The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer

Garfield and the New York "Independent."

We notice that the Register quotes an article from the New York Independent in regard to Garfield, dated July 30th, 1874. Here is another from the same paper dated September 2d, 1880, that it will be sure not to quote:

The quotation from our columns is correct. We did use the language attributed to us, for a laudable purpose in accordance with the evidence then before us. There was then before the public damaging evidence in reference to both the Credit Mobilier and the De Golyer contract. Having occasion to say, none too strongly, that in a candidate before a convention or a constituency "honesty is even more essential than intelligence," that electors should "get an intelligent representative, if they can find him, but they must find an honest one," we then referred to the current charges against Mr. Garfield, whose name was before the Nineteenth district of Ohio for re-election. After speaking in very flattering terms of Mr. Garfield, we stated fully what were the charges, with the evidence as it then stood, which impressed us, and we told the citizens of that district that they should seek of Mr. Garfield very clear explanations of his conduct before consenting to vote for him. We put this as strongly as we knew how, because we believed that his constituents, who knew him best and who were a body of remarkably high moral tone, should above all others rest satisfied with nothing less than high honor in their representative. They saw it as we did, and they demanded the "explanations."

He saw it as we did, and he gave the "explanations." They were full and satisfactory, and that Nineteenth district has forgotten that it ever suspected its representative, and so had we. We then were troubled, as they were. Since then we have carefully studied the whole case and fully exonerate him. The Nation, a paper which has the reputation of being so impartial as to lean backward, has, after full investigation, done the same. Mr. Poland himself, who drew up the adverse report, now says that he believes it did Mr. Garfield injustice, and that, if the evidence afterward given in defense by Mr. Garfield had been before it, the report would have been very different in his case. We have studied the entire evidence, and we are now satisfied, as we were not in 1874, that there was nothing in the conduct of General Garfield relating to either of the matters referred to that in any way reflects upon his personal or official integrity.

For this rectification of opinion we have given our reasons in previous issues of the Independent. We have no merely partisan ends to serve in advocating the election of Gen. Garfield. We support him because we believe in his honesty as a man, and also his eminent qualifications for the office of President, and because he represents Republican principles, and will, if elected, give effect to them. We cannot support General Hancock, because he is a Democrat, and would, if elected, be simply the tool of the Democratic party, with the Solid South as the chief dictator of its policy.