New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1872-05-23
COlfaX, SC.
A. d. JONES,

Vice President Colfax is quoted as eager
to step into President Grants shoes, and Mr..
Senator Morton is forced into similar atti-
| tude by some cunning Democratic Bohemian.
Mr.. Senator Wilson has been on the cards
for the same possibility, and Mr.. Speaker
Blaine is charged with any variety of in
trigues to push General Grant out, so that he
may breathe four years. Presidential para
disc. The device is ingenious, if not novel.
From the Scriptual epoch down, the second
in the State has tried to get the mastership.
The heir apparent has been made vicariously
or otherwise to seek his fathers place. Our
own experience is not, therefore, an eXcep-
ton. We must not profane the past by per-
sOnal illusions, but the Vice President has
ever been set up as rival to the President.
Dallas was ignored by Polk; Breckenridge
by Buchanan; Hamlin confessedly by Lin
coin. Jackson, of all the Presidents-Jack-
son, great in all his features and passions,
great even in his errors, chung to Van Buren,,
and in his eagle talons bore him to his eagle
height-was the exception. To say, how
ever, that Vice President Colfax has been
plotting against Grant, would be to utter a
foolish falsehood We have rarely known a
firmer friendship for one man to another than
that of COlfaX to Grant, and never one more
cordially reciprocated. There has been an
open and manly championship Of the Presi-
dent by the Vice President. Governor Nor
ton, of Indiana, has been even more frank
and manly in his devotion to- Grant. He
has, in fact, been the most useful friend of
the President in the Senate; wise, careful,
courteous, all the time. He has not sought
to deceive the President by using his patron
age to punish good men in his own State, but
''made up' his quarrel with Colfax at the
earliest moment. He has not blinded the
President by nattering him with false hopes.
He is one of the few who have dared tell the
truth. And so of brave, unsellish Henry
Wilson, the knigh of our modern politics,
one Of the purest and best of our present
leaders, who for two years past has labored,
in season and out of season, to make peace
between Grant and Sumner. Wilson wants
to be Vice President, and General Grant
could ask no better guarantee of devotion to
himself than the fact that Henry Wilson was
risking even separation from Charles Sumner
to stand by him. And we have no doubt all
this is equally true of James 6. Blaine,
Speaker of the National House. Has the
Republican party had a better friend or fairer
champion Who helped us more in the
doubtful fight in Maine in 1868? Grant
| never had a truer or Drawer friend than
Blaine.
This matter of a possible candidate for
President in case Grant withdraws, has been
matter OF whisper. We propose to make ii
a matter of spoken words. Our President is
not heather god nor Persian Khan. He is
| one of us. He belongs to us. He lives in
glory or dies in infamy precisely as he is true
| or false to his mission. The Virginia gentle
man, George Washington; the Tennessee or
North Carolina bushwhacker, Andrew Jack
son; the rail-splitter, Abraham Lincoln, di-
| vide the honors of grateful nation, because
| they were true to their country.
| 1t is a supreme pleasure that the same peo-
| pie who elected Grant have also the right to
criticise and censure him. We are for him
| for President against the feld-against all
| incomers but we are free to say--freer than
Mr.. Postmaster General Creswell's organ,
the Baltimore american, a few days ago
that if it is necessary for him to get out Of the
way to save this country from the rebel De.
mocracy we shall ask him to do so and when
we do, he will have already anticipated us
In other words, the Republic must be saved
and, before God! we believe to-day that the
best, if not the only man to lead us to vic.
tory now, is the same quiet soldier who lee
US to victory against the rebellion. All con.
siderations demand his reelection. His rec.
ord in peace is not less brilliant than his
record in war. We should be stamped with
ingratitude to the last syllable of recorded
time, if ever we forgot Ulysses S. Grant
Philadelphia Press. ..