the leonine Stevens to
the assinine Mullins all have partaken of his
hospitality at the regular rates. He has had
the fullest opportunities of measuring the
degree of respect which the radical consumers
of his oysters show to the colored man.
They are willing to take his oysters on
perfect equality, bat do they take the
h,o ;sc Not &c
Up stairs they talk and talk till words grow
exhausted in favor of the s'great principle" of
equality in all things; but when they go down
to dine which Of them has the courage to put
his theory 10 practice and say, ''Come, George,
take seat and try dozen on the half shell; )"
or ''How dye do, Mr.. Downing? Had your
dinner? Join us in a clam chowder;" or ''Call
up and see US, Mr.. Downing. Mrs. Jones will
be 30 glad. Bring your family and make
yourself at homer" Oh! no. You hear
nothing of this kind in the radical restaurant,
and George knows it.
But this is a triling complaint compared to
the general conduct in political affairs of the
republican party towards the black man. II
feel called on" says George, ITO declare that
a majority of those known as republicans in
their example practically illustrate Judge
Taney's declaration that black men have no
rights that white men are bound to respect.
Just so. The black man has exchanged per-
sonal for political bondage, to escape from
which George, as the new Moses, looks visit
fully across the lines to the democratic
camp. He quotes Fernando Wood, and
thinks he sees in the luminous speech
of that gilt-edged statesman CLEAN
of hope that the democratic heart is
melting in sympathy for the Ethiopic tribes,
that positions are reversed and the scalding
tears that furrowed republican cheeks in the