The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-21 00:00:00

THE PRESIDRNT AND CONGRESS.

(From the Atlantic Monthly for April.)
The President of the United States was not
elected to the office he holds by the voice of the

people of the loyal States ; in voting for him as
Vice-President nobody dreamed that, by the assas-
sination of Mr. Lincoln, he would constitutionally
succeed to the more important post. The persons
who now form the Congress of the United States
were elected by the people of the States for the ex-
act positions they hold. In any comparison be-
tween the two as to the direct derivation of their
power from the people and the States, Congress
has everything in its favour ; Mr. Johnson, nothing.
The immense power he enjoys, a power not merely
greater than that of Queen Victoria, but greater
than that of Earl Russell, the real British Execu-
tive, is the result not of design, but of accident.
That the executive power he holds is legitimate,
within its just constitutional bounds, must not
blind us to the fact that it did not have its origin in
the popular vote, especially now when he is appeal-
ing to the people to support him against their direct

representatives.
For the event which the Union party of the
country was so anxious to avert, but which some
clearly foresaw as inevitable, has occurred ; the
President has come to-- an open rupture with Con-

gross on the question of reconstruction. No one

who has witnessed during the past eight months the
humiliating expedients to which even statesmen

and patriots have resorted, in order to avoid giving
Mr. Johnson offence, without at the same time sacri-

ficing all decent regard for their own convictions
and the will of the people, can assert that this rup-
ture was provoked by Congress. The President
has, on the whole, been treated with singular ten-
derness by the national party, whose just expecta-
tions he has disappointed ; the opposition to his
scheme has, indeed, exhibited, if anything, too
much of the style of "bated breath" to befit the
dignity of independent legislators ; and the only
result of this timorous dissent has been to inflame
him with the notion that the public men who of-

fered it were unconscious that the people were on
his side, and concealed anxiety for their own popu-
larity under a feigned indisposition to quarrel with
him.

The President seems to belong to that class of
men who act not so much from principles as from
moods ; as his moods vary, his conduct changes ;
but while he is possessed by one of them, his mind
is inaccessible to evidence which does not sustain
his dominant feeling, and uninfluenced by argu-
ments which do not confirm his dominant ideas.
Mr. Covade and Mr. Schurz could get no hearing
from him, because they were sent South to col-
lect evidence while he was in one mood, and
had to report the results of their investigations
when he had passed into another. This peculiarity
of his mind makes the idea of a " Johnson

party" so difficult of realisation ; for a
party cannot be founded on a man, unless that
man's intellect and integrity are so manifestly pre-
eminent as to dwarf all comparison with others, or
unless his conduct obeys laws, and can, therefore,
be calculated. Thus the gentlemen who spoke for
him in New York, on the 22d of February, at the
time he was speaking for himself in Washington,
found that they were unwittingly his opponents,
while appearing as his mouth-pieces, and had ac-
cordingly to send telegrams to Washington of such
fond servility, that the vindication of their partisan-
ship could only be made at the expense of provoking
the hilarity of the public. But one principle, taken
up from personal feeling, at the time, he resented
the idea that " Tennessee had ever gone out of the
Union," has had a mischievous influence in direct-
ing his policy, though it has never been consistently
carried out ; for Mr. Johnson's mode of dealing
e desires, while he does
individual. He uses
itw tt oh
justify
a not allow it to restrain him from doing what he
p n c i
hisl e
doing is strikingly
what
h
pleases. The principle which he thus adopted was
that the seceded States had never been out of the
Union as States. It would seem to be clear that,
constitutionally speaking, a State in the American
Union is a vital part of the Government, to which,
at the same time, it owes allegiance. The seceded
States solemnly, by conventions of their people,
broke away from this allegiance, and have not, up
to the present moment, formed a part of the Go-
vernment. The condition in which they were left
by their own acts may be variously stated ; it may
be said that they were "States out of practical re-
lations to the Union,"—which is simply to decline
venturing further than one step in the analysis
of their condition or " States in rebellion, "
or " States whose governments have lapsed," or
" Territories ;" but certainly, neither in princi-
ple nor in fact, were they States in the Union, ac-
cording to the constitutional meaning of that
phrase. The one thing certain is, that their crimi-
nal acts did not affect at all the rights of the United
States over their geographical limits and popula-
tion ; for these rights were given by conventions of
the people of all the States, and could not there-
fore be abrogated by the will of the particular States
that rebelled. Whether or not the word " Terri-
tories" fits their condition, it is plain that they can-
not be brought back to their old " practical relations
to the Union" without a process similar to that by
which territories are organised tnto States and
brought into the Union. If they were, during the
rebellion, States in the Union, then the only clause
in the Constitution whkh covers their case is that