Bradford reporter. [volume] (Towanda, Pa.) 1844-1884, 1866-09-06


{ tive men, of all sections and parties, " to
: drive from power that radical party who
; are daily trampling under foot the Consti
tuition, md fast converting constitutions
7 Republic into a consolidated despotism.'
, The terms to which South Carolina is ask
ed to submit, before she can be made the
{ equal of Ohio or New York in the Union
, are stated to be too degrading and humil
iating to be entertained by a freeman for a
, single instant" When we consider that
: this radical party" constitutes nearly
four-ffths of the legal Legislature of the
nation, that it was the party which saved
the country from dismemberment while Mr.
Orr and his friends were notoriously enga-
: ged in trampling the Constitution under
foot" and that the man who denounces it
owes his forfeited life to its. .clemency, the
astounding insolence of the impeachment
touches the sublime. Here is confessed
treason inveighing against tried loyalty, in
the name of the Constitution it has violated
and the law it has broken But why does
MIR. Orr think the terms of South Carroll
mas restored relations to the Union too
degrading and humiliating to be entertain
ed by freeman for a single instant 2" 1t
1t because he wishes to have the rebel debt
paid? Is it because he desires to have the
Federal debt repudiated ? Is it because
he thinks it intolerable that a negro should
have civil rights Is it because he resents
the idea that breakers of oaths, like him
self, should be disqualified from having
another opportunity of forswearing them
selves? Is it because he considers that a
white rebel freeman OF South Carolina has
natural right to exercise double the po.
litical power of a white loyal freeman of
Massachusetts He must return an affirm
atlve answer to all these questions in order
to make it out that his State will be de-
graded and humiliated by ratifying the
amendment /; and the necessity of the mea-
sure is therefore proved by the motives
known to prompt the attacks of its Wilt
fers
The insoience of Mr.. Orr is not merely in
dividual, but representative. 1t is the re-
suit of Mr.. Johnson's attempt "to produce
harmony between the two sections" by be-
traying the section to which he owed his
election. Had it not been for his treachery
there wonld have been little difficulty in
settling the terms of peace, so as to avoid
all causes for future war but, from the
time he quarrelled with Congress, he has
been the great stirrer-up of disafection at
the South, and the virtual leader of the
Southern reactionary party. Every man at
the South who was prominent in the rebel
lion every man in the North who was prom
inent in aiding the rebellion, is no openly
or covertly his partisan, and by fawning
on him earns the right to defame the repre-
sentatives of the people by whom the rebel
lion was put down. Among traitors and
Copperhcads the fear of punishment has
been succeeded by the hope of revenge
elation is on faces which the downfall of
Richmond overcast E; and return to the
old times, when a united South ruled the
country by means of divided North, is
confidently expected by the whole crew of
political bullies and political sycophants
whose profit is in the abasement of the ma
ton. 1t is even said that if the majority of
the trump" Congress cannot be overcome
by fair means it will be by foul and there
are noisy partisans of the President who as
sert that he has in him a Cromwellian ca
pacity for dealing with Legislative assem-
blies whose notions of the publick good
clash with his own. In short, we are prom
ised, on the assembling of the next Con-
gress, a coup d'etat.
Garret Davis, of Kentucky, was, we be-
lieve, the first to announce this Executive
remedy for the radical disease of the
State, and it has since been often prescribed
by Democratic politicians as a sovereign
panaca. General McClernand, indeed, pro-
posed scheme, simpler even than that of
Executive recognition, by which the South
ern Senators and Representatives might
effect a Judgement in congress. They
should, according to hime, have gone to
Washington, entered the halls of legisla-
tion, and proceeded to occupy their seats,
;'peaceably if they could, torcibly if they
must :" but the record of General McCler-
nand as a military man was not such as to
give to his advice on question of carrying
positions by assault high degree of au-
thority, and, there being some natural hes
itation in following his counsel, the golden
opportunity was lost. Mr. Montgomery
Blair, who processes his willingness to act
with any men, "rebels or any one else" to
put down the radicals, is never weary of
talking to conservative conventions of "two
Presidents and two Congresses" There
can be no doubt that the project of coup
d'etat has become dangerously familiar to
the conservative" mind, and that the emf
nent legal gentlemen of the North who are
puDllsnlng Opinions aulrLnlhS IHe llguI Vi
the excluded Southern Representatives to
their seats are playing into the hands of
the desperate gang of unscrupulous politi-
clans who are determined to lave the right
established by force. 1t is computed that
the gain, in the approaching elections, of
twenty-five districts now represented by
| Union Republicans, will give the Johnson
party, in the next Congress, majority of
the house of Representatives, should the
Southern delegations be counted and it is
proposed that the johnson members legally
entitled to seats should be combined with
the Southern pretenders to seats, organize
as the House of Representatives of the Uui-
ted states, and apply to the President for
recognition. Should the President comply,
he would be impeached by unrecognized
House before an incomplete" Senate, and,
if convicted, would deny the validity of the
proceeding. The result would be civil war;
in which the name of the Federal Govern
ment would be on the side of the revolutions
lists. Such is the programme which is freely
discussed by partsans of the President,
considered to be high in his favor and the
scheme, it is contended, is the logical re-
suit of the position he has assumed as to