The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-11 00:00:00

THE UNIT

ID STATES.

(From a Correspondent of the Times.)
NEW YORK, JUNE 27.

On the question of the restoration of the Southern
States to the place they abdicated in the Federal
Union, Mr. Johnson has left no doubt in any quar-
ter of the policy he would pursue. That policy
was indicated in the proclamation appointing a Pro-
visional Governor for North Carolina, and further
developed in the measures taken on the same basis
for the gathering in of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia,
and Florida to the Federal fold. There remains but
South Carolina to be provided for ; and as South
Carolina for social and political reasons was as hate-
ful to the Republican and new England party as
Massachusetts has for the last thirty years been to
the South, it was hoped by the ardent politicians who
won the last Presidential election that this " hot-
bed," this " cradle," this " nurse," and " mother of
treason and secession" would not be permitted to
return to her old place in the Republic until she had
suffered a long probation of military Government,
or been degraded into the position of an outlying
territory, like Utah or Idaho, without a Govern-
ment of her own choice or any representation in
Congress. Mr. Johnson, however, has suddenly
dissipated these Republican hopes. He has received
a deputation of eminent South Carolinians, treated
them with marked kindness, and spoken to them in
a tone and temper which won their hearts, and ex-
pounded to them his views of the situation with a
frankness of expression and a breadth of statesman-
ship which made a favourable impression upon their
judgments. The report of the Conference which
took place at Washington on Saturday has been re-
ceived with shouts of approval by the Conservative
and Democratic party, and has createdsomething like
a panic in the ranks of theßepublicans. Mr. Johnson
owes no allegiance to the Convention that nominated
him at Baltimore to the Vice-Presidency. The Con-
vention never intended or dreamed that he would be-
come President, or, with his antecedents as a slave-
holder and a State Rights Democrat, they would
have set his pretensions very summarily aside.
Knowing this, he is doubtless of opinion that he
owes them nothing, and that in pursuing his present
course he is guilty of no defection from a cause to
which he never gave his adhesion. However that
may be, he has rendered it impossible for the Re-
publican and pro-negro party to depend upon his
action, and placed himself full and square at the
head of the political organisation which prior to the
secession of the South elected 13 out of the 16 Pre-
sidents of the Republic.
Mr. Johnson's speech, a conversation with the
South Carolinians, contained little which he had not
previously said or written since he became President.
Its merits consisted rather in its emphatic plainness
and admirable lucidity than in its novelty. It laid
down in the case of South Carolina the same princi-
ples which he had applied to North Carolina and
other Southern States, but explained with greater
fullness and precision the manner in which he in-
tended to work. He called upon South Carolina not
only to admit the fact that slavery was dead within her
limits as well as in the whole territory present and
future of the Union, but to go still further, and by
a Convention of her people to amend her State Con-
stitution to that effect, and so place herself in more
perfect harmony with her sister States and with the
irreversible decision of the sword. This done, all the
rest was easy and would follow in due course. There
would be no interference on his part or on that of
the Congress of the United States with the rights of
the State to regulate the suffrage within its bounda-
ries. All that the Central Government had to do
with South Carolina, or any other State, was to take
care that its form of government should be Republi-
can, as the Constitution prescribed. Whether it
granted or withheld the suffrage from negroes was
no concern of anybody beyond the State limits.
Personally, Mr. Johnson, who declared himself now,
as ever, an enemy of monopoly and of aristocracy,
was of opinion that the gift of the suffrage to the
negroes would not be a good thing for the mass of
the Southern white people, inasmuch as the negrocs
would inevitably vote as they were directed by their
employers and former masters, who would thereby
acquire more political power than if the negroes had
no votes. To this consummation he was opposed,
in the interest of what were once called the " poor
whites" or " mean whites," a class from which he
himself sprang, and whose votes and influence in the
councils of the nation he would rather strengthen
than weaken. Altogether Mr. Johnson's declara-
tion in favour of State rights and against negro
suffrage are of a character that cannot fail to have
a large influence on the reorganisation of parties,
to confirm the wavering allegiance of the Democrats,
who would rather he had been elected on their plat-
form than on that of their opponents ; and to cause
the extreme'Radicals to detach themselves from his
Administration, and take up a position of permanent
and organised resistance to his measures.

