Weekly Calaveras chronicle., 1866-09-22
The Coming Crisis.


ms shame. and making maudlin speeches.
our public men. as general thing. have not
oeen noted for abstemiousness, but they have
heretofore had the good sense to know when
they were the worse for liquor, and at such
times have kept themselves in private. and
held their tongues. MeDougall is the only
one of our living statesmen. except the Pres
ident. who has had the hardihood to make a
public exhibition of himself when drunk !:
and it is a curious coincidence that he and
johnson have both betrayed their pledge to
the Union party. Drunkenness is the COM
panion and abettor of crime-whether the
criminal deliberately steadies his nerves and
braces himself with liquor for the commission
OF the criminal act. or being drunk has his
moral sensibility blunted and corrupted. by
which crime is made easy Many man has
all the will and disposition to commit crime,
who has not the courage to do so until he has
stimulated himself with liquor; and others,
while sober would never think of doing any
thing wrong, but when accidentally intoxi-
Gated they have their reason clouded, and
are prepared for the commission of any deed
of violence which may be suggested to them.
To which class of drinkers our President be-
longs we shall not attempt to determine. If
to the last, he is an object for pity as well as
censure; but from his persistency there is
good ground to believe that he first decided
to betray the Union party. and then drank
himself up to the point of action. In either
case he is a dangerous man in his present
position. and is standing menace to the
peace of the country, which should be re-
moved by Congress- and the first duty which
our loyal Representatives owe to their con.
stituents. is. upon the reassembling of Con
gress to vote articles of impeachment against
him, and send him to the Senate to be tried,
for there is continual danger while he remains
in office, that he will attempt some coup d.
etat upon the liberties of the loyal people.
Four years of bloody war. we had fondly
thought had settled, in our Government, the
principle that the will of the constitutional
majority shall govern the nation. But it
would seem that we had not read the lesson
Alright, and that the only real lesson of the
war was to teach the South that secession
was mistake-that it is easier to govern
the whole than part of the country, and
that they should have followed A. II. Steph-
ems and Herschel V. Johnson's advice, ohd
have fought it out IN the Union. and that
united South pitted against divided North
would more than be sufficient to conquer and
rule the whole country. What else mean the
signs of the times What else can mean the
threat made by the President in his speech at
the Delmonico dinner, and which is repeated
by him and his friends on all occasions, that
the failure of his policy to put the rebels in
ed by another war; The President has been
making political tour through the loyal
States for the sole purpose of trying to Sc
cure the election of the Copperhead Con-
gressional ticket in the coming elections. and
at every place where he has addressed the
people, in some form or other he has reiterat-
ed this threat. Does he think that the loyal
people are towards. and are to be bullied in
to subserving his purposess And are we
dogs to cringe and crouch at the raised whip
No. by Heaven! And if what the President
says is true, and he and the South are pre-
pared to make war if they cannot carry the
elections, then let the war come! We have
need of it to purify the country and establish
the principles of Freedom which we thought
were gained in the last war of rebellion
1t the rebels again come into power slavery
Is not destroyed, and the President does not
now mean that it shall be destroyed. Already
Southern public men claim that the Amend
ment to tie Constitution abolishing slavery
was not legally ratified, and the President is
with them on that point-else what mean his
declamations against Congress, where he ac-
cuses them of desecrating the archives of
the Government, and where he declares that
nothing but the Constitution of our fathers
shall be the law of the landi He knows that
the Amendment was not handed down to us
from our fathers. and that he can never hope
to have it formally and legally repealed but
with the Government in the hands of the
rebels. anything in the interests of slavery is
possible. and with rebel Supreme Court it
would be an easy matter to decide the pas
sage and ratification Of the Amendment to be
illegal, and thus "rehabitate" slavery. The
only safety to the peace of the country is for
all loyal men to do their duty without fear
of consequences. and pay no heed to the
threats of the one side, or the plea from the
other, that we must not humiliate the South
We must do our whole duty. and if that hu-
initiates the South, then the fault is hers and
not ours. When was the South ever soueam-
ish about humiliating us! The whole histo-
ry of our attempt to conciliate her has been
one of humiliation to US. She bullied us for
forty years, and at last bullied us into war,
and then we soundly thrashed her. Kind
ness and courtesy are lost on bullies. and
there never was one yet that thrashing did
not do good. As soon as we have commenced
to talk of conciliaticn, she has commenced to
again bully, and we will have the whole war
to go over again if we allow her bullying to
again carry the day. For her sake as well
as our own' let the loyalty of the country
present solid front, when she will succumb
and we will not again have to "March thro'
Georgia"
A Cross nF ERuIr The ad;,a-ac.Ln