The weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1878-1881, 1880-10-12
GRANT ON

GrantS attack on the character and Tepu-
tation of General Hancock, as presented in
our dispatches of yesterday, will be found to
possess something of the nature of a BOOM
erang, which, when thrown by unskilful
the party attacked. In the first place the re-
publican party will not be benefited by reviv-
ing recollectlons OF those dreary carpet-bag
days of SO and 81. Thoughtful citizens will
not grow enthusiastic in the support of a
party incapable of d~evising a better policy for
the treatment of the conquered south than
the one briefly described. People will ask
what kind of republican government was
that which armed such men as Sheridan with
absolute power and sent them into the sub
duea states as truly the representatives of
absolutism as was General Meilikoff in his
recent proceedings against the Russian Mill
lists? Was that the restoration of the
Union" for which the north had poured out
its blood and treasure so literally a few years
previously? Then in his account of the in
terview in which he assures Hancock that
four million ignorant blacks could not DON'T
nate oyer three million whites possessing all
the education and property how is it that
the bluff and truthful soldier Grant forgets
all about the hordes of disreputable northern
adventures who went south for the express
purpose of manipulating that vast mass of
African Ignorance, an undertaking in which
they received the active support of the repub-
lican party? And why does he further omit
to add that the Acknowledgement of immense
numbers of southern citizens still further
contributed towards delivering the recon-
structed states into the hands of the carpet
bag thieves, whose work is yet visible in the
debts now burdening those states? The fact
of the matter is that in his attack on Han
cock Grant makes his first appearance in the
role of demagogue, a position to which he has
of late been steadily gravltating under the
direction of that arch demacogue, Roscoe
Conkling.
If anything his attack on the memory of
Andrew johnson was still less happy than the
onslaught on Hancock. OF johnson as a
statesman we may entertain different opin-
ions, but of his character as a man there is
only one Judgment to be pronounced. Even
in the days of the impeachment, when a con-
gress of jobbers was anxious to provide in the
person of poor, innocent old Ben. Wade a
leader under whose purblind eyes their
schemes or wholesale thievery could have
been prosecuted without hindrance-even in
those days, the b~itterest, most implacable enc
my of Andrew johnson had not a word to
say concerning his personal honesty, not a
breath of accusation of collision with any
job or any system of spoliation whatever.
This reputation he enjoyed to the last, and
when he went to his grave Andrew johnson
vas respected as an honest man, by friend
and foe alike, whatever may have been
thought of his political meth DIS. This opin-
ion of Johnson's honesty is still cherished by
the people, and when Mr.. Grant modestly as
sures us that he was himself too "stupid'a and
obstinate " to comply with the wishes of the
Louisiana commissioners, whose schemes were
favored by Johnson, we are apt to remember
that he was 500 stupid and obstinate' TO get
rid of the whiskey thieves and other rings
which found at Washington 50 congenial an
atmosphere during both terms of Grants ad-
mimistration. His slur Oh the memory of
johnson cannot but recall the purity of John.
sons administration, which contrasts strik-
lngly with the Babcocks, the Belknaps, the
whiskey rings, the nepolism, the taking of
presents, and in a word, with the low vul-
garity which characterized administration
circles while Grant was at the head of affairs.
The public was SO charitable as to credit to
ignorance rather than design The fact that
President Grant selected his associates from
among men very few of whom wOul have
been welcomed to a seat at the table of any
| respectable citizen; charity kindly suggested
that he had no personal interest in the opera
ions of the whisky ring; but for all that,
when the third term was suggested, the peo-
pie were not slow in declaring that they had
had Grantism enough, and wanted no more of
it. After such a rebuff as that received at
Chicago, common sense should suggest to
Mr.. Grant that his leadership or counsel is
not desired. Good taste would further sug.
gest the propriety of a non-intrusion into the
arena of politics, an arena from which he was
excluded by the majority of his own party,
and excluded in such a way as 10 leave no
doubt that he was not wanted, for if eyer a
"vote of want-of-confideuce'' was adopted it
was at Chicago.
TERRE HAUTE, Iud., Oct. G.-The repub-
Iio,ps bad a grand rally TODAY. with "A very