The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 7.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

[163] on the part of some, and party expediency and desire of office on the part of others; but the change itself is real and irrevocable; the penalty of receding would be swift and irretrievable ruin. In any point of view the new order of things is desirable; and nothing more fully illustrates ‘the ways that are dark and the tricks that are vain’ of party politics than the attempt of professed friends of the Union and equal rights for all to counteract it by giving aid and comfort to a revival of the worst characteristics of the old party in the shape of a straight-out Democratic convention.

As respects the candidates now before us, I can see no good reason why colored voters as such should oppose General Grant, who, though not an abolitionist and not even a member of the Republican party previous to his nomination, has faithfully carried out the laws of Congress in their behalf. Nor, on the other hand, can I see any just grounds for distrust of such a man as Horace Greeley, who has so nobly distinguished himself as the advocate of human rights irrespective of race or color, and who by the instrumentality of his press has been for thirty years the educator of the people in the principles of justice, temperance, and freedom. Both of these men have, in different ways, deserved too well of the country to be unnecessarily subjected to the brutalities of a presidential canvass; and, so far as they are personally concerned, it would doubtless have been better if the one had declined a second term of uncongenial duties, and the other continued to indite words of wisdom in the shades of Chappaqua. But they