Year: 1875

change the whole tone os our pol itics and our government. Since the war a military sentiment has controlled the republican party. The old feslty to ideas which an imated men like Sumner and Chase and Greedy, and which made the party independent, az gressive and pure, has given way to an absolute submission to the will of q chief. The President commands the government and the party just as he commanded an army. There is no will but that of the silent, inscrutablc mas ter in the White House. Occa- sionally there has been murmur. ns in St. Domingo and more recent ly in Louisiana. For q moment VI: have expectations of n mutiny or division. One or two indc- pendent men venture to assert that they are the peers and not the slaves of the President. But dis cipline is resumed, the murmur dies away, acts of an extreme and unconstitutional nature arc con doned or forgotten, and the party moves on and on, obeying the will of . chief as implicitly as that will was obeycd by the armies of the Potomac and the West.

 If the head of this party were q sclf-denying, patriotic man, an imatcd by the sentiments of Wash ington, or even of Jackson, with no ambition but the public wei fare, no personal friends to sup port and m personal interests to advance, we might be content with this anomaly in government, feel ing assured that it would right itself, and that the nation, after passing through it's military fever, would drift back to a condition Oi pristine health and freedom. But President Grant is no such man. Obstinate, able, independent, self willed, amcndablc to no influences except those winch appear to his pride and his vanity, believing that he is more necessary to the party than the party ever has been to him, and regarding the Presi- idency as a personal possession, flushed with power, he does not mean to resign the office to which he has been chosen until he has exhausted every means of retain ing it. Upon this theory his pol icy is as clear as crystal. We can understand it. We can see that he has been from the bcginni ng driving ut one purpose, and in pursuance of that purpose noth- ing is more natural than that he should threaten war with Spain, and ask Congress to give him mon- ey % as to purchase guns of a larger calibrc.

 The uprising ofthc people in the last canvass against the idea of the third term destroyed ever;' belief which the President had en- tertaincd as to the power of party discipline to retain him in the Presidency. But two chances re- mained-a rebellion in the South and a foreign war. Nothing has prevented the revival in the South of the rebellion but the admirable patience of the southern people. Provoked as they have been al- most beyond endurance-a high mcttled, proud, irasciblc race nothing was more probable than that they would have answered the usurpation of Kellogg and the conduct of Sheridan by insurrec- tion. The South is in so volcanic q condition that the flame would have blazed all over the late Con. federacy. Such an uprising would have given the President the opportunity he and his friends desired. It would have aroused the old war spirit; it would have sent him into the field at the head of an army, and the result of such q campaign would have been the certainty ofa triumphant re-clec- tiOn as President.

 But, as we have said, this failed through the patience and wisdom of the Southern people, and now what remains! A foreign war, and with no country but SDain.