, 1872-08-29
A Brave and Manly Letter.

Those of the Illiberal faction who are
SO fond of circulating the slander that
the Liberal nominee for President has
no firmness, will do well to read the fol-
towing extracts from HORACE GREELEY S
letter to the Union League Club, the
the members of which had threatened
to expel him for becoming one of JEFF
ferson Davis bondsmen. The letter
was printed in tie Iibune of May 23d,
1867:
By these presents Greetings-To
Messrs. George W. Blunt, John A. Ken
nedy, John O.. Stone, Stephen Hyatt,
and thirty others, members of the Un-
ion League Club:
Gentlemen was favored on the
10th instant, by an official note from our
courteous President, John Jay, notify
ing me that requisition had been pre-
sented to him for "a special meeting of
the club, at an early day, for the pur-
pose of taking into consideration the
con luct of Horace Greeley, a member
of the club, who has become bonds
man of Jefferson Davis. late chief officer
of the Rebel Government.
Gentlemen. shall not attend your
meeting this evening. l have an en-
gagement out of town, and shall keep
it. do not recognize you us capable
of judging, or even fully apprehending
me. You evidently regard me as a weak
sentimentalist, misIed by maudlin
philosophy.
arraign you as narrow minded block
heads, who would like to be useful to a
great and good cause. but don't know
how. Your attempt to base great, en-
during party ON the hate and wrath ne
cessarily engendered by bloody civil
war is as though you should plant a
colony on an iceberg which had some-
how drifted into u tropical ocean. Itell
you here that, out of life earnestly de-
voted to the good of human kind,
your children will select my going to
Richmond and signing that bond as the
wisest set, and will feel that it did more
for freedom and humanity than all of
you were competent to do, though you
had lived to the age of Methuselah.
ask nothing of you, then, but that
you proceed to your end by a direct,
frank, manly way. Don't slide off into
mild resolution of censure, but move
the expulsion which you proposed, and
which I deserve, if deserve any re-
pl oach whatever. All care for is, that
you make this square, stand-up-fght.
and record your judgment by yeas and
nays. l care not how few vote with me,
nor h W many vote against me; for I
know that the latter will repent it in
dust and ashes before three years have
past. Understand, once for all, that
dare you and defy you. and tina: I pro-
pose to fight it out on the line that l
have held from the days of Lees sur
render. So long as any man was seek
ing to overthrow our Government he
was my enemy; from the hour in which
he laid down his arms he was my for
merly erring countrymau.
So long as any is at heart opposed to
the national unity. the Federal author
ity. or to that assertion to tn equal
rights OF all men which has become
practically Unidentified with loyalty and
nationality, shall do my best to de-
prive him of power; but whenever
he ceases to be thus, demand his re-
storation to all privileges Of American
citizenship. I give you fair notice that
I shall urge the refranchisement Of
those now prescribed for rebellion 80
soon as I shall feel confident that this
course is iscoueistsnt with tho freedom Of