What Greeley Did.

Cromwell Argus, Volume III, Issue 152, 8 October 1872, Page 7

What Greeley Did.

From a laughable electioneering squib in an American paper—which supposes Greeley already elected President, and details his pro eeedings—we take the following :

As soon as he reached the executive mansion, which we used to call the White House, President Greeley organised an army of two hundred thousand men, and proceeded to force the entire population of the seaboard States westward at the point of the bayonet. The utmost violence was used. Tluse who resisted were shot down, and their dead bodies were carried off to a national factory which the President had est tblished for making som i kind of fertiliser. All the large cities of the east were depopulated, and the towns were entirely empty. The army swept before it millions of men, women, and children, until the vast plains west of Kansas were reached, when the pursuit ceased and the army was drawn up in a continuous line, with orders to shoot any person who attempted to visit the east. Of course hundreds of thousands of these poor creatures perished from starvation. This seemed to frigaten President Greeley, : and he sent in a message to Congress, recommendiagthatsevenhundred thous md volumes of a book of his, entitled "What I kno.v about Farming," should be voted for the relief o." the starving sufferers. This was done, and farming implements and seeds were supplied ; and the millions of the wretched outcasts made an effort to till the ground. Of the result of this I will speak further on. In tne meantime the President was doing iulinate harm in another way. His handwriting was so fearfully and wonderfully bad that no living man could read it. And so, when he sent his first annual Message to Congress—the document was devoted wholly to the tariff and agriculture—a sentence appeared, which subsequently was ascertained to be, " Large cultivation of rutabagas and beans is the only hope of the American nation, 1 am sure." The printer, not being able to interpret this, put it in the following form, in which form it went forth to the world—-" Tne Czar of Russia couldn't keep clean if he washed with the whole Atlantic Ocean once a day !" This perversion of the Message was at once telegrapbcd to Russia by the Russian Minister, and the Czar was so indignant that lie immediately declared war. Just at this time President Greeley undertook to write some letters to Prince Bis.narek upon the potato rot, and after giving his singular views at great length, he concluded with the statement that if the Emperor William said that subsoil ploughing was not good in light soils, or that guano was better than bone dust, ho was a "a liar, a villain, and a slave !" Of course the Emperor also immediately declared war, and became an ally of Russia and of England, against which latter country Mr Greeley had actually begun hostilities already, because the Queen, in her speech from the throne, had declared the\Tr£/>f(. ; ie's advocacy of a tariff on pig-iron incendiary and calculated to disturb the peace of nations. Unhappily this was not the full measure of our d sasters. The President had sent to the Emperor of Austria a copy of his book, " What I Know," &c, with his autograph written upon a fly-leaf. The Emperor mia-

took the signature for a caricature of the Austrian eagle, and he readily joined in a war against the United States ; while France was provoked to the same act by the fact that when the French Minister came to call upon I Mr Greeley to present his credentials, the 1 resident, who was writing an editorial at the time, not comprehending the French language mistook the Ambassador for a beggar, and I without looking up, handed him a ' quarter' : and an order for a clean shirt, and said to ! him, "Go West, young man—go West." So J all those nations joined in making war upon j the United States. They, swooped down j upon our coasts, and landed without opposition ; for those exposed portions of 1 our | country were absolutely deserted. The Prosii dent was afraid to call awav the armv from , Kansas at first, for fear the" outraged people upon the plains would come East in spite of him. But at last he did summon the army to his aid, and it moved to meet the enemy. It was too late ! Before the troops reached Cincinnati the foreigners had seized Washington and all the country East of the Ohio, and had hung the President, the Cabinet, and every member of Congress. The army disbanded in alarm, and the invaders moved to the Far West, where they found the population dying of starvation because they had followed the advice of Greeley's book : "Try, for your first crop, to raise limes : and don't plaid more than a bushel of quick-lime in a hill!" Of course these wretched people were i at the mercy of the enemy, who—to their! credit be it said—treated them kindly, fed '' them, and brought them back to their old [homes. You know what followed—how Prince i Frederick William of Prussia ascended the imerican throne, and the other humiliations liat ensued. It was a fearful blow to Belublieanisai—a blow from which it will never recover. It made us, who were freemen, a I nation of slaves. It was all the result of our j bliid confidence in a misguided old man who ! ! wai actually a fool. May heaven preserve I I you. my children, from the remorse I feel j | whet I remember that I voted for the bucolic I ! old elitor.