The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-02-11
AMERICAN SIMPLICITY AN STRENGTH.

AMERICAN SIMPLICITY AN D STRENGTH.
Never was our Republican simplicity more
signally and yet unostentatiously illustrated
than on Saturday, the occasion being the
retirement to private life of the commander
in-chief of the United States military forces.
FThe only changes" the report says, chat
will result from the retirement, will be that
Colonel John E. Tourtelotte and Colonel John
M, Bacon, now acting as aides-de-camp of
General Sherman, will be ordered to rejoin
their regiments" That is all. No demon
stration, no fanfaronade, and no military
display. General Shermans aides-de-camp go
back to their regiments he re-
mains in his quiet home in
st. Louis, and that is the end of it,
One of the greatest military men of modern
times a man who for months walked in the
focus of the eyes of all the world, and who led
as brilliant a campaign as ever was planned or
carried into successful execution, steps down
and out from the highest to the place of the
humblest honest citizen. Nothing goes with
him but the glory of his deeds and the graft
tude of his fellow-citizens. A new evidence
of the solidity of the American republic is
thus laid before the world. With all the
chances and temptations attendant upon the
troubled times of desperate and exhaustive
civil war, not one of the great leaders
o. tod 10 do &c fol
individual advancement, nor to take advantage
of personal popularity to lead the people into
new complications. From the chaos of inter
necine strife that plowed up the social world
as an earthquake throws up mountain ranges
out of the level plain and heaves islands from
the depths of the sea, the dsordered elements
have recrystallized, and the splendid mosaic of
American citizenship has been restored and
embellished.
The old world with its Kingdoms, empires
and autocracies, has been free to criticise us
and predict short and inglorious life to our
peculiar form of government. The fabric of
our institutions was declared to be rotten, and
our hope of an abiding place among the ma
tons of the earth a fantasm of fanatical
dreamers We succeeded in the revolution,
it was said, only because of aid from France
The large measure of truth in this must be
admitted. When the treaty of Paris was
signed and the newborn republic was recog-
nized among the powers of earth, the mother
country confidently expected the bewildered
own weight, so diverse were the elements
out Of which it was wrought, and so hostile
and homogeneous were its several parts. The
problem of existence was indeed desperate
one, and had not those in charge been for
country first, and self afterwards, it is not
plain but we might have been a kingdom SINH
lar to that of England. Washington was
urged to take advantage of his popularity and
power to found an empire on the Western con-
tinent, and it is a matter of history that he
could have retained the presidency. His
illustrious example has since served as the
VI
national politics. and in the same simple man
ner that Washington retired from the army
and declined the presidency at the close of his
second term, others occupying those exalted
stations have given way to their successors.
Again, in 1912, the life of the republic was
imperiled, but it again came out victorious,
stronger and more self reliant from the con-
f1ict. But the supreme test was begun in the
early days of 1861, and again hostile sentiment
across the sea confidently predicted dissolu-
ton, and by every means of encouragement
except open and honorable warfare, assisted in
the attempt to dismember the American Union,
hoping to be in at the death and to share il
the spoils. But again the patriotism of the
people was adequate to the fierce demands of
the times, and the same self-abnegation was
observable in public men as has characterized
all of our really great American leaders. To-
day is the peer Of the nations yesterday. The
same spirit that animated Marion and his men,
who were compelled to meagerly subsist on
sweet potatoes while fighting the battles of the
new republic. is alive to-day. The nation has
grown wealthy, wise and strong. The great
disturbing element in American political life
was put out Of the way during the rebellion.
1t can never come between State aud State