Year: 1868

this city on the Fourth of July, though nomi-
nally democratic convention. seems to have
lost its party character and to have suddenly
become truly nationsl, so implicitly do men of
all parties and the whole people rely upon it to
rise to the dignity of an act that shall save the
nation: No voice i heard The ether way save
that Of the small, pitifal professional poll
ticians, the dirty influence mongers, the dealers
in promises and places.


The want of the nation now is to have
statesman at its head-not soldier. There
are no armed enemies to overcome, no mil
lions of men to be organized into line of battle
and hurled against fortified places Slaughter
and strategy are not the necessities of the hour.
When they were the sitting of the national life
gave us Grant, man with an intellect and
character that peculiarly fitted him to succeed
in those things but now we wan. another sort
of mana man competent to succeed in states
manship as Grant did in war. Grant under
stands war; he has given his life to its study;
but he does not understand any necessity of
State save how 10 protect it from its armed





istered over the drumhead he knows nothing
of finances save that the soldiers must have
their pay. Is this the sort of man to organize
peace, to be entrusted with a government
when the fighting is just finished and the needs
are to do everything in the world that is most
unlike war and that is the opposite to what
war does, to cure the effects of the war, to
open the courts, to assist and encourage agri-
culture and commerce and industry? No.
We want man of an entirely different mould
never requires to count upon physical force as
the great corrective of every evil and the means
to every end. Chase was as great in the war as
Grant; but he was great in the things that, while
they are necessary to war, are the primary re-
quirements of peace. He devised the means
by which the national strength could be
exerted, the national power directed in the
given channel, the national wealth transferred
from hand to hand and made available at the
direction of the popular impulse This was as
necessary to the success of the nation in the
war as victory in the field, and power of this
nature is, above all other things, necessary in
peace. AS between the two men, therefore,
who stand forward candidates for the highest
Office in the gift of the people, considering all
the necessities of the Office and all the circum-
stances of the time, the choice, if it be the
reasoning expression of the country thought,
must inevitably fall upon Chase. Indeed, if
Chase be nominated we hardly see how Grant
can go through the campaign and lend his
name to an effort to prevent the nation having
for President the man 80 much more fit for the
place than himself. We should not be sur
prised if Grant, seeing bis false position,
should withdraw upon the nomination of the
Chief Justice and leave the radicals to nomi-
nate another and less scrupulous leader in
Wade, perhaps to be balanced by the candi-
date of boiling faction of democratic ex
tremists like Pendleton. Between two such
candidates, however, Chase, as the man of the
people, could not be more sure of success than
he is now as the opponent of government by
despotic will-the champion of order under the
In