would perhaps serve to oust Greeley after should be placed in the Presidential chair; there is therefore all the more need of the public considering them well, before elevating him to such a responsible place. If any two or three of them are true, they should disqualify him for the popular suffrages. Which one of them is not?

We will close this chapter with two quotations from high authority in reinforcement of our characterization of Mr. Greeley. First, from Mr. George William Curtis, most candid and generous of New York journalists, and editor of Harper's Weekly. He says:

"Mr. Greeley undoubtedly has elements of strength, but he is not a strong candidate. His name does not suggest to the country either of the two great executive qualities-discretion and decision. Bred in the school of Henry Clay, whose memory he piously reveres, he is naturally timid and a compromiser. He has the credulity which belongs to a certain simplicity of nature, and which destroys all sound judgment of person. His sympathies are limited; his prejudices deep and strong. He has been always a politician, and of an unsuspected personal honesty. Yet he is not free from suspicion of personal grievance, for he undoubtedly considered himself betrayed by the action of the New York Republican Convention in 1870; and it is plain that he has felt the want of what is called influence with the administration."

And next, from that Nestor of the press, Mr. William C. Bryant, who writes in his Evening Post (a paper which had been in sympathy with the Cincinnati movement up to the time of its wreck upon the old rock of political trickery):

"We shall, therefore, put together a few reasons that occur to us why the nomination of Mr. Greeley is unworthy of support.

"He lacks the courage, the firmness, and the consistency which are required in a chief magistrate of the nation. He showed this in a remarkable manner when, at the outbreak of the civil war, he desired to let the South

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have its way and dissolve the Union of the States. He was frightened, and feared to face the consequences of rejecting the demands of the Southern politicians. The war, however, went on, and soon, though claiming to be a Unionist, he became frightened again. He wanted to make terms with the rebel government at Richmond; he wanted to negotiate with George Saunders and other agents of the rebel government who had sought refuge in Canada. He was for stopping the war and letting the South depart with the chance of preserving slavery. His whole career during the war was irresolute and cowardly, and his counsels impolitic and unwise to the last degree. 'Mr. Greeley's political associations and intimacies are so bad that we can expect nothing from him, in case, to his own misfortune and ours, he should be elected, but a corrupt administration of affairs. Everybody is aware of his close intimacy with Mr. Fenton, of the Senate. If there is a corrupt and dishonest politician in the land, there is no man who has a better claim to be so considered than Reuben E. Fenton. His character is well known to Mr. Greeley; yet is he Mr. Greeley's bosom friend and counsellor in politics. Without a single idea of what public virtue or principle means, he is a most shrewd and skillful political manager. It was probably through his intrigues more than through any other influence that Mr. Greeley succeeded in obtaining his nomination. The same facility for entering into close association with dishonest men has marked the whole of Mr. Greeley's career. He began his political life as a disciple of Thurlow Weed, and only rebelled against his master when he found that he was not to have any of the offices for which political parties were quarreling. In a letter, which found its way to print, he expressly declined to hunt any longer in company with that virtuous individual, Weed, because there was no proper division of the game. He now hunts in company with Fenton, who is more generous. If he should be elected, it is very likely that Fenton would be the principal member of his Cabinet, and that the other heads of departments would be little better. As for the subordinate offices, they would probably be filled by the men whom he makes his companions, such as John Gridley, Waldo Hutchins, Benjamin Wood, John Morrissey and Hank Smith, the lesser lights of Mr. Greeley's social firmament.

"Mr. Greeley has no settled political principles, with one exception. It is a serious objection to any candidate for an office of high political trust that he has no well defined standard of right in his own mind by which to try any measure or any course of proceeding that may be proposed. This is one of Mr. Greeley's great deficiencies. Any aspect of a public measure which looks plausible satisfies him, and drifts backward and forward upon the shifting currents of expediency. It has been said of him as a politician, and we believe with some truth, that he has been on every side of every public question that has come up save one, and that brings us to another objection to him as a candidate.

"He is a thoroughgoing bigoted protectionist, a champion of one of the

most arbitrary and grinding systems of monopoly ever known in any country. Mr. Greeley is nothing if not a protectionist.

"The last objection to Mr. Greeley which we shall here mention is the grossness of his manners. General Grant is sometimes complained of as not filling the executive chair with the decorum and dignity which properly belong to the place; but his deficiency in this respect is the deficiency of one not accustomed to polished society, giving little heed to certain conventionalities which really become the high sphere he moves in, as Mr. Greeley so often is. "These are some of the objections which will occur to thoughtful men when they hear of Mr. Greeley's nomination; and allowing these the weight which they fully deserve, we must advise our readers to refuse the nomination their support. With such a head as is on his shoulders the affairs of the nation could not, under his direction, be wisely administered; with such manners as his, they could not be administered with common decorum; with such associates as he has taken to his bosom, they could not be administered with common integrity,"

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

Its Record During and Since the War-Some Nice Tidbits from the History of Greeley's Present Allies-The Essence of their Poliey Then the Same as Now-A Democratic Club of 500,000-Greeley's New York Associates -Who and What They Are-Greeley the Ring Candidate-That Good, Honest Soul-What he has Promised to Do for Them-Frank Blair as Painted by H. G.-The Southern Aristocrats, Ditto-Some of Greeley's Western Friends-Democratic Record on Financial Questions-On Congressional Abuses—The Original Nominator of H. G.—He Favors Repudiation of the Yankee War Debt and a Return of Negroes to Slavery-A Question by H. G. in 1864-Will he Answer it in 1872 ?

The action of the Democratic party at Baltimore, in nominating Horace Greeley as its candidate upon his secession record and his amnesty principles, has two effects. It completely stultifies the course of those "Liberal Republicans" who claim to be still Republicans, and who arrogate to themselves much virtue for breaking up the Democratic party; and it also makes Greeley distinctively the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, just as Judge Chase would have been in 1868, if he had secured the nomination which he then so ardently coveted. Greeley is the candidate of the regular Democratic organization. Democratic discipline will be brought to bear to whip voters into (507)

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his ranks, and Democratic money, doled out by Augustus Schell and Cyrus H. McCormick, will be used to buy such as will yield to no other incentive. The friends of the Democratic party, therefore, are Greeley's friends, and the friends of Greeley are its friends.

RECORD OF THE DEMOCRACY.

The record of the Democratic party prior to the Administration of James Buchanan, is not of much account in this connection, since all national issues assumed a new phase with the dawn of secession and civil strife. It will be recollected, however, that the Democratic party (so called because it was not democratic but oligarchic) was the party of Slavery before the war, and that ever since the firing upon Sumpter, it has been the opponent of all measures for putting down the Slaveholders' Rebellion, and for realizing the results of the defeat of that rebellion. Its personnel is practically the same now as then; and its perpetuation of itself at Baltimore-its refusal to adopt the "possum" policy signifies nothing less than the determination to keep alive the aspirations and purposes of 1861-63–64-66, and those years; a determination which is doubtless reinforced by confidence in Greeley's devotion as a neophyte to their cause, and especially by his promise in a recent letter to a Hartford gentleman, to deal out the loaves and fishes of office to copperhead Democrats in proportion to the number of votes which they cast for him.