New-York tribune., 1873-06-13
A REdPPEdRANCE.

"Choate ~ said the Boston Constituent When
his representative TO the Convention which
nominated John Bell and Edward Everett for
President and Vice-President returned home
and reported the result. "ChOateT said the
startled delegate" why, Choate is deadP
"Yes," was the calm reply, "but he has only
been dead little while"
If there was an anachrOnism In the noml-
nations of Bell and Everett in 1850, what
shall we call the appearance of fOur-cOi-
umn letter i'm the Virginia papers from Gen.
Henry A. WISE setting forth his views upon
current political topics, there being very
contingent liability of his nomination by one
or other of the parties, or n party between Che
two. for Governor. The General steps down
to us like bewigged and knee-buckled pic
ture out of frame, and he talks as though
he had been shut up somewhere and was
making up for lost time. He always was flu-
ent, but his fucncy grows on him. ms let-
ter-four columns of it just as flyer
is provoked by the mention of his
name. What would he do if he should
be nominated Tor if elected, what
would his messages beR The General
has survived so much that it no wonder he
is garrulous But to think Of his stepping
into the arena to discuss tho presently pend
inc problems Of railroad transportation, pur-
chase of canals by Government, State in
snance of life and property, perfect equality
of tho races, and all that sort of thing, and
20 be ready to run for Governor on his
views upon these very live and lively
issues - why, it's Fernando COrtcz sit
ting down to a discussion of the pun
ishment of the Kickapoos Here was Wise,
away back in 1892, over forty years ago,
delegate TO Democratic National COnyen-
ton at Baltimore and conspicuous there by
his refusing to vote for Martin Van BuTen
for Vice-President. In 1893 he was in Con-
gress on the top wave of the Notification
debate. That settled, he slid along on the
United States Bank excitement in 1870 Sc
cured the nomination of John Tyler by the
Wings, and was potential in his administra-
ton; subsidized a little from the surface only
to como into more prominence as a Dem
ocratic Elcctor in 1913 and 1852, and was ready
in 1854 to lead what seemed forlorn hope
against the new KnOw-Nothing party, which
was carrying everything before it. He made
brilliant campaign, broke the prestige OF
the mushroom party opposed to him, and was
for q while the most conspicuous figure in
our politics. When the KnowNOthing furor
began to subside, the Kansas-Nebraska busi-
ness came forward. and the Virginia states
man sailed to the front, first in support of
the Kansas Nebraska bill, and second in
opposition to the Lecompton Constitu-
ton. Then we had the hanging of
John Brown and little later the Secession
Convention, in which he favored compromise
and opposed disunon, TO keep his name before
the public and then he plunged with his State
and people into war, was brigadier-g general,
and occasionally came TO the surface with a
howl of dissatisfaction at the way things were
going. The close of the war finally found him,
unlike nearly all of his generation of poll
ticians, alive but stranded. Occasional utter
anccs bubbled up from him during the period
of reconstruction, and if we remember rightly
no had little passage at arms with Gen.
Terry, during that officers administration as
Military Governor of Virginia, which gave him
temporary resurrection.
And now he comes upon the stage IN sew
eral columns as fercely antagOnistc as ever to
the general tendency of things, us ready to
be a candidate as ever and, If we may judge
from the present manifesto, more than ever
fluent in uttcrance and complicated in eX-
preston. He does not believe in either the
Radical or Conservative party-these being
the names by which Yirginans designate the
parties of the Administration and the OppOs-
tiOn-and for his reputation of them he gives
reasons. In such space he could not well do
less. He is more severe, however, upon the
Conservative party, for which one would sup
pose he might have a natural attachment,
than upon the Radicals or "BlaCk Republi-
"cansn for whom he might bo supposed to
have n natural antagonism. He thanks the
Republican party "most gratefully and fer
"yently" that it made his colOred slave q
freedman, and he promises to unite heartily
with its honest and discreet efforts to make
the freedman his political equal but he puts
a fly in the amber when he says:
"But in making my bOndsman free it made me, free
man. slave; and until It aids in restoring constitu-
tiona limitations and checks OF arbitrary power aud
unmanacles my limbs from the degrading bondage by
which / have been dshonorcd and ensaved, can
never co0perate with its organization IT'S principles
and very that 1t IL not Republican and Is
not Radical any Just truo sense of either term"
Having said so much against that party in
n great spirit of justice and impartiality, he
takes up the Conservatives and harries them
for a column on long series of wrongs and
outrages, in which he says "they have out
scalawagged the scallawagger and out
"carpet- -bagged the carpet-bagger."
His own position ho prefaces with the state
ment that
There many independent, true. fearless respon-
sibo and honorable men, who patriots without fear
and without reproacb who will not be champions Of
either bird the other of your feathers Of either
principal party its indorser I'm the wrong; but who