Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1888-05-31
Greshnm,a Raoortl.

A man never knows himself until he
gets into politics. At least, he never gets
his past life pulled together In such shape
that he con see It all at one glance until
he becomes q formidable candidate for
some political Office. That is why Judge
Gresham Is, perhaps, better acquainted
with himself today than ever before. It
Is altogether probable that he never real
izod what q small potato he was until
the Blaine folks got to editing his record.
Up to within the last month or two the
Judge had reason to be stuck on himself,
for pretty much everybody else was stuck
on him. He had been cabinet officer, q
Judge Of the federal court, and had held
various public trusts, and yet everybody
spoke of him as q clean man, who was
guided in public affairs by sole desire to
had never become o presidential candi-
date, ho would have gone down into his
tory as ono of the purest men
that ever adorned public life. But
it doesn't look that way now. The
Blaine folks are talking q good
deal, and what they say is calculated to
tarnish the judges good name and to
knock the spots out Of his presidential
boom. They indulge in good deal of
mysterious undertone talk about the
political trades the judge made to get into
q cabinet Office and from the cabinet to
life position on the Federal bench. And
then they profess to have something that
they are holding back to be sprung at an
opportune time, which will show that
Judge Gresham's celebrated ruling in the
Jay Gould railway case was not so purely
unselish as the judges friends would
have the public believe. In addition to
these mysterious intimations of crooked
transactions on the part of one who is
held up as an example of immaculate
purity in American political life, the
Blaine people have gone to work and un-
earthed Judge Gresham's political record
thirty years back, and, as result, show
that he was an ultra Know Nothing, who
went about breathing slaughter and
threatenings to all American citizens of
foreign birth America for Americans"
was the judges political war cry thirty
years ago.
So far as the intimations thrown out
by the Blainites concerning Judge Gresh-
ans crookedness in politics or his ruling
in the Wabash cases, they will count for
but little against him unless substan-
tiated by proof But so far as his Know
Nothing record is concerned, it is bound
to give the judges presidential aspira-
tions very black eye. Not because of
any special prejudice in the Republican
party against Know Nothingism, because
the old Know Nothing party was the
germ of the Republican party, but it will
be because of the general recognition of
the fact that n man with an unmiStakable
Know Nothing record would not make
an available presidential candidate That
record would ALLEVIATE the entire foreign
born population at the start, without any
show of attracting strength from other
quarters, because the entire Know Moth
ing element is already inside of the Re-
publican party.
Judge Gresham's friends must have
been ignorant of their candidates past
record when they started his boom, or
they underestimated the hyena like ca
pacity of the Blaine leaders for delving
into the dead past.-St. Paul Globe