Looking at the popular support behind, the advantage is still with
Horace Greeley. President Grant has at his back the diversified army
of office-holders, drilled to obey the word of command. The speeches
praising him are by office-holders and members of rings. Horace
Greeley finds flocking to his cause large numbers of Republicans
unwilling to continue the existing misrule, and as allies with them
a regenerated party springing forward to unite in this liberal
movement. Democrats, in joining Horace Greeley, have changed simply
as President Grant changed when he joined the Republicans,--except
that he was rewarded at once with high office. The change is open.
Adopting the Republican platform, which places the Equal Rights of
All under the safeguard of irreversible guaranties, and at the
same time accepting the nomination of a life-time Abolitionist, who
represents preëminently the sentiment of duty to the colored race,
they have set their corporate seal to the sacred covenant. They may
continue Democrats in name, but they are in reality Republicans,
by the same title that those who sustain Republican principles are
Republicans,--or rather they are Democrats, according to the original
signification of that word, dedicated to the rights of the people.
It is idle to say that Horace Greeley and the Republicans who
nominated him are any less Republican because Democrats unite with
them in support of cherished principles and the candidate who
represents them. Conversions are always welcome, and not less so
because the change is in a multitude rather than an individual. A
political party cannot, if it would, and should not, if it could,
shut the door against converts, whether counted by the score, the
hundred, or the thousand; and so we find that the supporters of
President Grant announce with partisan triumph the adhesion of a
single Democratic politician or a single Democratic newspaper. On
equal reason and with higher pride may the supporters of Horace
Greeley announce the adhesion of the Democratic party, which, turning
from the things that are behind, presses on to those that are before.