The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1875-01-21

If the President were quite new to public
life and the country had acquired its first
knowledge Of him from his recent acts the
petent man had been lifted TO a station above
his abilities and that his stupendous blunders
ore the fruit Of incapacity and folly. No man
of even the most commonplace ability as q
politician could perpetrate such astonishing
mistakes if actuated by honest motives and
ordinary prudence. Vice President Wilson
may not deserve to be ranked with the highest
order of statesmen, but he is q man of excol-
lent sense, long experience, quick perception
OF popular tendencies, and no man In the
country is better qualified to judge what the
people, and especially the republican party,
will or will not indorse. His recent letter to
the editor of the Springfield Republican goes
as near as official propriety will permit to
making President Grant responsible for the
gloomy outlook of the republican party.
He does not think the case desperate,
but he sees no safety for the party but in re-
pudiating the mistaken policy of the President.
Vice President Wilson is an original repub-
ing fidelity to be listened to as an adviser;
and when he is constrained to censure General
Grant in q public communication the repub
lican party will be disposed to weigh his rea-
sons. When SO eminent and trusted repub-
lican undertakes to show that the fortunes OF
the party are not vet desperate, and to point
out methods of rescuing it from impending
4 tbo Of "
an effort betrays is very significant
But Mr. Wilson'S letter does not touch upon
the most recent and alarming measures of the
President He merely accounts for the
astounding republican losses in last years
elections and suggests means Of retrieving
them. The high-hAnded military interference
in Louisiana is the most damaging blow of
all and it's prompt repetition in Mississippi
exposes the insincerity Of the recent
Message. It indicates an unrelenting pur-
pose to employ similar means in like
emergencies. When President Grant
caps the previous blunders which the Vice
President deprecates with this open and per-
sistent affront to the most deeply rooted sent-
ments of American citizens the conduct of
the President becomes a stupendous enigma
Is he demented, or is he resolutely bent on
the subverson of our free institutional
simpleton might unwarily fall into such
astonishing blunders as General Grant has
perpetrated in his recent employment of mill
tary force; but it is not easy to give hun the
benefit of that excuse Nobody who has had
opportunities for closely observing Pres-
dent Grant believes him fool Friends and
foes alike who have been in personal contact
with him unite in declaring that he is man
of uncommon capacity. Alexander II. Ste
phens, who is o person of superior talents
himself, and therefore competent judge of
talents, had good opportunities to take the
measure of General Grants capacity at the time
of the famous Hampton Roads conference, and
his testimony to Grants intellectual capacity,
as recorded in his history of the war, is most
emphatic. General Frank Blair had still
better opportunities for observing him in long
and intimate army associations, and nobody
can have forgotten that in the Presidential
campaign of 1863, when the whole democratic
press was decrying General Grant as a man of
slender capacity, General Blair stated that
this sighting estimate was mistake and
asserted that Grant possessed vigor of mind
and intensity of ambition which would make
his election to the Presidency great public
danger. The substance of General Blairs
memorable declaration was that if General
Grant were once elected to the Presidency he
would never relinquish the Office. The
coffh no loc fyrO fand 70 viy
the penetration of General Blair. 1t is only
under such President as Blair supposed
Grant would be that Che third term ques-
ton could have arisen to alarm
the country. The imputation that
President Grant was scheming for
third election, though regarded with in
credulity at first is almost universally
credited at present Vice President Wilson
evidently believes it. If he thought it had no
foundation he would emphatioally say SO in
the face Of the country, instead of calling on
the President to make public remuneration
of such designs. Why should he think it
necessary for General Grant to renounce such
pretensions if his own observation Of the
Presidents character had not convinced him
of the reality of the danger?
President Grants recent conduct is consist
ent with this theory, but is inexplicable on
any other unless it be the theory that he is a
dolt in public affairs. If he is determined at
oil hazards not to relinquish his Office at the
expiration of his present term, the
extraordinary things he has been doing
are Ineligible on any other hypo-
thesis they are a puzzle. So long
as the republican party maintained its
old ascendancy and showed no signs of de-
cadence it was natural for President Grant
10 trust to common political arts. With that
party in an assured majority he had only to
secure its nomination to realize his hopes,
and the activity of the ofice-holding interest
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