The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-04-13
Tho Anti-Grant Republicans nj the Cooper
Institute-The Programme.

Instirute-The Programme.
The walls OF the Cooper Institute, which
have hedged in many curious and enthusiastic
crowds in their time, re-echoed last night to
the call Of the republican ''soreheads"
for rally at the Cincinnati Con-
vention. Senators Trumbuil and Schurz, with
all the usual surroundings of hot, 70 .gy
impetuosity, laid their little panacea for the ills
Of the Union before the meeting, and retired
in the full expectancy of seeing the
seed OF republican discomfort which
they had sowed for the first time
In New York, develop before morning as
fast as the tabled Japanese radishes
that grow ten feet in night. And what was
the burden of the seductive song which, with
Schurz as its Orpheus, is to WOO not only the
republicans away from the administration,
but bring the rank and file Of the democracy
into radical camp, where JEFF Davis and
Sumner and Toombs and Trumbull will
lie down together? After very modest intro
duction, recalling some sixteen years gone
when New York last had seen his face,
Senator Trumbull poured forth his bluff
Western story. He complained of the dis
abilities of the South and applauded
MIR. Greeley for his amnesty suggestions, but
strangely omitted to say that his co-sorehead
Senator, Sumner. killed with civil
rights amendment the best Amnesty bill
which came from the House. Carpet
baggers were next severely handled,
and the Custom House patronage over which
Brother Fenton mourns and will not be
comforted came in for its share.
Civil service reform naturally followed,
and was treated with disingenuous-
ness as creditable to President Grant as his
friends could desire. Then the encroach-
ment on the rights of States was lamented
over with a number of crocodile tears which
suggest much inward remorse. Then came the
military despotism and the sixty thousand
office-holders, and then the corruptions,
with Comptroller Hulburd and the Secor
claims as the frightfnl examples. We have
said that there was a disngenuousness about
the grouping Of these windy charges which is
all the more pointed when we find that
he gives credit to the administration for
full Investigations. But he thinks that
nobody save the opponents of the admins
tration can achieve the reforms and correct
the abuses which still exist This is modest
As Mr.. Schurz simply takes up this note
and makes it, if possible, more absurd |
by a display of egotism which would |
make him the sole fountain from which all the |
reform is to flow, we shall not follow it fur |
Their for the present. To be sure, there is |
nothing very new in all this, and after
all the outside horn blowing it is a very weak |
show when we come to examine the wax |
works, and find they are the same old |
Figures" damaged about the heads that have |
been modelled in Missouri by Brown and Blair,
and are to be melted into Presidential can
didate group at Cincinnati.
Now the important question recurs, what is
the prospect for this anti Grant republican
movement? 1t has been charged that the
enterprise is a creation of the Free Trade
League and for the purpose of split in the
republican party, whereby the free traders in
the coming fall elections may secure the bal
ance OF power in the next Congress. This |
idea is plausible one in view of the end pro-
posed and, from the fact that in the call for |
the Cincinnati Convention free trade is the |
prominent feature of the accompanying reso-
lutions of the Missouri Convention making
the call, we are strongly inclined to the con-
clusion that the free traders have long
finger in the pie. We know, however, that |
the Missouri republican bolt was engineered |
by Governor Gratz Brown, Carl Schurz and |
other republicans disappointed in the division |
in the federal offices of Missouri, and that |
these men, with General Blair and other lead
ing democrats, arranged the coalition of DEM
ocrats and anti-Grant republicans by which |
they carried the State and returned General |
Blair to the United States Senate in the place |
of an administration republican. Local issues
in Missouri favored the movement; but its
success, on the first trial-forty thousand
majority on the popular vote-ied the man.
ayers concerned into the mistake of magnify
ing 1t into a movement which might be sue
cessfully applied to all the States in the Pres
idential election.
But Virginia and Tennessee, and Georgia
and Alabama, aud others of the States in the
late war committed in whole or in part to the
fortunes of the Southern confederacy have,
since the rebellion, In the terrible tortures of
a radical reconstruction, undergone the same
political commissions and revulsions as Mis-
souri,. First, sweeping acknowledgements in
those States cut off large bodies of voters,
and next, in the reservations of the franchise
large bodies of voters were gained by the
parties opposed to the national administration,
and hence these violent political upheavals in
the revolutionary ex-rebel States. They are
the revenges, the ideas, the unexpended pas
sions of the war, breaking out in these polti-
cal conflicts Of the conflicting elements and,
wherever the combustibles exist. for their