The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-05-10

Pnrtiss nship.
II is scarcely week to-day since the first
nomination in the Presidential campaign was
placed before the people by the Cincinnati
Convention, and already the pioneer candi-
date has been assailed by the opposition press
with q personal vindictiveness that we had
hoped might be excluded from the present
canvass. There is nothing in the public or
private record of Horace Greeley's life to
warrant the scurrilous attacks that are daily
made upon him by the partisan organs whose
hot wrath is excited by the honor that has been
conferred upon him. Commencing life as a
compositor he worked his way upward until
he became the head of the leading political
journal of the country; and the purity. Of his
life the kindness of his heart and the SIM
plicity of his manners have been as honorable
to him as his business success. Yet, now that
he is candidate for the highest Office in the
gift of the American people, his virtues have
suddenly become vices in the eyes of his
enemies. If his assailants confined their abuse
to his eccentricities and peculiarities
their personalities would not be so offensive
and reprehensible; but their malignity induces
them to bedaub him with the foulest colors
they can select A city journal, edited by an
alien Englishman, who misunderstands the
American people and hos but a superficial
knowledge of American institutions, takes the
lead in this style of warfare, and denounces
Horace Greeley as traitor to the Union, q
secret conspirator with the Southern rebels and
an associate of Tammany thieves. A Cockney
British subject, who worships the reigning
monarch and is overawed in the awful pres
ence of the Lord Mayor, cannot be supposed
to comprehend or to appreciate the honorable
ambition Of every American to attain to the
proud Office of President of the republic, and
hence his sneers at Greeley on this ground are
natural enough; but the citizens of the United
States who have watched Uncle Horace's'
career since their boyhood will scarcely en-
dorse the English New York editor judgment
when he declares that Greeley, in his laborious
well fought and truly American career, has
"schemed and plotted, slandered good men
and screened rascals, outraged every principle
Of political consistency and spurned every obi
CATION of public virtue
| 1t has been said, and truly said that the
English people do not understand the people
of the United States This has been strikingly
shown in the course of England on the Ala
bama question. Our cousins on the other side
of the Atlantic believed from the commence
ment of the differences in regard to the Wash
ington Treaty that they had only to ftlme and
buster and declare their determination to
withdraw from the Geneva Conference to in
duce the Americans to abandon their case.
Discovering their error, they straightway
altered their tone, and expressed their willing
ness to allow the proceedings of the Confer
ence to continue, although reserving to them
selves the right to withdraw should the Ameri-
ment of the lobby efforts Of the persons inter
ested in the settlement of direct damages and
the deplorable vacillations of Secretary Fish,
they have again gathered boldness, and they
now declare that General Grant must certainly
abandon the American case or be defeated by
the people in the Presidential election. These
stupid blunders and erroneous judgments of
the sentiments Of the American people are
in great degree attributable to the
course of our own party organs and to the
scurrilous personal attacks they are accustomed
to make upon administrations and individuals
of the opposite party. Copperhead organs,
four years ago, teemed with personal abuse of
Grant and with reflections upon his personal
habits, and Englishmen read these ISLANDERS
and were too willing to accept them as truths.
We have reached another Presidential canvass,
and the first candidate in the field is ridiculed,
caricatured reviled and denounced now
laughed at as little better than fool, and
again branded as an associate Of thieves who
has spurned every obligation of public virtue.
1t is no wonder that foreigners totally misun-
derstand the character of our people when they
view us in the light we cast upon each other.
We protest at this early stage Of the cam
paign against the introduction Of these per-
sonalities and scurrilities into the pending can
vass. They cannot be INDUCED in by one party
without recoiling upon its own candi-
dates; and for the honor Of the
nation we call upon Americans, at least,
to discountenance such mode Of
political warfare, however well it may suit the
taste or answer the purposes Of foreigners who
can have no real sympathy with the republic.
Horace Greeley is a true type of American
life-a self-made, honest-hearted, energetic
man, having his peculiarities and eccentric
notions, but all the more American on that
account. If he wears cowhide boots, destitute
of polish, they have carried him bravely
through an. honorable career, marked out by
enterprise and ending in success. If his coat
hangs loosely on his shoulders and drags at
his heels it buttons over heart that is proud
of the land of his birth and full of kindly
feelings for his fellow men. If his old white hat
lacks the fashionable curve in the brim, and
looks like a venerable and not well preserved
family relic, it covers a brain full of genius
ever ready TO labor in the cause of freedom nnd