Year: 1876




After all, it appears that you are more
to be pitied than blamed, to be regarded
more in sorrow than in anger. While
your party, for purposes Of its own, has
held your body up as a shield between
itself and the people, who have said they
do not want either yourself or your
party, you have been losing the noblest
offer of immortal fame and affection that
history has proffered any American since
the days when George Washington
waived his chances of undue political
position. We do not say that your cir
cumstances and Washington's are pre-
cisely similar, nor ever analogous, but
merely you might have been awarded
credit in history for a similar disposition
to resign power to the people, to whom
it belongs of right. To you, personally.
it must necessarily be small achieve
ment to have been listed in future an
mails as one of long line Of Presidents,
mere item in a catalogue of chrome
logical facts; to have your name conned
by school boys together with that of
Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk,
Franklin Pierce, and the interminable
i1hO w bO ob1OUOhCu Oub W blC CldOh VI
doom, like those nameless sovereigns
that Macbeth saw pass by. We do not
intend to disparage those gentlemen, nor
any President we have had, or may here
after have; but there are in our national
history other names more. illustrious
than theirs, though their happy posses
sors never achieved the Presidency
even the names of their defeated COM
petitors The name of John Quincy
Adams is more likely to be remembered
from his brilliant record in the halls of
Congress than from the fact that he was
a chronological item in the White
House. The name of Henry Clay. who
"would rather be right than President"
is at least as bright and enduring as that
of Polk; and that of Winfield Scott will
last as long as Pierce's. 1t may be true
that you had not the shining record Of
Adams or Clay in debate, nor the emf.
nent fame of Winfield Scott in the field,
neither the one nor the other to rescue
you from impending oblivion. But for
tune has rendered you an opening for an
action more glorious and immortal than
any of theirs. 1t was not so much
what Cincinnatus did as what he
did not that made him great. And
so it was with Washington, and SC
it might have been with you. You have
been named as the leader of your party
and the purer portion of that party have
declared you a man to lead in fact, and
not to- be led by its baser elements. You
had but to assert your Leadership, and tt
say to those baser elements that you coulo
not countenance the devious and sub
versive means by which they proposed tc
defeat popular sovereignty and bring II
into ridicule, by utilizing Returning
Boards in one State and rejecting them
in another. The conspirators NIGH
not have obeyed you, as they are unac
customed to obey; but the whole mas
of the American people would have riser
to sustain you. For you to have dont
this would not have required even al
exertion of magpanimity; for not only
would it have elevated your name intc
one of the noblest landmarks in history
even in other ages and other climes, but
if you craved the Presidency, there il
rot envy enough in this land to have pre-
vented your being lifted into that Office
by the feeblest party four years from
now.


1t is probably too late; the rubicor
has, perhaps. been passed, and you mus
take your stand rather with those who
have sought power by indirection thar
with the nobler class who have clao
themselves in immortality by renounc
ing it.


Surely it is unhappy that a man o
honorable ambition, who has had thi!
tiGe offered him in his affairs, shoule
have chosen to be catalogued and classi
fed with the schemers and plotters who
are whispering to each other what Rich
elieu thundered TO those other gamesters
close not single trick"


You have preferred to take you
stand, not with Washington and Cincin
natus, but with Packard and Chamber
lain and the negro saloon-keeper of New
| Orleans.