The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-03-13

/
to Join tho Cincinnati Convention.
New Hampshire. which last March was lost,
was yesterday recovered by the republicans.
They have tough! this battle under under ths flag Of
General Grant and upon the platform of his
administration, and the result is the endorse
ment of the President and his policy for
another term. Considering the close division
of the State between the two great parties,
the disturbing temperance and labor reform
factions, and particularly the assistance given
to the democrats by Messrs. Sumner,
Trumbull, Schurz and other anti-Grant
republican Senators in their speeches on
the abuses and corruptions of the administra-
! ton, and by some half dozen boiling or dis
affected republican journals East and West,
democratic success in New Hampshire would
not have been surprising. Down to the actual
returns of the elections the issue was doubtful,
not SO much because the democrats held the
advantages of the State government, nor be-
cause the labor and temperance reformers
were to be dreaded, but because the republi-
can followers of Gratz Brown, Trumbull,
| Schurz and Greeley were the unknown ele-
ment in the contest The general result, how
ever, shows that Gratz Brown has no republic
can followers in New Hampshire; that Grant
holds his own there against all the outside and
inside opposition forces, and that the demo-
cratic party has gained no recruits from the
republican camp.
AS the first skirmIsh or reconnaissance Of
the Presidential campaign, therefore, this re-
publican success in New Hampshire, under
the circumstances, assumes the proportions
of great and decisive victory for Gene
raj Grant. 1t confirms the general impress
sion and removes the last shadow of doubt
as to the action of the Philadelphia Republi-
can Convention; it discloses the weakness Of
the s'soreheads" as a disturbing force,
| and 1t exhibits what Kossuth would call
the solidarity" of the republican party. On
the other hand, it must convince the demo-
cratic managers that If they fight the battle Of
1872 under their old party organization they
can look for nothing better than crushing
defeat. What, then, can they do? They have
the inviting alternative offered them of the
Missouri passive policy, the policy of sinking
the democratic party in a free and easy fusion
with all the anti-Grant elements Of the coun-
try, beginning with the Cincinnati Liberal Re-
publican Convention.
We presume that this policy will now be
adopted; that the Cincinnati Convention will
be guided by the democratic leaders in the
nomination of its ticket and In the construc-
ton of its broad and flexible platform that
this ticket and platform, with or without the
call of a Democratic Convention, will be COM
mended to and adopted by the democrats, and
that their party will not appear in the Presi-
Dental fight Its members will be rallied as
volunteers under the liberal republican banner,
and thus the issues of the war will be
completely done away with, with the disap-
pearance of the party opposing the war and
the issues of. the war, from Fort Sumter to the
fifteenth amendment. And that such q liberal
republican ticket for instance, as Judge Da-
Wis and Horace Greeley, appealing to liberal
republicans, democrats, white men and black
men, temperance men and labor refor mers,
tariff men and free traders, would poll tre-
mendous vote can hardly be doubted. Our
political parties are in transition state the
democratic party Is passing now from the
grub to the butterfly, and the republican party,
after the reelection of General Grant, will
surely undergo the processes Of decay and re-
construction in the squabbles Of its leaders
for the succession.
The democratic party, having run Its
course, is now going the way Of the federal
party, the old republican party and the wing
party-the way to dissolution and q new
creation. It was fortunate thing for our
popular institutions that with the adoption Of
the original constitution of the United States
the conservative Washington and the national
ideas of Hamilton inaugurated tho practical
experiment of the new government Other
wise French sympathies and the radical
republican dogmas of the French revolu-
ton of 1889 might have made our
"more perfect union" house Of cards to be
blown down and blown away by the first puff
of wind. AS it was, the State rights doctrines
introduced into the official interpretations of
the constitution by Jefferson cost us. sixty
years later, the terrible adjustment of the
bloodiest civil war in the history Of any peo-
pie. It is probable, however, that the federal
actual term Of existence but for the war and
its opposition to the war with England
in 1912. This war, in reviving all the
patriotic feelings and souvenirs of 1776, made
the federal party, In the popular estimation,
an enemy of the republic and an ally of Eng
land. Hence from 1912 the rapid decline
Of this party-rapid for those days of sleepy
sailing ships and drowsy pony expresses of
five miles an hour-to its disappearance from