John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[428] for fifteen thousand dollars. This kept the phrase before the public, and for months it was used by the newspapers of the country, and especially by the Sun, with telling effect in the campaign against fraud and corruption. Indeed, it may well be doubted if any catch phrase ever received a wider circulation, more aptly indicated the essential shamelessness of the methods then in force at Washington, or did more to arouse the public conscience against them. While still fresh in the public mind, the Credit Mobilier exposures began, and, involving as they did men of the highest position in both public and private life, they gave a degree of infamy to the formula of fraud which no amount of moral teaching or of decorous discussion could have brought upon it.

Meanwhile the movement of the Independent and disaffected Republicans, of which the Sun was the head, had grown into a powerful party organization, which called a national convention, in which many distinguished men took part. It nominated Horace Greeley for president, and B. Gratz Brown for vice-president. These nominations were afterwards adopted by the Democrats, on a platform which was based largely on the Sun's war against corruption in official life at Washington. When stripped of political verbiage, it meant nothing more nor less than “Turn the rascals out.” With this cry, which soon came to be more widely heard than “Forward to Richmond!” had ever been, Dana threw the Sun and himself into the canvass, and for a few weeks it looked as though the North, as well as the South, would take him at his word. He, and those who stood with him, believed thoroughly in the necessity of taking the government out of the hands of the Republican party, as well as in the honesty and capacity of Greeley, and spared no effort to make the country believe in him as well; but as the canvass progressed it became evident that the majority of the voters were unwilling