The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1872-02-03

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well considered letter from Washington,
urging upon the conservative republicans the
nomination of Judge Davis, of Illinois, as a
candidate for the Presidency in opp ostlon to
Gen. Grsut. The Cincinnati Commercial, as
most of our readers are aware, is an inf uential
organ OF that wing of the republican party
which, alarmed at the feartully rapid central
ization OF power in the general government
under the leadings of President Grant, and
seeing that no earthly power can pre- vent his
denomination by the Republican National
Convention, proelaims in advance its deter
minatlon not tosupport him if an unobjectiou-
able conservative man can be placed in the
field against him. This man the Commercial' $
correspondent finds in Judge Davis, of Hi.
nols, at present one of the Justices of the
Supreme Court OF the United States,
ofcourse, the success Of the project of the
conservative, anti centralzing anti-Gra re-
publicans contemplates and depends upon
cordial union, in the support of their candl.
date, with the democrats. While, therefore,
they are compelled to select as their candidate a
man whose record as a republican, on all the
great questions which were involved in and
settled by the late civil war is clean, they
must also present a candidate whose position
on those new issues growing out of the cen
trailing tendencies which form the pecul
lar and dangerous feature of modern Grant.
ism, is such as shall command the confidence
and support of the democratic party There
Is no doubt but on these points the record OF
Judge DAVIS is all that can be dcslreu His
republicanism was never doubted; yet while
placing himself upon record as such wherever
1t was proper for or expected of him to do so,
he has never gone out of his way to exasper-
ate the democrats. Besides, in those trials,
like the Mlligan case and some others, in
which the centralizing tendencies of radical
ism were brought under the crucial test of he
Supreme Court of the United States, Judge
Davis won the everlasting gratitude and con-
hdence If the democratic party and all good
men by standing firmly, with three other re-
publican and all the democratic Judges on
the bench, by the constitution, IN spite of the
frOwns and menaces of both the radical major
ity in congress and the executive.
! Besides, Judge Davis is a western man, of
exceptional purity of life, and has been con-
splcuous for years as one of the strongest and
abest men in the country His mind is clear,
his experience in public concerns great, his
observation wide, and his judgment quick
and strong. Young at tifty-seven years of
age, he is, physically and intellectually, in his
prime, being no older than ordinary men at
forty. five.
The issues on which the democrats and re-
pubhcans locked horns ten years ago have
been disposed of and settled. The negro has
been emanc1pated, clothed with the elective
franchise, aud in point of civil and political
rights placed on an equality with the white
man. While the democratic party can never
cease to condemn the successive steps bv
| which these ends were accomplished, thew
have at this day no purpose to disturb the
settlement" But as the excitement evoked
by the settlement Of these issues dies away
the old monster Capitalization, the offspring
and nursing of the old Federal party, and
supposed to have been killed and buried by
Jefferson and the old democratic party again
raises his hideous front under the form of
modern radcalism or Grantism The mon
ster, as IN his former estate, Is again hydra
headed, military tyranny and lawlessness,
| corruption in office, scandalous ring legislation
in congress, and reckless extravaganza and
waste in public xpenditures-continue heads
of the same old beast. revolving around the
great gulf-like nav, Capitalization.
1t is nothing to us now, and can be nothing
to any democrat OF sense, whether Judge
Davis was an abotionist in 1860, or favored
negro suffrage in 1861 if he is sound today on
the grand old issues of States rights and
! opposition to Capitalization of power in the
federal executive (who has already more
power than any constitutional monarch on the
face Of the carth,) and 10 true to the grand
| ideas OF civil liberty which have made the
name Of Jefferson n power whenever, in ANY
quarter OF the world, an cnslavc,! people have
dared to strike for liberty.
An exciting election took ulpcp in Philolel