The Political Mess of 1880

At the reception of General Garfield in Washington after his nomination, Secretaries Schurz, Ramsey, Sherman and Thompson, Postmaster General Key and Attorney General Devens occupied seats at the same table with Generals Garfield and Sherman. How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! A few years ago, soon after Schurz came to this country, he took special delight in inveighing against our religious and civil institutions. Next comes the fossil Whigs, Ramsey and Sherman, who shared their hatred of the Democracy with the cursed foreigners and infernal abolitionists. Then comes the old Know-Nothing leader, the venerable and vulnerable Dick Thompson, with his party mottoes: 'Americans must rule America; down with Papacy; put no foreigner on guard.' Then comes Key, the 'Rebel Brigadier.' Then Devens, the 'slave-catcher.' The central figures of this remarkable coterie are Garfield, the Campbellite preacher, about equally addicted to piety, politics and poker, and the old abolition-hater Tecumseh Sherman. This notable gathering might have been completed by the addition of a preacher who invokes the curse of God upon all who had any connection with slavery in life, as well as upon any who offer any token of affectionate remembrance of such after death, and an ambitious attorney who continues to declaim the long-ago exploded lie that the Chief Justice of the United States had declared 'a negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect.' Then we would have the constituent elements of the party in one mess: the blatant infidel and the canting minister, the howling abolitionist and the slave-catcher, the 'rebel' General and sectional Unionist, malignity in divinity, ignorance in law, and mendacity in history.