Marshall County Republican. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1856-1878, 1872-06-20
GREELEY AS PRESIDENT.
ID ifflc ulties With England, Russia, and
Pruss a on Agricultural Questi0ns-Con-
quest of America.

Difficulties With England, Russia, and
Pruss a on Agricultural Questi0ns-Con-
quest OF America.
From Appleton's Journal.
You ask me to tell you, my children,
of the events which Immediately pre-
coded the destruction of the once great
American Union, and the capture of
the country by its present European
rulers, and to say something, also, of
the causes which led to these deplorable
results. undertake the task with
heavy heart, for, whenever l advert to
that terrible time, cannot help con-
trastlng our proud condition up to that
fatal year with the humiliating position
occupied now by the American people,
The story is a short one. In the fall of
1877 Horace Greeley, the editor of a
newspaper in New York, was elected
President of the United States. The
people voted for him because they be-
ieved him to be an honest man. But
he was vain and weak, and he enter
tanned certain fanatical and preposter-
Gus notions-about agricultural matters,
for lnstance-which he was determined
to force upon the people at all hazards
and despite all opposition. He believed.
among other things, that every man
ought to 60 to the West to earn his
bread and long before he was chosen
President he used to advise everybody
to move to that region as cure for all
the disasters which could befall the hui
man family.
As soon as he reached the executive
mansion, which we used to call the
White House, President Greeley organ
lied an army of two hundred thousand
men, and proceeded to force the. entire
population of the seaboard States west
ward at the point of the bayonet. The
utmost violence was used. Those who
resisted were shot down, and their dead
bodies were carried off to a national
factory which the President had estab-
hshed for making some kind of fertilizer.
All the large cities of the East were de-
populated, and towns were entirely
empty. The army swept before it mil
lions OF men, women and children, I'M
til the vast plains west of Kansas were
reached, when the pursuit ceased, and
the army was drawn up in a continuous
line, with orders to shoot any person
who attempted to visit the East OF
course hundreds of thousands of these
poor creatures persisted from starvation.
SSSAASA W 1A1SAIOA L
Greeley, and he sent message to Con-
gress recommending that seven hundred
thousand volumes of comic book of his,
entitled What | Know About Farm
1ng," should be voted for the relief of
the starving sufferers. This was done,
and farming implements and seeds were
supplied, and then the millions of
Wretched outcasts made an effort to till
the ground. Of the result of this l will
speak further on.
In the meantime the President was
doing infinite harm to the country in
another way. His handwriting was SO
fearfully and wonderfully bad that no
living man could read it. And SO when
he sent his first annual message to Con-
gress-the document was devoted wholly
to the tariff and agriculture sentence
appeared which subsequently was ascer-
tanned to be, Large cultivation of ruta-
bagas and beans is the only hope of the
American nation, | am sure" The
printers, not being able to interpret this,
put it in the following form, in which it
went forth to the world: "The Gar of
Russia couldn't keep clean if he.washed
himself with the whole Atlantic Ocean
once day ~ This perversion of the
message was Immediately telegraphed to
Russia by the Russian Minister, and the
Gar was SO indignant that he instantly
declared war.
Just at this time President Greeley
undertook to write some letters to
Prince Bismarck upon the subject OF
potato-rot, and, after giving his singular
views at great length, he concluded with
the statement that if the Emperor
William said that sub-soil ploug Ching
was not good in light soils, or that
guano was better than bone-dust, he
was . a liar, villain, and slave l'. Oh
course the Emperor also Immediately
declared war, and became an ally Of
Russia and England, against which lat
ter country Mr.. Greeley had actually
begun hostilities already, because the
Queen, in her speech from the throne
had declared the Tribune's advocacy of q
tariff on pigiron incendiary, and calcu
lated to disturb the peace of nations.
Unhappily; this was not the full
measure of our disasters. The Presi
dent had sent to the Emperor of Austri,