New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1883-01-17

And yet The Richmond Dispatch has the as
surance to undertake to forecast his future so
far as to say that he can never be nominated
for President by either party. Obviously it
doesn't know him. Why, when this man goss
for a nomination of any sort he means bust
ness 1t isn't any Fort Fisher racket-blOwing
up lot of powder and going away. lie never
did that but once. Now when he wants q
nomination he sticks to it till he gets il, and
if he doesn't get it from one party he does
from the other. 1t makes no difference with
| him which he gets it FROM It's all the same
so he gets it. If direct assault fails he lays
siege; he trenches and mines and approaches
by ziz-zags and multitude of indirections,as he
did during the succession of years in which he
sought the Republican nomination for Governor
of Massachusetts, All these failing, he simply
sends out scaling party with ladders to
enter the convention Of the other party by
third-story window and capture the nomina-
ton by surprise. No flea, even under gal
vanic battery, could make livelier work than
this. One moment the large, heavy thumb Of
Massachusetts, Republicanism drops heavily on
the spot where he is supposed to be, and
naturally ought to be the next he winks at
sitive scalp of the exceedingly respectable
Massachusetts Democracy. Reached 1t partly
by saltation and partly by ladder. A year
previous, persons who knew the General
only by his abOrtiye attack on Fort
Fisher and his unsuccessful siege Of
Worcester, and had never seen him
in his great grasshOpper act, would have laid
heavy odds that he could never be nominated
for Governor Of Massachusetts,. They would
have laid still heavier that he would never be
nominated by Democrats, and would have
laughed any man to scOrn who suggested the
possibility that he would be the Democratic
candidate within year. But be was, all the
same. He isn't safe man to lay wagers on
or prophesy about.
The Richmond paper manifestly does not
know him. Massachusetts does. So does Bos-
ton And so, to an unusual degree, with
knowledge born of hard knocks, does the Hon.
Frank Bird. All for how many successive
years did Frank Bird and "Sam y Bowles
and Chip Warrington Robinson, and the
Hoar brothers and the rest sit together in a
musty room In the Bay State House, at WOr-
cester, on the eve of the State Convention.
working up the opposition to Butler and
devisng barriers between him and the Repub-
lican nomination. And the most detected and
melancholy Bird in the whole flock over the
possibility of Butler was Frank. Tired out
at last with fighting Butler, he went over to
the Democracy. "The villain still pursued |
him." He had hardly struck the roost when |
Benjamin was beside him. Worse still, he got |
the regular Democratic nomination for Gov
ernor, and Bird was obliged to signalize his |
entrance into the party by boiling a regular |
nomination. Nobody who knew Bird well and |
Butler not very well would have hesitated at |
that time to have laid a wager of say a million |
dollars against a nickel that Frank Bird would |
never be found voting for Butter for
Governor. But he was, all the same.
And what is more, and must have made Bowles
and Robinson turn over in their graves, he has
since then been attending dinners in honor |
of Butler, and publicly expressing con-
hdence in him. The Richmond paper |
clearly does not know Mr.. Butler. Let |
it fasten its mind q little more friendly |
upon his character and career, beginning, say,
with his vote for Jefferson Davis in the
Charleston Convention of 1860, and coming
down by easy stages to the present time. Ii
after careful consideration of his character
and qualities it is prepared to risk the predlc-
ton that it will not itself be found urging |
Buffers nomination for the Presidency in
SS4, we shall-wait and see.