The Republican Journal

EDWIN M. STANTON AGAIN.

The Prog Age don't like our remarks about Stanton, and complains that we have not credited him with ability. Doubtless he had ability. So has the devil. A man can't make such a hell upon earth as Edwin M. Stanton did, without the possession of some force of character.

We care not what is said by papers like the Age. But if any of our friends think we have said too much, we ask them to carry their recollections back to the time when Gen. McClellan had invested Richmond, and with his plans perfected was pushing rapidly into victory. It was the malignant interference of Stanton that caused the withdrawal of troops on which the General relied, and compelled the retreat to Harrison's Landing. Stanton's interference and Lee's generalship worked together to crush the army, that was saved only by the genius of its commander.

It was then that McClellan addressed to Stanton these words, wrung from his agonized heart-

"I know that a few thousand more men would have changed this battle from a defeat to a victory. As it is the government must not and cannot hold me responsible for the result. I feel too earnestly to-night. I have seen too many dead and wounded comrades to feel otherwise than that the government has not sustained this army. If you do not do so the game is lost. If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you, or to any other person in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army."

For the dead men who strewed that field, and for the prolonging of that war for years, Stanton was directly responsible. Does anybody suppose we are going to worship the memory of such a man?

Stanton was the incarnation of all the hideousness of war and desolation. The troublous times of a revolution generally throw one such man to the surface. There was Jeffries in England, Robespierre in France, Haynau in Austria, Stanton in America. The radical party never put on an aspect so threatening and dangerous to the liberties of the country as when it sought to place that man on the bench of the Supreme Court, and at the same time to pass a law restraining the Court from its supervision of a certain class of laws. His overbearing will, his bad heart, his terrible audacity would have made everything bend before him, if it were possible. If those linked with him had willed a despotism, what better instrument, and what better place, than Edwin M. Stanton as Judge of the Supreme Court. If ever an overruling Providence directly interfered for the good of a people, it was when He laid the hand of death on that reckless, unscrupulous, man.