The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1877-08-24
HORACE GREELEY.

Great men, like great political par
ties, seem destined for only one line of
usefulness during their period of exist
ence. When great political organiza-
ton starts out upon a particular princi-
pie or theory, it bends all its energies to /
the accomplishment of its one idea, and,
this assured, it relapses into state of
chronic respectability, so we'll satisfied
with what it has done that it not only
has no disposition to go higher, but be-
comes an implacable foe to the party
that, scaling its own heights, sees yet
farther and aspires to yet greater prog
ress.
The Republican party was born to re-
store the Union and establish equal
rights for the black man. This much
can be safely asserted because it has
been proven. This party tacitly claims,
however, that in thus achieving success
it can afford to progress no further. But
the fiat of destiny cannot be escaped.
1t must enfranchise women, as we'll as
negroes, or die.
Horace Greeley was the party's ma
tional editor. No man ever made such
an editorial fight for the Republican
idea as he. This gained, he relapsed
into apathy. He not only refused to
further aid the fundamental principles
of liberty by disclaiming class legisla-
tion for sex as well as color, but he set
the prestige of long life, spent in a
fight for the principles of freedom, into
obstinate opposition to one step in ad-
vance of the point already gained This
done, and his work was ended. 1t was
time for him to die.
Yet, how strange it is that human in
dividuals, like human organizations,
are thus circumscribed in their ambi-
tion, as though life were an ocean, with
natural boundaries, beyond which one
existence cannot reach.
Had Horace Greeley grasped the idea
of individual liberty in its fullest sense,
and stood, in his declining days, as the
champion of freedom for woman, even
as he had long been the able advocate
of freedom for men, he would now be
living upon the earth in peace and pros
perity, honored by all the world.
One cannot but heave a sigh over the
old mans wrecked ambition as he reads
the late revelations of the press con-
cerning the manner of his taking of.
Entering into the Presidential cam
paign of '72, with the proud self-con-
seriousness of certain victory, Horace
Greeley scorned the idea of woman's
enfranchisement, thus throwing over the
record of life well spent the black pail
Of non-progression. He had grown wise
in own conceit, and his eyes were
blinded to his own undoing.
Returning, after his unexpected de-
feat, to the great journal over which be
had so long presided, the old man re-
sumed his editorial labors, only to find
himself no longer master, even there.
A Samson, shOrn of his strength, he
bowed his head in the bitterness of his
humiliation and ended his days in a
mad-house. His last words were, "The
country's gone, the Tribune is gone, and
I am gone"
Will the Republican party take warn
ing? Will it continue in the van of the
inevitable, as the standard-bearer of
equal rights for humanity, and make a
brave advance against the aristocracy
of sex, and live? Or will it, like Horace
Greeley, refuse to advance further in
the line of progression and die? We
shall see.