The Portland daily press., 1880-07-20
The Hancock Recruits. +,

Democratic papers have great deal to
say about Hancock recruits" but singular
ly enough, omit to mention the most sur
prising conversions. They persistently
dwell upon the names of John W. Fornev
and Leonard Jerome. These are GOOD
names. Mr.. Foney became recruit in
1861, and has since done loyal and valiant
work. Mr.. Jerome was with the Unionists
from the start, and, though never worker
in any sense of the word, his social position
and his considerable wealth enabled him to
do good service when service was most
needed.
But the most remarkable conversions have
gone unrecorded, and the long roll of re-
cruits has yet to he called. Thousands and
tens of thousands of these names are to be
found in the archives of the office of the
Acknowledgement of the late Southern Con-
federacy. They received an invitation to
become Hancock men seventeen years ago.
an invitation accentuated by eighty pieces
OF cannon and seventy thousand muskets at
Gettysburg. They declined then-without
thanks. They have been converted bv general
order since-General Order Number Forty.
Nor are the conversions in the North less
remarkable. Pennsylvania, for example,
contributes its penitent in the person of
Buchanan's Attorney General, jeremiah
Black, the man who declared coercion of the
rebellious States the most monstrous of crimes
and who held that the commander of the
Second Corps was waging a wicked and I'M
constitutional war, New England contrib
utes Senator Eaton who, following in the
track of Calhoun, styles himself the ac
credited ambassador from the sovereign
State OF Connecticut to the annual confer
ence of allied States at Washington. Indi-
ana contributes Senator Voorhees,, who pro-
posed-as "war measure of course-that
our soldiers should wear upon the collars
of their blue coats the label ssAbe
Lincoln: his dog" Nor is Maine
behind. She was prompt in furnishing her
quota of Hancock men during the war.
There were some of her people who didn't
join him then. They are falling into line
now; and she offers, to begin with, the 49,
600 voters who cast their ballots for John
W. Dana in 1861; and to follow up with,
the $4,000 voters who through their repre-
sentatives in Convention in 1868 demanded
pledge from their candidate that he would
recall the Hancock men from the front, and
who denounced "this wicked, this hellish.
this abOlitionist war;" And at the head of
this great body of recent recruits, of these
men who were never known to approve
military order until peace was restored,
who were peace men in time of war and
who have become war men in these piping
times of peace, is the distinguished Demo-
cratic leader who gave the pledge the 'Han-
cock Convention" of 1868 demanded. So
radical has been his conversion that he most
unfrdternally stigmatizes his fellow recruits
whom Lee led into Pennsylvania as '.rebel
hordes." The hellish war spirit animates
his breast. His enthusiastic patriotism
would have been more valuable had it been
more timely. 1t is little late now to sport
the clover-leaf of the Second Corps. 1t cost
something once to wear that badge, and
then its wearers were called Lincoln
hirelings" and "abolitlonist assassins''-and
so called by the Hancock recruits of 1880.
Yes, the number Of Hancock men is large
so large that one suspects Hancock to be
the recruit. He has been converted, not
they. Mahomet has gone to the mountain.