Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1872-08-16

BosToN, August 3, 1872.
Dear Mr.. Sumner Though | should
be strongly induced, by the friendship
subsisting between US, to AVOID taking a
place antagonistical to your own, under
ordinary circumstances, even if | deem
ed it erroneous, yet all personal consid.
erations must be subordinated to the pub
lie welfare when seriously imperilled.
You do not believe in silence in crisis
like the present, nor do |. In your let
ter to certain colored citizens of Wash
ington, you have spoken plainly, not We
hementiy, and with rhetorical amplfica-
ton (not for the first time), in utter
condemnation of the President of the
United States and your advice to the
whole body of colored voters is, that
they concentrate their suffrages upon
rival candidate in the person of Horace
Greeley.
In reviewing your letter propose to
speak with equal plainness, and as ear
nestly, to counsel my colored country
men not to follow your lead in this mat
ter, but, as voters, to move unitedlY for
the reelection of President Grant, for
every consideration pertaining to their
safety and happiness, to the cause of
national peace and unity.
In apologizing for your delay in an
swering the letter of inquiry referred to-,
you state that you wished to be aided
by the information which time might
supply" The kind of information you
desired or expected to gain in the brief
space of seventeen days is left to con-
lecture; but, in view of your long avow-
ed estrangement from the present Chief
Magistrate, it could not have been need
ed to intensity your hostility to his ad-
ministration. Your reply is dated July
20, and appears to have been as careful
Iy timed to influence the election in
North Carolina Oh the 1st of August, be-
fore anything could be done to neutral
ize its effect, as was your Grant indict-
ment speech in the Senate to determine
the action of the Philadelphia Conven-
ton. These condolences may have been
accidental, but you must not be surpris-
ed if, owing to the well-known infama-
BILE state of your mind, general belief
obtains that you have unfairly availed
yourself of opportunities to work fatal
division in the republican ranks.
1t affords you much qualification to be
singled out by your colored interrogators
as /" the special advocate of their rights. 4"
But this is an assumption which justice,
ss well as becoming modesty, should
have led you to disclaim, even if it was
meant only to describe your Congression-
al career. Similar advocates have from
time to time stood bravely up, both in
the Senate and in the House of Repre-
entatives-Wilson, Hale, Wade, Chase,
Giddings, Mann, Lovejoy; Julian, Pal
frey, Thaddeus Stevens, Gerrit Smith
and others-who, if not as copious and
ornate in speech as yourself, have been
as unfinching, and in their turn most
bitterly denounced, to say nothing of the
thousands of anti-slavery men and wom-
en- whose lot it was to pass through the
heat and bnrden of the conflict, plead
ing, in season and out o. season, nearly
a score of years before your voice was
heard in support of their holy cause.
Your advocacy of it has been great and
meritorious but to claim it as peculiar at
this late day, as though you stood alone
and almost single-handed, is personal
appropriation very far removed from
selfabnegation, and quite unwarranted.
The republican party (the product of
thirty years moral and religious agita-
ton for the overthrow of slavery has
crushed vast sectional rebellion for the