The Political Situation
It was unfortunate that the
President should have lately said to a delegation from New Jersey that he is too old to
change, for the greatest changes of his life have occurred within the last five years, and
no reasonable man is ever too old to be convinced. Especially at a time like this, when
the wisdom of public policy and the national welfare depend not upon theories but upon the
actual condition of affairs, it is surely the part of wisdom to cultivate patience and
toleration and an open mind. During the dark days of the war a Union Senator came one day
from an interview with President Lincoln and exclaimed, impatiently: "Theres no
bracing atmosphere at the White House! The Presidents mind is never made up. No
Union man is stronger for seeing him." Then it was a very dull Union man. Mr. Lincoln
was strong because he was patient. His patience enabled him to know and to weigh exactly
the force of opinions. If he had constantly said upon the vital points of the war,
"My mind is made up. I am not to be moved," he would have lacked precisely the
distinctive quality of his greatness as a man and of his fitness as President. President Johnsons temperament differs
from President Lincolns as General Jacksons did from General
Washingtons. Mr. Johnson likes a fight. All his life he has been a sturdy political
champion. He has been trained in the most orthodox discipline of the most despotic of
parties, and he gives blows as well as takes them. At the close of a fierce war he stepped
into the Presidency over the body of his predecessor murdered by those who would gladly
have killed him; and his grim resolution to maintain the Constitution and Union, as he
understood them, promised to be inflexible against all whose views differed from his own.
But forgetting, as it seems to us, that the most patriotic men may honestly differ in a
crisis like the present, he rather imprudently recognizes as the only friends of the Union
those who support his policy in every point, without weighing the probable and obvious
motives of such support in many quarters. Thus while he declares himself with peculiar
emphasis the defender of the Union and Constitution it is remarkable that those who have
not shown during the war that they were its enemies doubt the wisdom of some of his
measures, while those who have been the open and bloody or secret and treacherous foes of
the Union, now vehemently applaud every word he utters and every act he does. Is it that
those who with Andrew Johnson have hitherto defended the Union against every assault did
not comprehend what they were doing; or is it that those who after long deliberation
struggled fiercely to destroy it, are at heart its most intelligent advocates, its truest
friends, and the safest counselors in its reorganization?
But this rapturous approval of the
President by his political enemies is not a new phenomenon. The party which advised
surrender to the rebellion, and exhausted the language in contemptuous vituperation of Mr.
Johnson while he stood like a rock against their treasonable fury, has no course left but
to excite and exasperate division between him and his friends. They applaud him not
because he demands that treason shall be made odious, not because he maintained military
rule and suspended the habeas corpus in the disturbed States, not because he
imposed assent to emancipation upon those States and excepted large classes from amnesty,
not because he demanded that "a public enemy* * * should be subjected to a severe
ordeal before he is restored to citizenship," but because his measures do not command
the unqualified support of all Union men, and because they hope to widen a difference into
a fatal breach. When Mr. S. S. Cox, who said at Chicago in 1864 that Lincoln and Davis
ought to be brought to the same block together now says at New Haven that Mr. Johnson, the
faithful friend of Mr. Lincoln and elected with him, is the best of Presidents, it is hard
to believe that a politician so experienced as Mr. Johnson does not estimate such support
at its true value. He must know that the breach between him and the Copperheads is
irreparable. He must know that they would willingly use him as a wedge to split the Union
party, as a stalking-horse to their own purposes, as a spring-board to leap into power;
that they would use him to the last and then contemptuously discard him. He ought surely
to know that the party which must rely for success upon its old alliance with the old
spirit of Slavery in the South, and not upon the new spirit of Union and Liberty there,
would as soon vote for Charles Sumner as for Andrew Johnson. The Copperhead policy of
to-day is a vast reaction against the spirit and results of the war and in favor of the
old Southern policy. In such a reaction does the military Governor of Tennessee, the
Senator who alone from his section defied to the death the leaders of that old Southern
policy, think that he has any place? Had the Presbyterian chiefs honor and confidence in
the Court of the Restoration?
