The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1866-11-08

partisans shall serve him, not merely by
prostration Of body, but by prostration
,of mind. 1t Is the hard duty Of his
more intimate associates to translate his
broken utterances from Andy-Johnsonese
into constitutional phrase, to give these
versions some show Of logical arrange
,ment, and to carry out, as best they
may, their own objects, while protesting
.boundess devotion to his. BY sophis-
ticai process of developing bis rude no.
,tions, they often lead him to conclusions
whicn he had not foreseen, but which
they induce him to make his own, not
by fruitless effort to quicken his mind
Unto following the steps of their reason
ting, but by stimulating his passions to
sthe point Of adopting its results. They
ithus become parasitesin order that they
Fmay become powers, and their interests
make them particularly ruthless in their
dealings with their masters consistency.
,pTheir relation to him, if they would
bluntly express it, might be indicated
in this brief formula: "We will adore
you in order that you may obey u.s."
!, The trouble with these politicians is,
that they cannot tie the Presidents
stongue as they tied the tongues of the
E eminent personages they invited from
call portions Of the country to keep silent
uat their great Convention at Philadel-
ltphia. That Convention was master
opiece of cunning political management;
but its Address and Resolutions were
hardly laid at Mr.: Johnson's feet, when,
: in his exutation, he blurted out that uu-
fortunate remark about "a body called,
or which assumed to be, the Congress
of the United States," which, it appears,
1--WE have seen hanging on the verge Of
the government" Now all this was in
the Address of the Convention, but it
was not SO brutally worded, nor SO CAL
culated to appall those timid supporters
of the johnson party who thought, in
their innocence, that the object of the
Philadelphia meeting was to heal the
wounds of civil war, and not to lay
down programme by which it might
be reopened. Turning, then, from Mr..
johnson to the manifesto of his political
supporters, let us see what additions it
makes to political wisdom, aud what
guarantees it affords for future peace.
We shall not discriminate betwe' n in
surgent States and individual insur-
gents, because, when individual insur-
gents are so Overwhelmingly strong that
they carry their States with them, OF
when States are so Overwhelmingly
strong that they force individuals to be
insurgents, it appears to be needless.
The terms are often used interchangea-
bly, in the Address, for the Convention
was so largely composed of individual
insurgents that it was important to vary
a little the charge that they uSurped
State powers with the qualification that
they obeyed the powers they usurped.
At the South, individual insurgents con-
stitute the State when they determine
to rebel, and obey it when they desire
to be pardoned. An identical thing
cannot be altered by giving it two
names.
The principle which runs through the
Philadelphia Address is, that insurgent
States recover their former rights under
the Constitution by the mere fact of sub
mission. This is equivalent to saying
that insurgent States incurred no guilt in
rebellion. But States cannot become
insurgent. unless the authorities of such
States commit perjury and treason, and
their people become rebels and public
enemies; perjury, treason, and rebellion
are commonly held TO be crimes and
who ever heard, before, that criminals
were restored to all the rights of honest
citizens by the mere fact of their arrest !
The doCrtne, moreover, is worse
heresy than that of Secession; for Sc
cession implies that seeded States, be-
ing out of the Union, can plainly only
be brought back by conquest, and on
such terms as the victors may choose to
impose. No candid Southern Rebel,
who believes that his State seeded, and
that he acted under competent authority
when he took up arms against the Uni
ted States, can have the effrontery to af-
firm that he had inherent rights of citi-
zenship in "the foreign country" against
which he plotted and fought for four
years. The so.called right of seces-
sion was claimed by the South as a con-
stitutional' right, to be peaceably exer-
cised, but it passed into the broader and
more generally ineligible "right" Of
revolution when it had to be sustained
by war; and the condition of a defeated
revolutionist is certainly not that Of a
qualified voter in the nation against
which he revolted. But if insurgent
States recover their former rights and
privi eges when they submit to superior
force, there is no reason why armed re-
bellion should not be as common as local
discomfort. We have, on this principle,
sacrificed thirty-6ve hundred millions Of
dollars and three hundred thousand
lives, only to bring the insurgent States
into Just those 'practical relations to the
Union" which will enable us to sacrifice
thirty-6ve hundred millions of dollars
more, and three hundred thousand more
lives when il suits the passions and ca