Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1866-05-16
The President Malignant and Deter
mined.

Washington Correspondence Cincinnati Gazette
Those who expect that Andrew john
son meditates any withdrawal from the
position he has assumed, read the future
with clearer vision than the most clear
sighted here. The arguments which pro-
duce the greatest effect at the White
House are the same which were used
when the South was in power; only
dressed over to suit those changes which
cannot be reversed by them. The men
who fawn around the President, and to
whom he gives most heed are, many of
them, men who have denounced him for
all that is unworthy of a man. The
Northern men who visit him, and the
messages which reach him from the South,
are such as to show hat traitors expect
to avoid all punishment for their crimes
through him. mo conditions" says Mr..
johnson, and his words are echoed
through the length and breadth of the
South. That whole people are a unit in
his praise, as those who have lately
reached here after months oftravel among
them report. They are beginning TO take
consolation in the thought that after all
Mr.. Lincoln is out of the way, and a
| Southern man is their President. And
in almost every sense he is their Pres
ident.
He is daily becoming more obstinate.
The voice of the North in condemnation of
his policy, is drowned for him by the
praise of the South. He deems himself a
jackson; installing his own obstinacy for
the sternness and decision of that able
President. Instead of a statesman, a
demagogue holds the Executive office, and
every transaction at the White House
proves this true. The assi6uo1s use of the
telegraph, the cunningly devised false
hoods which appear in journals claiming
to be his official organs, are sufficient evil
dence to justify this statement. Instead
of attempting in good faith to carry out
the will of those who elected him, he is
neglecting no means by which he can ut
terry destroy the loyal party which placed
him in power. Reconstruction with Mr..
johnson, means simply the overthrow of
this party.
Those famous extracts from the Presi-
dents speeches when he was a Union
man, in which be threatened to make
treason odioes, and to force traitors TO take
back seats, and all that sort of thing, were
kept standing, printed in capitals, at the
head of the editorial page of a paper here
which claims to be DIR. Johnson's organ,
until the matter became a subject of uni
versal ridicule, and until they were the
daily handwriting on the wall atthe Pres
ident's feasts. "They are weighed in the
balance and found wanting" was the ter
rible summing up ofthese quotations from
his Union speeches. These lave at length
disappeared, and now the only words of
the President keptstanding in that journal
are these:
Honest conviction is my courage, the
Constitution is my guide, and in the peo-
pie is my faith."-AndreW johnson.
The same paper this morning thus bung-
lingly comes to Mr.. Johnson's aid, and
virtually admits the necessity for some ex-
PLANTATION, while denying its necessity:
"The report that the President has
issued a proclamation declaratory of the
true intention and meaning of the peace
proclamation, is without any authority in
truth"