The Portland daily press., 1865-05-26


thers-that since his Inauguration in the Pres
idency, with grim and monotonous denuncia
ton he had sounded the doom Of traitors, till
they and their poor accomplices all over the
Union, were chattering their teeth with ter
ror, their guilty consciences fancying they
heard in HIS voice the indignant gnost OF Jack
son and The awful shade of Washington call
ing down Vengeance on the impious hands
that have pulled down and polluted with
brothers, blood the temple they had reared to
-Tiberty and Union. gr~s .,rs !
Wbat is President Johnson's record On
the 9TH OF March last he thus spoke in the ma
tional Senate: NE ~akssAG8.ti
IA At the time the traitors in the Senate of the
United States plotted against the Government,
and entered into conspiracy more foul, more
execrable, and more odious than that of Cata
line against the Romans, happened to he 4
member of that body, and, as to loyalty. stood
solitary and alone among the Senators from the
Southern States was then and there called
upon to Know what would do with such trai-
tors, and want to repeat my reply here. i
said, If We had an Andrew jackson he would
hang them as high as Hannah. But as he IS no
more, and sleeps in his grave in his own beloved
State, where traitors and treason have even IN
suited istomb and the very earth that covers
his remains, humble as am, when you ask me
what would do, my reply is, would arrest
then; would try them, 1 would eonpiet them,
and IscOuldh hang them.
Zone word more and have done. 1t is this !:
1 am in favor of leniency, but in my opinion,
| evil doors should be punished. Treason is the
| highest crime known in the catalogue of crimes
Ia of hat
| willing to lift hisimpions hand against the au
thority of the Nation--I would say death is too
easy punishment. My notion is that treason
must be made odious, that traitors must be pun
ished and impoverished, their social power
broken, though they must be made to feel the
| penalty of their crimes. Hence / say this--the
halter to intelligent, influential traitors. But to
| the honest hey, to the deludcd man, who has
been deceived into the Rebel ranks, would
extend leniency. Iwould say return to your
allegiance. renew your support to the Govern
| ment and become good citizen; but the leaders
should be made TO remunerate those men who
| have suffered as consequence Of their crimes.
Let us eommence the work. We haze put doom
these traitors in arms; let as put them doion in
tGtD, in public judgment and IN the morals of
\ the aC0rLd. n coz 3gHn1ga ne "a 81 EszSsffIi
a. On the 18th Of April, Mr.. johnson, on tax
ing the oath OF Office as President, referred to
his former opinions as follows:
.As to an indication of amy policy which may
| be pursued by me in the administration of the
Government, have to say that that must be left
| for Development as the Administration pro-
crosses The message or declaration must be
made by the acts as they transpire, The only
assurance that can now give Of the future il
reference t0the past. The course which have
taken in the past in connection with this Rebel
lion must be regarded as q guarantee of the
future" ,3l9M &3kNG Ek44A
Three days afterwards the new President,
In an address to delegation of citizens of Till
nois, headed By, Gov. Oglesbys thus express
| cd himself: ara u1ENsf ltwAhg
4 y eThe American people must be taught g. il
they do no not already feel-that treason is 0
crime and must be punished [applausel; that
the Goyernmentwill not always bear with its
but to punish Ia s'SSlAIs 2 ~ while
we are appalled,, overwhelmed at the fall of one
man IN our nidstby the hand of traitor, shall
| we allow men-I care mot by what weapons--
1 to attempt the life of the State with impunity
While we strain eur minds to comprehend the
enoSiniiy Of this assassination. shall we ALLOW
the nation 10 be nssassinated I"
We cshnottofbear conGidefing asa puI sly
| speculative question in the study OF human
nature, the reason that should induce any
man to publish and repeat the stalwart and
presumptuous lie we have thus (perhaps for
all intelligent persons gratuitously,) SO decis-
lively exposed. Mistake it cannot have been,
for these public documents were in every
body1s hands, and had been printed ana com.
mented upon doubtless, in the Advertiser IL
! self. $1,000, 81. $500 III.
There may be. a class Of minds for whom
such mendacity might plead some apology,
but we do not presume to classify there OF
elsewhere, that ofthe writer whose statements
we are contradictlng. There are persons be-
reft Of certain faculties of sense as of sight OF
hearing, and it is curious to observe the won
derful compensating and restoring agencies
OF nature, whereby other senses as of touch
and tasteand smell, grown more lacute and
delicate, come to supply their place, and let in
| upon the darkened soul, il not The precise in
tslligence derived from these lost faculties
ideas enough to support animperfect sequence
4 OF thought, and an incomplete consciousness
ofrational life. So, doubtless, among the slips
and mistakes OF the creative energy, there
occur more rarely graver omissions, not In
the faculties Of the soul, but in the soul
itself; cases where the function itself
| oftruth, --that moral instinct out of which re-
racity and integrity naturally groy,r-is lack
ing. In such abnormal cases men do not
wonder that the poor bereft find themselves
Unable to keep their word, strangely oblivious
of contracts, incapable Of afine sense of per-
sonal honor, falling off from lack of fidelity
from friends, from party, from q cause,
breaking by a kind of absent indedness ov-
er social ties. which to others are SO sacred,
but which to them are only conventional and
convenient, and putting upon the facts of cur
rent history a meaning precisely opposite to
what they signify,-the false man imagining
that man and God himself are false, lust as IL
is the illusion of the drunken man that every
man is drunk. Men rather note with curious
interest how such persons, seizing holdof the
recuperative and compensatory powers of ma
ture within their reach rare able to exc out
and to initiate the Offices of absent moral
sense, with the cunning OF the intellect, and by
such bungling methods attain low and
plausible standard ofrespectability.
Letter from the State Capital.