Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1866-04-23
CHIEF Justice Chnse and President
.IOhnSOm.

CMief y Justice Chnse and President
johnson.
In times that have gone by, our people
looked upon the Supreme Court of the
United States with something approaching
reverential awe. Although the Judges
wero the creatures of Executive appoint-
ment and confirmation by the United
States Senate they were looked upon as
occupying position more exalted than
any other in the country; and had any
member thereof even ten years ago de-
scended therefrom to address political as
semblage, or to discourse to any assemblage
on questions connected with party politics,
or approbatory of or directory to Congress,
deep aud long outcry would have been
made by the people generally. About
questions of this sort, it was common to
expect the President to discourse; bnt not
any member of the Supreme Court. This
by way of calling attention to the fact,
that Chief Justice CHASE so far forgot
the character of the position he occu-
pies as to make our of the South
shortly after the insurgents had been
disarmed-not for the purpose of as
certaining the temper of the Southern peo-
pie; but to harangue the Negroes and Gre
ate in their minds feeling that should
prompt them not to remain satisfied with
their condition until suffrage should be
giyen them. The President was at the
same time striving to do all he possibly
could to tranquilize the country-to give to
it enduring peace, prosperity and happi-
ness-while the econductof the Chief Justice
was calculated to hamper that work with
aggravating and irritating obstacles. The
Republican press did not discover 10 this
conduct of the Chief Justice any cause for
censure, as lowering the dignity and eX-
posing to reproach the Supreme Court OF
the United States, from which politics
should as sedulously be excluded as sin is
excluded from Heaven; nor did they speak
word deprecatory of his conduct, calcu-
lated, as It was, to complicate the work of
conciliation. They saw nothing out OF
place in it; they did not recognize
it as undignifed-as unworthy the
exalted position he. held. Nor did
they, in the exercise of finely cultured
sensibility, find anything to complain OF
in the speech of Chief Justice CHASE at the
Centenary meeting in the city of New York,
not many nights ago, wherein he signified
ioy at the enactment of the Civil Rights
. bill into law, despite the veto of the
President and urged that another bill
should be enacted comforting suffrage upon
the Negroes, "
But if President JOHNSON dares to tell
the people, either throughra message to
Congress, or through speech to some del
egation that may call upon him, that the
work Of conciliation has gone on eminent
ly satisfactorily, and that all that is now
required to make it complete and perfect,
is to permit the Southern States to resume
their right of representation in Congress,
the Republican press become horror-strick-
en- at the audacity, the vulgarity and the
treachery of the President, and they affect
a fear that these performances of his will
make our Government an object of derision
and scorn abroad. l.'
Wherefore this difference in the treat
ment of the conduct of Chief Justice CHASE
and President JOHNSON by the Republican
Press? Is it not because the Chief Justice
prates of the rights and capacity of the
Negro, while the President talks and works
for the maintenance of the Constitution and
the preservation of the Union?