Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 February 1873 — The People and Leaders. [ARTICLE]

The People and Leaders.

Mr. Oglesby is elected Senator from Illinois to fill the seat of Mr. Trumbull, and Mr. Bogy, from Missouri, to replace Mr. Blair, So disappear from public life two more of the conspicuous figures of the Cincinnati Convention. There was, indeed, something dramatic in the part of Senator Blair upon that occasion. It was not unknown that Senator Schurz left Washington favorably disposed to the nomination of Mr. Trumbull, but his opening speech seemed to indicate Mr. Adams. Then through the cloud and confusion Mr. Fenton was seen silently slipping off, and Mr. Blair, the colleague of Mr. Schurz, having tried a Brodhead letter in 1868, tried a new departure in 1873, and was loitering about hotels aud the outer rooms of the Convention. The nomination of Mr. Greeley was very welcome to Mr. Blair ; anckhis brother Montgomery, having previously suggested Mr. Tiryant as a candidate, was yet very warm for Mr. Greeley. The whirlwind followed. And it is now seen, among other purifications, to have—swept away the Blairs. But while it is the Republicans who have declined to return Mr. Trumbull, it is the Democrats who have rejected Mr. Blair. It is another illustration of the hollowness of the coalition. The Democrats were willing to use Liberal Republicans as cat’s-paws, but when they could not rake out a single chestnut; they spurned even their own leaders who advised them to try. The party will reckon strictly with those who persuaded them to nominate a life-long antagonist, and to suffer in consequence an unprecedented defeat. The fate of Mr. Trumbull will not, of course, surprise him. His separation from his party was deliberate and well-eonsiderect. with Mr. Fenton, lie did what he could to restore the old enemies of the party and of the country to power, and the country and hia own State pronounced his. sentence at the polls. Mr. Trumbull has served long and with great ability. He has been sometimes vehemently partisan, sometimes violently recusant under the party policy. Recently he has been bitter in his hostility to what he called the Senatorial ring, and was counted one of the most powerful and dangbrous of the Cincinnati leaders.

A year ago, in the Senate of the United States, there was a singular spectacle. Mr. Sumner, Mr. Trumbull and Mr. Schurz, all of them among the chief Republican • Senators, sat near each other, among their Republican.colleagues, and often in the height of debate they clustered together as if to show how hearty was their concert. Undoubtedly the spectacle of that union of the Eastern and Western and the German born Senators, men of character, ability, experience and power, seemed to Democratic Senators opposite representative of a great movement. Beihind thdse three tub Democrats saw an imposing schism in the dominant party, a secession, an inevitable defeat and dissolution. Many person? iq. the country thought that they saw the same thing. Are there bettef men, are there truer Republicans? they asked, and some of them followed that leading. But the spectator in the Senate to-day, as he looks toward the seats of those Senators,' reflects that he has again been, taught the* lesson that in this country there is no following of leaders in the old sense. The Philadelphia Convention met within a fortnight of Mr. Sumner’s denunciation of Grant, and its reply was the eager and enthusiastic renomination of the President, and the uprising of the Republican people to repel the slanders of the campaign against a man whose services had been so illustrious and inestimable to the country. Senator Morton truly said in the Convention that the feost honored party chief would’find that a party founded in the best instincts and intrenched in the noblest traditions would not dissolve at his dictation. It would distrust his judgment rather than its own impulse. The Senator’s words have been amply vindicated. The Republican party has sustained itself, and once more saved the peace and prosperity of the country; while the departure from public life of Mr. Trumbull and of Mr. Blair, in the light;of the events of the lastyear, again points the truth of the wise saying, All men know better than any man.— Harper's 11 eddy.