Year: 1874

Conkling is man of distinguished character
and reputation, the leader of the republican
party in this State, the most eloquent Senator
in Congress now that Sumner has passed
away; in the fulness and energy of active man
hood; and, having declined the highest once
in the gift of the President, that OF Chief
Justice, may naturally be regarded as can
didate for the highest office III the gift of the
people. Mr. Conkling retains all of
/ lovers enthusiasm for beauty that time has
a good deal faded. To his tender eyes re-
pubhcanism is as fair and fresh as when she
made her virgin campaign under the banner
of Fremont And although times have
gone roughly with her since then, and men
have trifed with her good name and there
have been Credit Mobilierism and carpet
baggery and salary grabbing and other un-
seemly sores upon her brow, repelling
to honest and unbiased eyes, Roscoe
Conkling is ardent as when he chanted his
first political epithalamium. In these days Of
doubt and unbelief the sweet, assured conf
dence of this imperial lover is soothing and
grateful


We can understand the political exigencies
which lead Senator as eminent as Mr.
! Conkling to speak of the rebellion as an event
that would not have taken place had Grant
been President in 1860 And it would be
hard to deny statesman the pleasure of say
ing these harmless things to Collector Arthur
and his loyal followers in noisy convention.
But we must question the wisdom Of leader
who takes 80 superficial view of public
events as to regard the rebellion as an event
that could be created or suppressed by any one
man. as a mere combat and not great awaken
ing and transiton-not as a vast national
revolution, but a war drought on them
selves by the white people of the South, mis-
guided and deluded by the democratic party"
And as the war was simply the result OF the


'delusions'' of ''the leaders of the democ-
racy, SO the present troubles "come from the
lamentable and suicidal course Of men who
have been freely forgiven by the nation for
one of the bloodiest crimes in the book Of
time" In other words, and without venturing
to follow the alert and soaring rhetoric Of the
Senator, the Southern people should have felt
that we did all we were called upon to do
when we did not hang them. We completed
reconstruction when we refrained from capital
punishment OF COURSE there have been awk-
ward bitches in the business, which the Sena-
tor does not overlook. Ignorant, weak, venal
mem have seized power. There have been


''bad legislation, excessive taxation. unwise
and profigate administration, with their train
of evils" The South should have submitted,
grateful as We before remarked, that its rebels
had not all been hanged, just as New York
submitted to the counting in" of Hoffman as
Governor when Griswold had thirty thousand


votes more.


Mr.. Conkling feels that Grant "cannot be
spared, and if not now, how in 1852 AS for


the South, we have punished it as no people


have ever been punished. We have overturned


Davis and Lee, Breckenridge and Jackson,


and have raised up Kellogg and Warmoth,
Moses and Whittemore. This is ou,


reconstruction, the result of nine years of the
: deliberate craftsmanship of Mr.. Conkling and
( his friends, and New York republicans are
called upon to rejoice over the achievement.
s 1t is nine years since Lee surrendered at Ap-
r pomattox, since the last gun was fired in


anger, since the republican party came into
, unchallenged mastery of the Union. Provi-
dence devolved upon that party the most
sacred mission ever intrusted to political


organization-to build up the shattered States;


to bind up the wounds and heal the sores to
give opportunity to the misguided white man


and protection to the black to consecrate and
consolidate the results of emancipation, SO


that the new relation should be benefit to
the master as we'll as the slave; to revive
, the dormant and paralyzed industries OF
the South; to restore the railway system,


the cotton and sugar crops, and to
enter heartily and fraternally into the
sore needs of all classes. To this we were
@ prompted by every instinct Of brotherhood to


men who were our brothers, by every instinct


of seltishness as members of Union which
I could never be harmonious Union 50 long
: as anarchy reigned in large section OF
States, so long as sovereign Commonwealth


were suffering from ''bad legislation, exces-
. sive taxation, unwise and proAigate admin.
l istration." This, we say, was the mission


accepted by Mr. Conkling and his friends in
g 1865. To this work they have been devoting


themselves for nine years, and now the result


is, according to Mr.. Conkling's own state
: ment that Ignorant, weak. venal men" rule
the South, and Grant "cannot be spared
from Washington lest the honest masses should
overturn them.


This is the situation, and this eminent and
It leading Senator who has no superior in the
q councils of his party, admits that he has nc
i other issue upon which to go to the people thar
d the old war cry of 1861. In the beggary ant
J. bankruptcy Of republican craftsmanship moth


ing remains but the gospel of hatred, ant


Roscoe Conkling breaches it at Utica with a,
's much earnestness, as much eloquence and 81
e much feeling as he preached war to the knit