Year: 1864

THE New York Journal of Commerce
puts this question touching the next
President of the United States, and ans
wers it thus:


The question, who shall be the next
President Of the United States, begins to
press on all minds. It is, in fact, the
grand question of the winter. Military
movements will be suspended for some
months, and political movements will oc-
cupy the attention of the people Con
gress will be at work on legislation, and
the country will work at the great priyi-
lege and duty of the citizen, the discus
sion of public measures, and the deter
mination of the future public policy.


If it were possible to throw aside en-
tirely all party prejudice and partizan
feeling, and look coolly and camly on
the Presidential question, it would Ger
tainly do every man good to spend an
hour or two in such an exercise. 1t
would be well to ask what sort Of man
shall he be, rather than who shall he be?
What shall be his measures, his princi-
pies, his style Of ability? There are
some points on which all men win agree
who have the nations interest at heart.
There are others on which they all ought
to agree, but about which there is doubt
less some difference of opinion.


He ought to be new man. BY this
we mean that he ought not to be any man
who has been mixed up in Washington
politics, plunder. and intrigues, who has
been debauched and destroyed by those
influences which surround Office. holders
at the capital. If men looked on the
character of those whom they select for
rulers, to be intrusted with their grayest
interests, as carefully as they look on the
character Of the clerks they employ in
their offices, or the men to whom they
lend money or trust their fortunes, they
would choose rulers elsewhere than am
ong the men who have made politics At
the national capital their trade for years.
1t is of no use now to tell US that we want
men Of experience. We want men of
honesty and ability, and there is not a
man of that measure in America whose
experience during the past three years
has not just as well fitted him for the
Presidency as that Ofany person at Wash
ington. The grand desideratum is a man
who is wholly outside of the ring which
exists at Washington to-day, very much
as one existed few weeks ago in New
York city politics. It would be a fatal
error to elect next fall any man now in
volved in the intrigues Of that ring. 1t
would be a terrible error to place power
for four years to come in the hands of
any man whose interest it is to draw the
veil Of secrecy over the history of the
present administration, to continue its
contracts, and to carry out its measures
without question. No, let the next Pres
ident be a new man.


He should be man Of youth and Wig
or of mind. He will be called on to di-
rect the pacifcation Of the people and the
restoration to prosperity of this afflicted
nation. We cannot emerge from the ter
rible scenes surrounding US without a
convulsiOn we'll nigh equal to that which
attended our entrance into them. 1t has
been a comparatively easy matter for a
President to perform nominally the fune-
tions of his Office during the war. 1t
will be tenfold, hundred fold harder
to perform them at its close. Why hes
itate to express the exact truth which is
in every mans secret thoughts, that nei-
ther the President nor his Administra-
tiOn has fought this war. It has fought
itself. We have drifted, drifted, drifted,
from battle to battle, from experiment to
experiment, from accident to accident.
The army Of the people has been in the
field, and the politicians at Washington
have had 10 more conception, three or