p. 142, para. 1 | Untitled article

Untitled article

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, August 13, 1867

Political Effect of Sheridan's Action.—General Sheridan still continues to act while the President is hesitating. His removal of almost the entire city council of New Orleans, and appointment of loyal men in their places—which appointments include five colored men, of whom one is a full black—is an act over which Andrew Johnson will feel no less bitterly than over the removal of Throckmorton. It is probable, also, that the next order from Sheridan will make a sweeping change in the State officials of Texas, compelling the rebel State officers generally to follow in the footsteps of the Governor to private life.

In his appointments, no less than in his removals, General Sheridan has shown himself a consummate master of political tactics. He has not only removed the right men, in the right manner, and at the right time, but he has also appointed the right men to the vacant offices. The appointees who are white, are generally the Republican candidates for those offices at the last elections. They are men in whom the Union men not only have confidence, but men whose appointment adds strength to the Republican party of the State. In appointing registers as well as in appointing city officers for New Orleans, General Sheridan has given a share of the offices to colored men. One-third of the registers are colored men, each board being composed of two whites and one colored man; generally of one officer or ex-officer of the United States army, one white Union citizen, and one colored Union citizen. This division unites in support of the boards the sentiment of the army, the white Union voters and the freedmen; and it is no less shrewd, politically, than just. The appointment of a proportion of loyal colored men in the city government, in place of the white traitors removed, still further tends to consolidate the colored voters in support of General Sheridan's administration, while the joint action of the army, the white Unionists and the freedmen, in these offices, tends to consolidate them into one party, accustoms them to act together against their mutual enemies—the rebel Democracy—and lays the foundation of the future Union party of Louisiana upon the broadest, deepest, and surest foundations.

In this matter, Sheridan is daily proving himself as wise, as dashing, and as victorious a politician as he has proved himself as a military leader. Of all the Generals thus far tried, he has shown himself the best qualified for political, civil administration; a fact that will go far to bring him forward prominently as a candidate for the Presidency, if the President should fulfill his threat, and remove him from his command. We sincerely hope, for the sake of the South, that the President will be deterred from doing this.—Detroit Post.