The President can not hope to create a
new party however doubtful States may waver. The Union Party comprising that overwhelming
majority of loyal men who sustained the war can not disband merely because the war is
over. It will of necessity cohere until the fair results of the war are secured. With who,
then, will the President trust himself, with his friends or his foes? However he may
differ with those friends, can the difference be really so radical as it is with his
opponents? We have no wish to conceal that difference. The various views and measures
which compose what is called "the Presidents policy" are undoubtedly held
and proposed by him in perfect good faith. They are inspired by the conviction that the
great object now to be attained is security with conciliation, and the preservation of our
constitutional system. In this conviction all patriotic men will agree. But upon the
question what is security, and what is or is not Constitutional, there are wide
differences. When the President assumes that by a formal acceptance of the terms he has
imposed the Union is really restored, when he refuses to hear of further delays or
conditions; when he opposes any constitutional amendment, or any serious national
legislation whatever until the late rebel States are represented in Congress: when he
thinks that the present remedies of law are sufficient for whatever friction or wrong
there may be in States so long distempered, or, if they are inadequate, that they should
not be strengthened until those States have a voice in Congress, he differs from the vast
body of the Union party, and apparently begs the very question at issue, which is, upon
what conditions those States shall have a voice?
It is not enough that he declares himself
the defender of the Constitution against those whom he calls its new assailants. It is not
enough that he declares his abhorrence of centralization. It is not enough that he
declares that he stands by the Union, and that those who do not agree in every point of
his policy are enemies of the Union. That question still remains. The President is
unquestionably pure of purpose, and very determined. He may be clear in comprehending and
skillful in interpreting the Constitution. He has certainly proved his fidelity to the
Union. But the equal integrity, and ability, and devotion, and firmness of Congress can
not be questioned. President Johnson must see that the Union party can not accept the
indiscriminate support of all his views and measures as the test of constitutional
fidelity; and he makes a profound mistake if he regards the situation as a struggle
between himself and Mr. Thaddeus Stevens. When he sees those who have as little respect
for Mr. Stevenss wisdom as he has himself gravely questioning his course, it is a
fatal delusion if he sees only Mr. Stevens.
The question is simple. Is it possible
for the President to believe that the party whose last general and official manifesto was
the Chicago Platform of 1864 is sincerely the Union party of this country? Would he trust
to that convention to settle the questions of to-day more than of two years ago? If the
alternative is presented to him of surrendering to that party, or of attempting to form a
party composed of the Copperheads, the late rebels, and a few recruits from the Union
line, or of continuing to act with those who have fought with him the good fight, but who
now, in some important points, differ with his judgment, we shall believe, until belief is
impossible, that he still holds to his words of the 8th of February, "that
he might differ with some of his friends, and he should feel wholly at liberty so to
differ, and to state the grounds of his contrary belief or opinion; but he considered
himself identified with the great Union party , and had no desire or intention of being
found outside. He intended to exercise his own judgment, but was ready to yield it when he
found it was not sustained by the judgment of the people.
Articles Relating to Johnson's First Vetoes:
A Long Step
Forward
January 27, 1866, page 50
Congress
February 10, 1866, page 83
Education of the
Freedmen
February 10, 1866, page 83
The Veto Message
March 3, 1866, page 130
The Freedmens
Bureau
March 10, 1866, page 146
The Presidents Speech
March 10, 1866, page 147
The Political
Situation
April 14, 1866, page 226
The Civil Rights
Bill
April 14, 1866, page 226
The Civil Rights
Bill
April 21, 1866, page 243
The Congressional
Plan of Reorganization
May 12, 1866, page 290
The Trial of the
Government
May 26, 1866, page 322
Making Treason
Odious
June 2, 1866, page 338
The Final Report of
the Reconstruction Committee
June 23, 1866, page 387
The Report of the
Congressional Committee
June 23, 1866, page 386
The Case Stated
August 4, 1866, page 482
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