The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1877-05-23
GRANT AND HIS LIEUrENANTs.


General Grant INDUCED in little farewell
talk as he steamed down the Delaware on
his way to Europe, in which he spoke of
Sherman or Sheridan as being in every way
qualified to have filled his place, even in his
character of civil ruler. This may be true
and not be very complimentary either to
Generals Sherman and Sheridan We do not
wish to detract one iota from General Grants
military record and glory, but we are free to
say that his administration of national af-
fairs was the most wretched and painful
failure in the history of the government
1t was era of corruption and fraud; a
time of fearful looseness and general want of
restraint in every department. Then the
crowd of hangers on and blood suckers
which gravitated naturally 10 the national
capital, and had their home and existence
there, was disgrace to present day ciyiliza-
ton. Grant has an idea, so he says, that
Sheridan would have done well as civil
ruler, or at least made as good one he
did, We had an exampleof Sheridan's style
of administering affairs on one of his New
Orleans trips as foreshadowed in his well
known QlSDaIcn WHICH ne sent 10 w
ton, and to which Belknap replied: 1--WE are
all with you" Sheridan, our readers will
remember, telegraphed to Grant to declare
all the Louisiana people "banditti," and
then he Significantly added, ''No further &c
ton need be taken except that Which tOOu!d devOtre
upon me-" In the words of old Simon Cam
eron or old Zach, we forget which, as they
are Goth at home in the use of such Ian
guage, What HI of time" he would
have had. All the men, women and chill
dren at his mercy as "banditti," or outlaws,
he would have made brilliant record as an
administrator of civil affairs. He would
have been bigger man than old Grant" for
a fact. No wonder that the New York Times,
the grand national organ of radicallsm, was
so completely taken aback at Sheridan's dis
patch, that it exclaimed, 1--WE have never
published such document before, and we
must say that nothing like it has ever been
seen in any country under a constitutional
government 1t almost induces one to be-
'lieve that the world has gone back two or
three hundred years" And again, the
same paper in alluding TO Sheridan's "ban-
'ditti'' scheme. saws:
''If this means anything it means that
General Sheridan would forthwith proceed
to hang or shoot as many persons as he
chose to bring under his own description Of
'banditti. Some of the people in Washing
ton must be curiously incompetent to gauge
public opinion, or they never would have
allowed that mad dispatch to have seen the
light" ,p ...
They, however, did allow it to ''see the
light" and Belknap, then secretary of war,
telegraphed, eve are all with YOU" and
now, in view of all this, General Grant, on
his departure for Europe, in docking back
over his career, thinks that sheridan could
have taken my (his) place as soldier or in
civil Office"
AS the nation progresses into the future
it will, in taking retrospective glances into
the past, thank God that the doings and
precedents of the last'sixteen years of radi-
calism are gradually getting DINNER and
DINNER as they fade farther away into the
welcome past