The New York herald., 1876-03-04
The Republican Party I'm DisgrAce-
BeIknap, "The President and All OF


U.s."
The infamous and revolving despatch
which Secretary Belknap sent to New Or
leans in January, 1875, contained an apt
phrase, which is more truly descriptive now
than it was on that memorable occasion.
Nobody who listened to Mr. Evarts can have
forgotten his scathing denunciation of the
'all of us" despatch at the great indignation
meeting in this city, Immediately after the
dispersion of the Louisiana Legislature by
federal soldiers The rebuking eloquence of
the great lawyer and incensed patriot rose
to its highest strain of burning vehemence
while he commented on that official proof
that call of us" were accomplices in
that daring act of military usurpation,
and the effect of his speech was so great that
within three days Mr.. Fish and other respect
able members of the Cabinet denied that
they were consulted or had ever given their
consent But the moral obliquity of that
disgraceful transaction in which Belknap
telegraphed that ''the President and all of
us" were implicated did not approach the
turpitude of the sordid corruption at which
the country now stands aghast. While it
may be true that only the President was
consulted before sending the ''all of us"
despatch, the fact that Belknap and his chief
dared to commit the other members of the
Cabinet to such an act without their knowl-
edge betokened the servile complaisance
which emboldened the authors of the telegram
to take such liberty with members of the
Cabinet whom they had not consulted Their
subsequent disclaimers did not help them,
because the public rightly judged that if
they had been men of spirit and indepen-
dence Belknap and the President would not
so coolly have presumed on their acquies-
cence, and the fact that they did not resign
after so unwarrantable an insult to their self
respect confirmed the public opinion of their
abject servility. If the "all of us" telegram
was not literally true in fact it was substan-
TALLY correct in spirit, the failure of the un-
consulted members to resign after such an
affront to their independence making them
accomplices in spite of their disclaimers.
Be that as it may, there can be no reason
able doubt that not only the administration
the deeper and more damning disgrace
which has now fallen upon BelLnap. 1t is
impossible for "all of us" to shirk it without
a denial of that party responsibility which is
essential to the success of republican insti-
tutions. 1t is the accepted rule of our poll
tics that the party in power is answerable for
the conduct of the men it puts in office-a
rule which is never disputed except in some
astounding emergency like the present,
when the thick-and-thin organs of a dis
graced party try to limit responsibility to
the individual offenders. Perhaps we
ought not to blame our vigorous and
slashing contemporary, the Commercial
role of a party organ, when it has
never professed to be anything else but an
independent journal cannot accept its stress
of-weather view of party responsibility. The
Commercial, in its comments on the Belknap
infamy,. says 1.-THE HERALD tells us it will
crush the republican party. If Mr.. Belknap
represented all that made the republican
party that party could not survive such a
blow as this. But no one man, nor one
clique of men does that. The party stands
on o foundation that cannot be destroyed
even by such acts as Belknap's. His act was
isolated-it was his individual weakness,
his particular shame"
There would have been as much political
sense in attempting to shield the democratic
party four years ago from the ruinous con-
sequences of the disgrace of Tweed. 1t was
true in point of fact that not one democrat
in hundred thousand had any completely
with the Tweed Ring but nothing was said
by the republican press at that time
about "isolated acts," or individual
weakness" or particular shame" The
whole republican press held the dem
ocratic party answerable for Tweeds
colossal thefts, and with perfect justice, ac-
cording to accepted ideas of party response
bility. The democratic party of the United
States staggered and reeled under that tre-
mendous blow, although the crimes had
been perpetrated by a small knot of local
politicians in single city, without the
knowledge or completely of the party at
large. The democratic organization was so
broken and crippled by the Tweed exposures
that it burst not go into the Presidential
canvass of the following year on an indepen-
dent footing and was forced to the humilia-
tion of taking shelter behind the Cincinnati
Convention and accepting Mr.. Greeley, its
bitterest foe and reviler as its Presidential
candidate. 1t was in vain that the demo-
cratic organs asseverated and protested
that Tweed and his immediate accom-
plices were the only guilty parties and
reconstructed against the injustice of hold
ing the democrats of every State in the
Union responsible for frauds of which they
were ignorant until the blasting exposure.
1t is idle to resort to this line of argument in
country where government by political par