Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1872-04-04
SEE THIS !.


out of this immense sum, in all the Depart.
ments of the Government, 81, $50, ,000-less
| than fifteenth part Of one per cent! Look
at the Post Office Department. With do, ,006
| postmasters, clerks and small-carriers, the
| loss has been less than one-tenth of one per
cent. in these three years. In no part of the
world has such integrity been shown, under
like circumstances We haye paid out during
these three years, 100000, 900 in pensions,
and we have had five defalcatious, all of them
soldiers, and four of them shed their blood
for the country. But the Government has
not lost dollar, for the agents made good
their accounts, or their bondsmen did it for
them.
WHAT HORACE GREELEY CALLS "BAD
RECORD"
This administration came into power with
the pledge to maintain the faith and honor of
the country, then wickedly assailed. During
these last thirty-five months there has been
paid $2S7, 100000, saving nearly SIS, ZOO, 900
a year in interest. This money has been
mostly saved on the one hand by an honest
collection of the revenues-for we collected
the first fifteen months of Grants adminis-
tration, $67, 900, 900 more than was collected
under the same laws in the last fifteen months
of Johnson's administration-and on the
other hand, by reduction of the expenses of
the government. From these two sources
we have paid this $2S7 200, 900. Throughout
the financial world it is a matter of wonder
and amaZement that the financial policy of
the United States should be so successful.
We elected General Grant, pledged to main
tain the faith of the nation, to make our debt
sacred, and what is the result? Why, the
seven hundred millions of currency is worth
to-day hundred and forty millions of dol
lars, twenty per cent, more than it was three
years ago. The laboring man who has earned
two dollars to-day has received forty cents,
in real gold value, more than he would have
received three years ago this day. There has
been added twenty per cent. to every dollar
the laboring men of this country have earned,
and it has been added because of the signal
fidelity and ability with which that pledge has
been kept, to maintain the faith of the nation,
honestly collect the revenues, reduce the eX-
penses and eXtinguish the national debt as
fast as he could.
BRIEF SKETCH OF TIE PRESIDENT
To hear these men talk you '. ould suppose
General Grant was vastly inferior to such
great, magnificent statesmen as Polk, Pierce
and Buchanan. Who is General Grant
this man so denounced? When the war
opened he was earning few hundred dollars
tanning leather in Galena. He offered his
services to the nation, and they were not ac-
! cepted. He went down to Springville, and
served there for some weeks, helping to en-
roll and organize the regiments they We're
raising in Illinois. Finally, they gave him a
regiment. He had not money enough to
buy sword with which to fight the battles
of his country, or horse to ride. You did
not know anything about him; the nation
knew nothing ab5ut him; few had heard of
him. He had sktrved In the Mexican war,
when young man, fresh from West Point,
and won two brevets for gallant conduct,
but nobody knew anything of this humble
man. He took his regiment and marched
away. He never asked anything of the gov
ernment; he never disobeyed an order; he
forward and did his duty, a quiet silent,
modest man. About the first thing we heard
of him was that he took about twenty five
thousand men up the Tennessee river, moved
on the enemy's works, attacked an army of
twenty thousand rebels, and captured about
fifteen thousand of them. You next heard
of him coming or the field of Shiloh when it
was nearly lost, and when they asked him if
he had prepared for a retreat, he said that
one boat would take all that retreated He
defeated the rebel army that had been nearly
victorious. Then he went down the Missis-
slppi river, passed Vicksburg, made move
ment into the country, attacked the rebel ar
mics, captured Vicksburg, and then you find
him at Chattanooga, to save lost battle, and
you have heard of the magnificent victory he
won at Mission Ridge, and at Lookout Noun
tain. He was then brought to Washington,
and took command of the armies of the coun-
try, led the Army of the Potomac through
the Wilderness, fighting every day in the
month of May, 1864, put his army before
Richmond, and when the hour came, moved
upon the doomed city and received the sur
render of the rebel army at Appomattox.
Nineteen battles behind him, and all victo-
res! He did not march his army to make a
parade through the rebel capital, but started
off alone with his carpet-bag in hand for
Washington, to stop the raising of troops and
the manufacture of munitions, to make prep
arations to disband the army and save ex-
pense, and to save what he regarded, and
what we all regarded as a very important
thing, general bankruptcy in the country.
oBLoQrY AND REpRoACH THE REWARD OF A
FAITHFUL PUBLIC SERVANT.
We turned to this man when Andrew john
son failed us, and asked him to be President
He did not seek the Presidency; he felt and
said that his post at the head of the army was
the post for him. We made him President,
and it was his strength and commanding in
flucnce that carried the Fourteenth Amend
ment. That same influence carried the Fif-
teenth Amendment, and gave the black man
the right to vote in all the States. The men
who stood by the cause of anti-slavery and
the protection of the black man has found in
General Grant man who has stood brayely,
steadily and consistently on the side of free
dom and the equal rights of all men. He has
been President three years, followed by OBJ