The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1866-02-07
Territorial Governments.


Territorial Governments.
Propositions have already been
offered in Congress to establish terri
tortial governments i'll the Southern
States in place of the State govern
ments now in such successful opera
ton. This is no more than was to
have been expected from the fanati-
cal ana unreasonable malignants who
constitute q majority of that body.
But fortunately for the South, in this
proposition, they make the issue
fairly and squarely with the Presi-
dent, and array themselves in open
and undisguised hostility to the policy
which he has announced and to which
he is fully committed. He cannot
give way if he were disposed without
attaching infamy to his name and ad-
ministration, and he is by nature one
of the very last men to abandon a
position upon which he has taken his
stand. We predict that if the act is
passed to establish territorial govern
ments i'll lieu of the State govern
ments which were erected by his
invitation and ut his suggestion, he
will interpose his Executive veto and
crush it to the earth. It is not likely
that a two-thirtl vote could be OBJ
tanned to carry such an iniquitous
measure over his head, and, therefore,
we apprehend but little danger of the
triumph of the radicals in this re-
spect.
But every measure of this charac-
ter presented by the radicals, and the
tables of both Houses are loaded with
them, only 60 to show us how very
important to the South is the friend
ship and firmness of the President in
this crisis. But for the protection
which the South enjoys in his liberal
feelings and resolute and indomitable
purpose to maintain and restore the
Union, the tide of fanaticism would
roll in one resistless and destroying
wave over every State in which the
rebellion ever had foothold. Those
who carp at and object to the Presi-
dents policy surely do not consider
that he now stands as wall of de-
fence between the destroying malig-
nifty of Northern fanatics and the
helpless and down-trodden people of
the Southern States Were he to
falter or to yield. ruin more desolat-
ing than any yet known would sweep
like a sirocco from the Potomac to
the Rio Grande, prostrating and
bhghting everything before it.
Though his plan of restoration may
not be all that we should have desired,
or perhaps all that we thought we had
q right to ask, compared to the legis-
lation the radicals would fix upon us,
it is superlatively good, and every
candid man must admit that it is so.
1t saves the Southern States IRON
further humiliation, places in their
hands the power to raise their voices
In their own defence, and in protest
against outrage, and admits them to
political rights and privileges, which
will enable them to command and en-
force respect. This much cannot be
denied. Then why should any man,
processing regard for the interests
of the South, refuse his support to
the policy of the President, so liberal
and so satisfactory, when he must see
that the failure of that policy inevi-
tably involves the triumph of that of
the radicals? Surely, lie can be no
true friend who viii so act, and he is
merely trifiing with the interests of
which he pretends to DO the supporter
and the advocate. .-LomsciNe Courier.