The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1872-10-03
POLITICIANS TO THE REAR.

8stsNs alEE -------f8 1872 1estfA
The people are conducting the present
campaign-not the politicians. Never
before in our history as nation have the
people taken SO deep an interest in polit-
ical affairs. Politicians who once dicta-
ted public opinion are to-day powerless.
They make frantic efforts to lead their
old followers into new paths of policy,
but they can, neither coax nor drive them
from the old party. Greeley fancied him
self political loadstone, and thought
wherever he went his old friends would
follow. To-day he finds himself deserted,
or so. nearly SO that his Republican fol-
levers could be accommodated in an old
fashienoned stage-coach. Schurz, once an
influential man, admired by his country
men because of his deyotion to freedom
and for lis marked ability, has open
ed his eyes to the fact that he does not
carry the German vote in his pocket and
that his countrymsn still retain their old !.
fashioned notion of doing their own
thinking. tTrumbull, who once thought
himself the leader of Western sentiment,
has given up In disgust, and will devote
the remainder of his days III trying to
convince his old friends that he was rs
honest in voting against the impeachment
of 'His Accidency," Andy johnson, as he
was In leaving the Republican party
Upton was never Blessed with much in
fluence, so his leap into the Greeley move
ment has produced about as much dis
turbancc in political affairs as a pebble
dropped into the Atlantic.
Sumner has verified his prediction that
principles outlive men," But Yesterday
the colored people needed his words as an
oracle to-day they turn from him as
false prophet. They see in his false doc
trines of the present the contradiction of
the grand truths he taught them in the
past. For this reason he has no more in
huence over the colored vote than the
Kuklux leaders with uhom he has claSped
hands.
General Banks, "the lingering shadow
OF asplendid character" whose greatest
enemy has been himself, will find it a
hard task to pull down in few DAYS the
fabric which commanded his noblest eff
forts. in the past. His eloquent pleadings
in behalf of the party he now abandons
are too well remembered to be lost under
the new departure which he has taken.
Farnsworth had been so long on the
fence that his final step took no one by
surprise. He had worked with the
opposition in the House so long that he
was regarded as one of their number be.
fore he formally announced himself as
such. Ii he ever had any influence he
lost it before he changed his coat, and
among Republicans can never hope to re !
cover what he has justly forfeited. The
same conclusions hold good with Fenton,
Fitzpatrick, Doolittle, and a class of still
smaller politicians, who once had some
influence, but are to-day without follow
er.
Their old friends have heard their sto-
~. They recognize it as the same retail
ed in 1868 by the Democrats, and they
turn from them with contempt. They
know that these gentlemen who pretend
to be Reformers have been tried by an
honest administration and found want
Fing. They know that the movement in
augurated by Greeley s. Co., is purely a
personal one, whose object and aim is to
bring into power party that will accept
Grants rejected timber and afford such
men AS Schurz, Trumbull, and Fenton an
opportunity to bolster up their falling for.
tunes at the public expense.