The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1872-08-10
The Editorial Bureau" Again,

bureau dt washington, 20 luTulSn IeaueIS LOT
the "minor republican newspapers of the
country" The Grant Congressional commit
tee at Washington, it says, is engaged in that
sort OF business, sends documents" to pub
fishers Of country as well as city newspapers;
but it ignores studiously the well known fact
that this work is done for the Grant Coon
gressional Committee" by detail of clerks
from the different departments, with Robert
Douglas at their head. About all the COM
mittee do is to abuse the ranking privilege in
sending the documents abroad.
But, however that may be, the Republican
insists that the bureau aforesaid has furnished
no leaders for that paper. The Article to
prove Horace Greeley a secession,st fifteen
years ago, though it may be weak" (no doubt
about that,) was the editors own. The extracts
from Greeley are given in Stephens "War
Between the States" an6 were not of the clip.
pings from the Tribune file at Washington.
So says the editor of the Ottawa Republican.
He opened Stephens book, and running over
about 200 pages devoted to Northern senti.
ment' on the subject of the right of secession.
alights on quotation from the New York
Tribune, and copying, paradcs it in great glee
as startling discovery. Now here is nice
piece of editorial honesty. In the same book,
right along through hundred pages or more,
are quotations from speeches of Abraham Lin
coin, Ben Wade, S. p. Chase, Wendell Philips,
Gerrit Smith, Lloyd Garrison, &C., &C.. up to
hundreds, and embracing about every repub-
lican leader sufficiently CONSPICUOUS to have
history or get his name into the papers-ALL of
whom had uttered precisely similar sentiments,
The truth is, from the day Of the passage of
the fugitive slave law in 1850 to the day when
Fort Sumter was fred upon, the doctrine of
state sovereignty, as defined by Lincoln and
Greeley, was held as cardinal principle Of
the free soil, abolition an republican party,
and was never disputed except by what were
then called "fossiized wings" and democratic
"Cnion Savers" The radical leaders at the
north and the followers of Calhoun at the
south stood on precisely the same ground
contessedly, openly, boastlngly. This doc
trne was even proclaimed by Mr.. Lincoln's
administration for a year after the war OF the
rebellion had been inaugurated, as Is shown
by Mr.. Stewards circular to our foreign minis.
tiers IN 1862, in which they are instructed to
represent to the foreign powers to which they
were accredited, that the war was not to co.
cree the states back into the Union that had
voluntarily gone out ; but that it was to en-.
able the Union men in the South, whom Mr..
Seward claimed to be in the majority, to assert
their constitutional right to remain in the
Union. More still, Mr. Ottawa Rpublican,
this doctrine was virtually admitted by the
Republican party at the close OF the war. as is
shown by its unwllllngness to bring jefferson
Davis to trial. The sole and only reason ever
given, and that ever existed, for no. bringing
him to trial, was the doubt whether the Su.
preme Court of the United States would hold
that, in asserting by arms the right of state
to secede from the Union, Davis was guilty of
treason.
Now, in view of these facts in view of the
| almost unanimous concurrence of the Repab
lican party before the war IN the doctrine OF
secession as countenanced by Greeley in 1860,
"a fact which We can substantiatc by extracts
from dozens of speeches which are not even
named in Stephens history-in view of these
facts, we say, is not the editor of the Ottawa
Republican, in thus culling out of a large VOL
ume of such extracts from speeches and utter
ances of HUNDRED republican leaders this one
from Greeley's Tribune, and holding it up
for reprobation as something singuarly and
peculiarly his, making p,tiful exhibition OF
himself.
Sour GRArEs.-The president, in his quiet
retreat from official cares on Pullman island, in
the st. Lawrence, watching the political signs
discovers the presendentlal office to be sou,