Year: 1871

times arise In the west and sometimes little
clouds, small and shadowy, no bigger than
politicians hand, appear in that Objectionable
harbingers Of change, Of unforeseen move
ments In public opinion, Of revolution, in fact,
peacefully and noiselessly working itself into
life. Such signs present themselves now in
the existing political condition of the country,
and they can be read clearly enough In the
singular political movements going on in the
Western States-Missouri leading off,


The last election in that State, which put
Gratz Brown the QiberaD republican, into the
Governors chair and sent to the Senate OF the
United States Frank Blair, an uncompromising
democrat, has significance far beyond the
State politics of Missouri; and if it is not felt
most uncomfortably in this light by the ad-
ministration Of General Grant and the friends
of the succession to the White House, then the
horoscope has been spread before them in vain
We know how all the Southern States, with
| one exception, have gone in their late cleo
tions, negro votes included. They have rallied
on the side of the democratic party,
and they are good on that side for the
Presidential vote in 1872. Missouri, which
is the political keystone of the Western and
Northwestern States, has abandoned radical
ism, has set up the might Of her franchise
crippled as il is, in hostility to the test oath
and all other obstructions which disfranchise
her citizens. She stands to-day, in the person
| of her two Senator'S and her Executive, in an
attitude Of firm hostility to the administration.
| When the State gave forty-on thousand
majority for Gratz Brown, which included
the whole democratic vote-for the democrats
put no State ticket in the feld-Missouri
simply declared that the time had come when
we should realize the fact that the war was
over, and the cry 'Let US have peace" was
| worthless shibboleth unless the practical
| effects Of peace were visible throughout the
land. The most conscientious radicals in the
State came to think that they performed all
their duty to party and to conscience by
adhering to the republican administration for
ten years past-as long as there was a slave
to be freed or rebel to be subdued-but that
dead issues should not stand in the way Of
progress in the great West and South merely



Especially they think that their own disfran-
chised seventy five thousand voters should be
restored to the full rights of citizenship, and
that the interests of their fellow citizens in all
the Southern States should be taken care Of
also in this particular; in short, that every
man should be made to feel by practical
proof that the war is over, and that the pre-
sence of United States troops in State elections
is unnecessary and offensive to the people.
These, we opine, were the thoughts which
drifted radicalism from its moorings in
Missouri and carried it into the tepid stream
of ''liberal repubicanism," from which it is
destined to float into the broad river of
democracy There is no use in coquetting on
the banks. The new element has to go into
that channel and take its part in shaping
events for the campaign Of 1872.


In view Of this coming revolution of parties
throughout the great West, what steps is
General Grant taking to concentrate his
strength, to bind around him the faithful few,
who in the midst Of general disintegration,
still cling to him with the tenacty which
belongs to the cohesive power of spoil and
office, or to win back the dsaffscted, who,
finding nothing in his policy to hold a great
party together, have either strayed away "to
paths uneven" or, like Sumner and Schurz,
with Blair now for an ally in the Senate, take
open issue with him-one on the platforms of
Motley and st. Domingo, the other upon the
broader principles Of fresh reconstruction of
the South? Personally, General Grant is
very strong, because people have not forgotten
Vicksburg nor the Appomattox apple tree;
but in his political surroundings he is awfully
weak Upon the two occasions referred to
generals and other high army officers were
most valuable counsellors, but in grave affairs
of State it is evident that they are not the men
to stand behind the throne and direct the ad-
ministration through great political crisis.
Grants prime mistake was in surrounding him
self by parcel Of amateur politicians, instead
| of gathering about him men Of skill and expe-
rience in the political arena. His various
| Cabinets failed to show single man even
with brass or audacity enough to face diff
Guilty if it should come. And it has come
now. The Cabinet, we might say, was but
school for unfedged politicians to learn the
use of rad tape, with a little smatterng of
diplomacy. instead of being composed of men
whose political knowledge would have brought
power into his councils, and whose mental
force would have been law in the Cabinet.


| General Grant has been unfortunate in all
| this; but it may not be too late to REMEDY the
! evil. 1t is said that he contempates an entire
reconstruction of his Cabinet There is not
moment to be lost. Want of good advisers
led the President into many mistakes. For
example, one was in trying to carry out the
old time idea that the State of New York
i L. H. h.