The President's Experiment
We elsewhere call
attention to a remarkable speech of General John A. Logans in Jacksonville,
Illinois. The General says that the policy of reconstruction adopted by the Administration
is an experiment, and that it is the duty of all good citizens to stand heartily by the
President until it is proved a failure.That is precisely the ground which a true Conservatism now
occupies. The Democratic Conventions, in breathless haste to eat their own words of the
last few years, vociferate their adherence to the Presidents policy, and amiable
poets of the morning press behold vast hosts of Jacobins marshaling under blood-red
banners to oppose it. But as the President is merely trying an experiment, it is rather
premature vehemently to support or rancorously to oppose his policy; nor is any country in
a very "parlous state" when its Jacobins are the most intelligent, conservative,
and substantial part of its population.
The President, acting from the necessity
of the case and for the public safety, has set aside the civil officers elected in various
States under their Constitutions, and has appointed provisional Governors of his own. He
has further prohibited thirteen certain classes of voters under the Constitutions of those
States from exercising the right of suffrage, and has authorized a certain number, who are
also qualified by the State Constitutions, to vote for members of a Convention. This
Convention is to remodel the existing State Constitutions, and to proceed, under them, to
elect State Officers and representatives in Congress. The Constitutions and, by
consequence, the validity of the officers elected, are to be submitted to the Government
for approval. In the Presidents words, the Convention is "to present such a
republican form of State Government as will entitle the State to the guaranty of the
United States therefore, and the people to protection by the United States against
invasion, insurrection, and domestic violence."
This is all that the President has done.
This is his whole policy thus far. It is, as General Logan says, "an
experiment." The President virtually says to certain persons in the States, "See
what you can do. Suggest your plan." But he does not say that the plan shall be
adopted. He does not promise that the Constitution shall be approved and the elections
under it legitimated. The very object he has in view is to try the temper of the class of
the population which he selects. To prove whether the local political power of the States
may be safely confided to them. Nor does he assume finally to decide so vital a question.
He leaves it. Where it belongs, to the nation itself, to the representatives of the
people.
The Democratic resolutions and the
amiable chatter about opposition assume that it is not an experiment: that the President
has declared the Constitution framed by the voters he has selected, and the elections held
under it, to be the law without further process or approval. This is exactly what he has
not done, and could have no pretense of authority for doing. If he had done it, if he had
said that a certain class of persons in the States named by him should elect a convention,
that that convention should frame a Constitution, that the elections should be held under
the Constitution, and that thereupon that State should be recognized as having resumed all
its relations in the Union, and its Representatives and Senators should be admitted to
Congress as a matter of course, then, indeed, he would have laid down a policy, and the
whole country would have crackled in opposition to it.
But the President is much too sagacious a
man to have declared within less than two months after the surrender of Lee that a
Constitution for South Carolina such as Mayor Macbeth or Wade Hampton might devise should
be accepted by the loyal people of the United States. He said, simply, "Let us find
out where we are. If Mayor Macbeth and Wade Hampton should happen to be wise, so much the
better. There is no harm in trying. If they are not wise, we can try again."
Thus far the President is merely trying
an experiment, and whether we think the principles upon which it proceeds promise success
or failure, we ought loyally and patiently to await the event. So says General Logan; so
says Maine; so says Vermont; so says California; so say we all.
Articles related to Johnson's Early
Presidency:
President
Johnsons Amnesty Proclamation
June 10, 1865, page 355
Pardon-Seekers at the
White House
October 14, 1865, page 641
General Logan upon
Reorganization
September 20, 1865, page 611
The Presidents
Experiment
September 30, 1865, page 610
Moses and John Tyler
October 7, 1865, page 627
The Presidents
Fidelity
December 9, 1865, page 771
The Presidents
"Friends"
November 4, 1865, page 691
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