Connecticut western news., 1891-04-29
LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE.
EDWARD CowLEs' OPINION OF HORACE
 GREELEY.

EDWARD cowLEs' OPINION OF HORACE
 GREELEY.
 Editor of the Neacs:
 The following is portion of a copy of letter which Nas written to my mother by my brother Edward soon after the death of Mir Greeley. Should you be disposed to publish it, it may interest some of your readers at this, his Jubilee season, and perhaps those who knew my mother will recall with somewhat gentle memories her ardent interest in the affairs of the nation. Her correspondence with my brother was always more or less an interchange of their political ideas. A. 0. c. W. ''The Grove. April 20, 1891.
 In speaking of Mir Greedy, Edward Cowles says: am not in the least sur prised at either his death, melancholy as it has been, nor at the particular features of it. Indeed some of those who knew him we'll have been surprised that death has come to him as at last it has. Few except his own intimate friends ever have known how near he came to dying in the same way imme- diately after the battle of Rull Run, in July1S61. For days he groaned and wept in agony over what he regarded as his personal responsibility. for the conse- uusnces of the "On to Richmond" cry. Brain fever he then barely escaped; and worse even than that, some indications of the same insanity which visited him now were perceptible in his case at that tine. In most respects he possessed a high degree of moral courage, but the thought that he was in anyway person. ally responsible for the disaster, and loss of life in July 1861, unnerved and distracted him. So too in 1872 the mere reflection that he had assumed the responsibility of seeking by new combinations, to defeat, as the event proved, his old party of liberty, prog ress, and human advancement. While such defeat was not his object, for he believed that he was to have in his fol- lowing all of the better portions of the old Republican, and the most also of the better portions of the old Democra- cy; but as I said, as the event proved, his position so taken and it's most mor- tifying result The false position in which he found himself, the seeming utter repudiation of both himself and his new political platform, its temporary severance of himself from his old and cherished friends, the startling fact, as it seemed to him that he had not the strong hold on the moral sense of the country which he had fattered himself that he really held, the to him most surprised waking up to the fact of his crushing if not annihilllating defeat, and that too after such scorching criti- cism upon his personal characteristics uniting him for high executive trusts, all these thingssso wounding to his amour p7'opre struck at once to the brain, a brain long overworked; and with the death of his wife, just at the eliminating point of his political disaster, bowed down hls head in bitter chagrin, disappointment and sorrow. obscured his intellect, with clouds of gloom, dethroned his reason, and caused his sun to set in darkness as melancholy and as sad as was ever the fate of gifted man. can hardly restrain my tears as think of him; his virtues were many and most ennobling, his faults were few and not those of the heart Whatever they were they were not of wickedness and vice. His was large heart, full of the simplicity of the child, always awake to the impulses of human ity and Christian philanthropy. Throughout his great battle of life his public virtue. His weaknesses have heart, of confiding and too unsuspi-
 
 such as rendered him utterly unfitted for high executive duties, just as they would have totatally disqualified him for ordering battalion into the deadly breach, where the inevitable price of victory is the march over and through | bloody path of death. Yet the good he has done in life will much of it live after him, and may the evil he has unwittingly done, be s'interred with his bones". Peace to his ashes, and the freshest of verdure above his head! The world is better that he has lived, and the Angel of charity will throw fragrant l flowers over every spot in his character where error has dimmed it's brightness. You who so long have been h1s admire1 will cheerfully join with me Tn ascrib- ing to him all proper honor and rever. ence for the good that was in him and " hich he hes done, for his long life championship of the lowly and the humble of the world, and we will both of us believe that his simple faith was we'll founded when in few moments oi serenity and reason, as his bewildered aud troubled intellect emerged as it were from clouds of darkness and mel aucholy, heewas able to whisper forth these impressive words. II know that my Redeemer liveth."