Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1872-10-30
THE CHRONICLE.
THE LESSONS OF THE CAMPAIGN.

| admits by this time that II has been
Indefinitely postponed-or, in other
words, that "the Greeley movement"
has virtually come to an end. The
bawling and Yituperation of the CAM
paign will doubtless be carried on a
| fortnight longer by the more Jealous
4 and irrepressible of the disciples, but
| they all know perfectly well that the
game is up, and that the Sage will
nave to remain in the private station
in which lie has won the admiration
of so many honest people, and in
which he has rendered his country 50
much real service. 1t is, therefore,
We presume, not bit too soon to ask
the various independent journalists,
thoughtful Democrats - and "Chris-
| tian politicians who have been
''wOrkingn for Greeley, to sit down
for few minutes for sober, profitable
thought, though it may be bitter re-
| Election.
The first thing that must strike
them as singular and disheartening in
the present situation is that now that
the Greeley movement has come to
an end, it leaves absolutely nothing
behind it. With the disappearance
of the candidate the whole organiZa-
ton vanishes into thin air. Not an
idea, principle, doctrine, maxim, or
hope does it drop in the political
arena. What we see, after the COM
batants have retired, is simply several
hundred yards of blackguard newspa-
per articles, and the PROSTATE forms Of
several seriously injured politicians
who will probably not be fit for duty
for several months, and some of
whom we sincerely respect and tried
in vain to keep out of this wretched
scrimmage.
This is of course, however, as every
one now sees and as every one might
months ago have foreseeD, the natur-
al consequence Of the conversion of
| the reform movement into a mere
personal assault on General Grant.
| Mr.. SchuTZ never said a tTuer thing
in his life than when he warned the
Cincinnati Convention that if it took
up the cry, Anything to beat Grant,
it were better it had never met. In
doing so it lost at one blow the sup
port of q large portion of those silent
but sympathetic spectators through
out the country who were looking
eagerly to ii for something in the ma
| ture of q political revolution. But
even if it be admitted that ali the
charges MessTs. Sumner and SchuTz
have made against Grant were true,
and that il was desirable to replace
him by somebody else, and that a
campaign having for its object his eX-
pulsion from the Presidential chair,
and nothing else, was legitimate, the
first condition of success in such q
campaign was the selection of a can
didate who would bear scrutiny from
all sides, and bear it well, and whom
the Democrats might have rallied to
without patent baseness and trickery
or their part, and without time-serv-
ing or tergiversatiOn on his, As there
has to be a President, it was clear
enough that people would not turn
Grant out without a very careful con-
sideratiOn of what they were to put in
his place. In other words, there was
no use in Summers or Schurz's or
TrumbulPs going about the country
denOuncing Grant simply. These
denunciatiOns by themselves pro-
duced little or no impression. Few
if any would form any judgment on
them until they heard what had to
be said about the man who it was
proposed should succeed Grant: for
the faults of one candidate and the
merits of the other form in the voters
mind one idea, complex it may be.
but still one. To abuse Grant, there
fore, and keep silent about Greeley,
as many Liberal orators did, was
political absurdity of the first order
To win in a personal encounter, not
only has your antagonist to be a fee
BILE man, but you have to be a strong
er man than he.
What was most injurious to Mr..
Greeley was, however, not Mr.. Gree
ley's own record, bad as that was i'm
many places, but his alliance with
the Democracy. If it be asked why
Democratic support should have
proved more injurious to him than to
any other possible or probable Liberal
candidate-Mr. Adams, for instance
the answer is very simple. Mr..
Greeley's whole career down to 1871
was of kind that made any recOncil-
iation or common action between him
and the Democrats impossible without
such a serious modification of opinions
on his part as would shake all conf
dence either in his honesty or his
sagacity; and, for the purposes of
the Presidency, it made little differ
ence in the popular eye whether he
was a knave or a fool. He may have
been right in his language or opin-
ions during the last twenty years, but,
if he was, his sudden change on re-
ceiving his nomination was sure to
destroy confidence in his virtue; if
he was not right, his failure to find it
out till this late period was fatal to
his reputation for wisdom. More
over, he was one of the few men
whom the Democrats could not take
up without exciting disgust. Their
transaction with Greeley was not one
that could be hidden from the public
gaze. Everybody saw the whole of
it, and it was marked throuo hout by
the suppression or reputation OF
everything which served the Demo-
cratic organization as a reason for eX-
isting. What it had to surrender, in
order to take Greeley, left no excuse
for its maintenance except naked
greed for office. The country would
not swallow such a combination
There were men in the Republican
ranks, or possessing Republican SYM
pathies, whose general ideas on the
subject of reconstruction, taxation,
State rights and general government
tai policy, made it possible for the
Democrats to support them without
any other abandonment of principle
than what hard facts had made plain
ly necessary; but Greeley was not one
of. these men. and the Cincinnati
Convention refused to nominate any
of them.
Moreover, the attempt to make
Greeley the apostle of reconciliation
was not only failure, but the most
ludicrous failure of all. Reconcilia-
ton is a process partly mental and
partly moral. Enemies are recon-
ciled by the mutual determination to
forget past differences, and by the
spriDging up of a mutual liking. In
the absence of these facts there is no
reconciliation. Whenever they ex-
ist between the North and the South,
the North and the South will be rec
onciied, no matter who is President;
as long as they do not exist, they will
not be reconciled, no matter who is
President. To talk of reconciliation
through the election of a particular
man, without reference to the state of
public sentiment, is absurd. Indeed,
the oldest thing in the Greeley can
vass was the determination of many
of his newspapers to treat everybody
who denied his fitness for the Presi-
dency as a fosterer of discOrd that is,
they would only hear of one mode of