Judge Frost, the spokesman of the deputation,
was as frank and explicit in his reply as Mr. John-
son in his declaration. He admitted that several
delusions in which the South had indulged had been
dispelled by the stern realities of war ; such, for
instance, as that State rights justified a dissolution
of the Union ; that Cotton was King ; and that
slavery was an element of political strength. With
these notions scattered to the wind, and a new
system of labour enforced upon them by those de-
cisions of war from which there was no appeal, the
people of South Carolina had reconciled themselves
to circumstances, and would cordially co-operate
with the Federal Government in making negro
labour as effective as possible, and in elevating the •
negro in the social scale to such a degree as his
capacities could reach. He contended, however,
that this was a work not to be accomplished sud-
denly by enthusiasm and fanaticism, but by time and
patience. The people of the South had a much
larger interest in the question than the people of
the North, and would be compelled to co-operate
in the work for selfish if for no other or higher'
motives. The new system of labour would have to
be inaugurated by sober counsels and discreet judg-
ment. The negroes were ignorant. their minds
were inflamed with the idea of liberty, which they
were much too apt to confound with license,-or, at
all events, with exemption from labour. The South
would, for its own sake as well as for that of the
negroes, do its best for them as free labourers work-
ing for wages, and no one in the north would more
sincerely rejoice than the South Carolinian planters
and landowners if the experiment of emancipation
should prove successful. He urged that freedom to
the slave was freedom to the master, and accepted
emancipation in that sense, not without a strong
hope that blessings which no one had foreseen, or
could now foresee, would grow out of the altered
circumstances so heavily imposed upon a defeated
but a high-spirited and gallant people. He ended
by promising that the same good faith which South
Carolina had displayed during the contest towards
the cause which it believed to be right would be
displayed in their pledge of loyal support to the
Federal Government now that cause was defeated
and the war was at an end, and asked the President
to nominate on as early a day as possible a Provi-
sional Governor of the State to carry out the ideas
he had expressed during the interview. The Presi-
dent, still conciliatory, asked whom they would pre-
fer for that office, and five names of prominent
South Carolinians were submitted to him who had
all more or less been involved in support of the Con-
federacy, but who were all declared good men, and
to be thoroughly depended upon in the altered cir-
cumstances of the nation. The Presidentreplied that
there was no spirit of vengeance or vindictiveness on
the part of the Government, and no other feeling
than an earnest desire to restore the relations which
formerly existed. He further promised that at the
next Cabinet meeting to be held on Tuesday (this
day) ho would repeat the substance of the inter-
view, and, if possible, select a Governor. All this,
as before stated, is " gall and wormwood" to the
philsosophical party, who use and would con-
tinue to use the negro for factious purposes, and
who would rather hold the South by military power
than permit any restoration of civil rights which
might endanger now or hereafter their own enjoy-
ment of office and its emoluments.

There only remains for the President to show by
his treatment of Mr. Jeff. Davis, Mr. Clement C.
Clay and the other gentlemen falsely accused of

the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, that he is not
animated by a spirit of vengeance ; that he will
favour the trial of Mr. Davis for treason before a
civil not a military tribunal; and that, if found
guilty, his life will be spared ; to complete the adhe-
sion of the Democratic party of all shades of opinion
to his person and policy, and to convert the mut-
tered distrust of the Revolutionists, led by Mr.
Wendell Phillips, Mr. Charles Sumner, Mr. Dana,
and the Northern pulpit, into undisguised and un-
sparing hostility. Those who are best acquainted
with Mr. Johnson are those who are most confident
that he will take this course, notwithstanding the
reasons for a contrary expectation that might be
drawn from the first ominous threats which he
uttered against traitors in the week that succeeded
Mr. Lincoln's murder. In confirmation of their
view there comes this morning, from St. Louis, a
speech just delivered by Major-General Francis P.
Blair, one of the eminent Blair family, that ex-
ercised such occult but paramount influence in the
councils of Mr. Lincoln ; and to all of whom, to
the elder especially, the Nestor of American poli-
tics, Mr. Johnson has long been accustomed to look
for advice on occasions of emergency—a speech
which exhorts magnanimity and mercy as em-
phatically as Lords Derby and Brougham in
the British Parliament, and, as all the lead-
ing newspapers of Europe that have written upon a
subject so momentous to the honour of the United
States and the personal character of the President.
"There can," says Gen. Blair, " be no justification
for any executions which are not demanded by the
safety of the State. Any policy, my friends, which
comes from hate and malice comes from hell, and is
at the instigation of the devil." This vigorous ex-
pression was loudly cheered. "We may," he added,
" have enemies abroad. We cannot afford to make
enemies at home. As for retaliation, there has
already been too much of it. If you talk of that, I
advise you to follow in the wake of the army which
marched from the Mississippi to the sea and thence
to Washington. Who could speak of retaliation
after witnessing that scene of devastation ? No
punishment that we could inflict could equal that
which the Southern people have already suffered. I
trust that the wounds which the war has inflicted
will not be envenomed, but healed, and that the
freedom for all men which we have snatched from
this terrible destruction and desolation, and which
is all we have gained, will at no distant day be more
than sufficient to repay both North and South for
all they have suffered." When major-generals talk
in this way there is hope that the fanaticism engen-
dered by the war may be as ephemeral as its parent,
and when men who give such good counsel are
known to be in the confidence of the President there
is almost equal reason to hope that they speak with
an authority higher than their own, and that they
are systematically doing their best to prepare the
popular mind for a more humane and Christian
policy than has yet found favour with the men
whose councils provoked the war and maintained it
until its triumph.