Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-07-01
A Bad BEGINNING.

MaJs Uens COmO'S Depts La anu leA8Ss
A Bad Beginning.
When the editor of the Philadelphia
Telegraph undertakes to criticise public
men he should learn something about
them before he begins. The long article
in his issue of June 26th entitled "Judge
Black and General Hancock" contains
only a casual word of truth here and
there. 1t is difficult to tell whether the
trash was written in malice or in mere
ignorance. In either case it deserves but
the contempt of decent people as the be.
ginning of the Republican campaign OF
slander against one of the firsta and great.
est soldiers of the republic. The point OF
the TRADE is that Gen. Hancock has here.
tofore taken the advice of lawyers and
statesmen in the discharge of his public
duties and will probably do SO again
This lisa grave offense and the Democrats
will find it hard to bear up against SO
terrible an accusation!
If, however, the Telegraph would lie
with less freedom it might follow its
bent with more safety. 1t calmly insin-
yates, for instance, that Judge Black
was the author of Gen. Hancock's cele-
brated "Order No. 4O.'' We are able to
state on perfect authority that Judge
Black never saw that order until it was
published. He did, however, appreciate
its inestimable value, and he has, as the
Telegraph says-truthfully, for once
been guilty of taking ali interest " in
the great soldier who promulgated it,
from that day to this.
The Telegraph feels that in abusing
Judge Black it is abusing Gen. Hancock.
Among other things, equally false and
equally silly, it says:
When the country was stirred by the
publication, at the close of the war, of the
secret history of Buchanan's administra-
tiOn, in which the perfidy and cOwardice of
the last and worst of the Democratic pres
idents were laid bare, Judge Black threw
his sandy wig into the arena, and went
for" the whitened and flowing locks of the
late venerable head of the navy depart
ment, the Hon. Gideon Welles, in a way
terrible to behold. His incisive English,
caustic sarcasm, and bitter arraignment,
to day stand unequaled in our periodical
literature. The most brilliant intellect
cannot alter the crushing facts of history,
however otherwise James Buchanan
would have been fully vindicated.
Then when that storm of scandal swept
through the land, making sorry work OF
scores of brilliant regulations and knock
ing from their pedestals many public idols,
this valiant knight and friend of the fallen,
with true chivalric nobility, rushed to the
front. His special favorite was Mr.. Blaine
whom he gave most thorough white
washing, and afterwards substantial coat
of varnisll, that wears splendidly, in the
Mulligan business.
And now Judge Black turns up, just in
the nick of time, although three thousand
miles from his native land, as the sponsor
originator, and patentee of the Hancock
bonn.
There are in this extract a few trifline
inaccuracies, which the Telegraph may
feel inclined to mend. Judge Black,
to begin with, never had any controversy
with Gideon Welles on any subject, and
never wrote a public letter to him OF
about him. He never gave Mr.. Blaine a
coat of white-wash, nor coat of varnish
He said simply nothing about him one
way or the other. In the Credit MObiliel
affair, to which the Telegraph alludes
Mr.. Blaine stood i'm no need of the kind
offices of the counsel for McComt
through whose suit the exposure was
effected !; since there was no word OF
testimony produced against him. Gen
Garfield was the unfortunate in that
case. He appealed to Judge Black s pri-
vate friendship for "a coat of white.
wash, and got a letter which recites
merely his own confessi n of the facts as
charged by Ames; and showed conclu.
sively that Garfield, when he subsequent
ly denied the same facts under oath, de.
liberately peiiured himself. The Isle.
graph viii perceive that it has made a Sc.
rious blunder. 1t was not Blaine but Gar.
field who got the wash that wouldn't
stick.
And as to Judge Black as originator,
sponsor and patentee of the Hancock
boom" if any claim has been made on
his behalf, it was made by Governor Til
den, who gave out a private letter from
Judge Black, written in the other hemi-
sphere weeks before there scds Hancock
boom, when Mr.. Tilden was himself the
most conspicuous candidate, and when
men who thought more of their own in.
terests than of the country's, held both
their tongues and their pens.
The Telegraph has heretofore been
considered passably respectable sheet,
and its editor was supposed to be a gen.
tleman. We trust that he has not
finally determined to part company with
his fair reputation although this coarse
assault, devoid of truth, made at the
same time upon the well-earned reputa-
tions of the most:distinguished soldier
and the most distinguished civilian of
his own state, looks very much like it.
JOHN w. FoRNEY, in this week Pro-
gress, has an elaborate article on General
Hancock, detailing his service to the
country at Gettysburg, when, as he said
in the daily Press at the time, C it was
General Hancock, Pennsylvania, who
SO nobly bore the brunt of the battle on
Cemetery Hill" Col. Forney declares
that all of us in Philadelphia owe a