, 1872-09-05
Deserving the Sinking Ship.

t-.5n -
The column of leading men through
out the country who are leaving the
Grant ranks and are declaring for Gree
ley and Brown is matter of wonder and
astonishment. Day by day the volume
increases in size and Importance
Among others, Hon. -Galusha A. Grow,
for twelve years Republican Congress-
man from the Wilmot district, of Penn
sylvania, and speaker Of the House dur
ing his last term of service, has formally
repudiated Grant and declared for Gree
ley. Mr.. Grows record as one of the
earliest, most earnest, and most consist
ent of Republicans has given him an
unquestioned right to rank with the
sblest and purest of his party. He was
an early advocate of the Homestead law
and one of its most tircless champions.
In letter recently addressed to Colonel
A. X. Mcclure, Chirman of the Penn
sylvania Liberal Republican Committee,
after stating his inability to take the
stump because of throat disease and
generally impaired health, he says:
I am for Greeley for President. He
has devoted "busy life" to earnest
thought on all the grave questions of
government policies, and the equally
grave questions affecting the welfare of
labor and the development of the indus
trial interests of the country. Penny
less, friendless and alone in great city,
struggling for years against adverse for
tune, he has achieved unprecedented
success. Editing the recognized organ
of the old Whig party lin which he had
been schooled from boyhood,) he WAS
among the first in advocating its aban-
donment and the formation of the Re-
publican party, when he had to choose
between duty to his convictions or fealty
to party organization. For thirty years
with each setting sun he has boldly ut
tered his convictions on the worlds
public doings of the preceding "a hours,
whether political, social. moral, or reli-
gious, yet never pandering to the vices
or follies of his time. During that
whole period, Crusader-like, he has
championed the universal manhood of
the race and the equal rights of all man
kind.
No one living has devoted more brain
work to the cause of universal liberty,
or the elevation of fallen and crushed
humanity, and few. if any, have endur-
ed more of the jeers of gilded prejudice,
or the SCOTS of bigotted error. Yet to-
day the leading ideas for which he has
struggled so long with unyielding tela-
city are incorporated into organic law
and are stamped indelibly upon the pill
lars of the Republic. And now, when a
great political party, through its regular
organisation, selects such man for its
standard-bearer, hail it as the political
dawn of brighter and better day. The
Democrat who can lay aside his party
prejudices of lifetime and accept the
foremost and ablest representative of
the ideas of his political opponents,
gives the best evidence he can furnish
that he is willing to let the dead past
bury its dead and to act in the living
present.
When the people Of one section of the
Union, despite the education of their
entire section, rally around the standard
of man whom for quarter of centu-
ry they have been taught by all of their
teachings to hate as their deadliest foe,
they give the best evidence that with
them the animoslties Of the past are
buried forever. If not in this way, how
tEen is the Union ever to be restored to
peace and lasting reconciliation? A vic
torious party in carnival of blood can
not, in this age, convert itself into a
party of perpetual hates. When the
vanquished are ready to close the bloody
chasm and bury forever the animosities
engendered in the deadly strife, return
ing over the graves of their dead ones.
and through the bitter memories of the
past to grasp in fraternal concord the
hand of the victor, where is the patri-
otism that would refuse the proffered
one?
In what other way can we ever expect
to have our people homogeneous in
ideas and institutions from the Gulf to
the Lakes, and from ocean to ocean,
with one Union and one destiny now
and forever? Are these grand results of
less consequence to the Republic than
the ambitious wishes of one man strug-
Cling to prolong his term of Office?
Yours truly,