Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1873 — The Fourth of March. [ARTICLE]

The Fourth of March.

We believe no President ever entered upon the second term of his high office with a greater or more general measure of respect, confidence and good will, than that which attends General Grant upon his second inauguration. There is a wide and deep conviction that whatever minor mistakes he may have committed, his Administration has, upon the whole, been orowned with unusual and unexpected success. There have been differences of opinion respecting the bestowment of a dozen or two of Federal offices, but in the face of these he has carried into effect a reform of the civil service which has been urged and not secured by loudtalking and high-professing statesmen for years. There have been complaints of a want of comprehensive statesmanship; but the chief glory of his Administration—the settlement of the Alabama claims—has exhibited an aptitude for diplomacy, the superior of which has rarely been witnessed, and the good influence of which upon the statesmanship of all nations will be felt for all coming time. The Policy of Peace—of Arbitration—of Adjustment by Reason—is one which will distinguish the Administration of General Grant not only, but the Government of which he was at the time the Executive head. The occurrence of war hereafter will be pure and simple barbarism, since it has been fully demonstrated upon what honorable terms war may be avoided, and its dreary catalogue of horrors and sufferings warded off; The Administration of Genera) Grant is not more to be commended for what it has accomplished in this respect, than for what it has avoided in unwise and sensational directions. His has been an eminently conservative Administration. There has been no excited, revolutionary, unsatisfied ambition at work to disturb the course of trade, to war with the natural tendencies of finance, or to detract from the utmost prosperity which has been susceptible of accomplishment by an undisturbed condition of affairs. It is the confidence wrought by this admirable method of government which has secured to President Grant the universality of his support. To his services as a soldier -■ he was indebted for his first term. But • his second is purely the reward of the confidence which his statesmanlike and prudent management has engendered. It was felt that byre-electing him flo risk would be run. He had demonstrated the course he would pursue in the future, by the cairn, conservative, prudent, dispassionate course he had pursued in the past. We anticipate from the second term of President Grant a still more satisfactory result than has attended the one which closed at noon to-day. The mistakes of his past he will rectify or avoid. With him the office is no longer new, and its duties an experiment. He begins as a veteran, AOt as a novice. He will go forward in accustomed ways, and not in blind and untried paths, and armed with that Instinct of wisdom which has thus far been trfs guiding inspiration, he will give to his country 4ta beat and choicest fruits in honesty, loyalty, economy and strength.— Clticago Jvtt.