Nashville union and dispatch. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1866-1868, 1867-12-25
THE SURRENDER OF CONGRESS-.

my Of Music. II is Enthusiastically terse
and trenchant upon the body that erst was
esteemed to represent all the wisdom, cour-
age and loyalty in the nation. From the
following extract it will be seen that he
admits that the President il master Of the
situation: -
President johnson leads the Trnmbulls
and the Shermans, the Fessendens and the
Conklings the Edmonses and the other
Conservative Republicans Of to day. There
are but two camps one acknowledges that
there is no other exit from the present
difficulty but by unfolding the negro, and
the other still repeats the cuckoo cry of
the white mans government. The Presi-
dent of the United States, after five years
of battling-which, if it means anything,
means that il is an effort of nation under
the providence of God, to drag out the idea
of race from their civil machineTy-the
President of the United States sends us
paper dated December, 1867, which appas
rently he must have picked up from some
drawer which Mr.. Buchanan or Franklin
Pierce left filled He laughs at what the
nation calls the craftsmanship of the coun-
try, and tells us that this is a white mans
government, that the negro is to be pro-
tected and treated very generously, every
thing is to be kindly arranged for him /;
and then, with emphatic propriety, with
wonderful consistency, it is Andrew john
son, il is the Andrew Of the 4th of March,
it is the Andrew that swung around the
circle, that adds 50 appropriately to this
advice that we are bound 10 be very
careful of his morals. And that is the
flag under which sails every man who
undertakes to postpone by any mea-
sures of Cancellation, by any policy Of
timidity, the graphing with the whole
of this question tosday. He leads
Congress. Congress has a sham outside.
1t has an apparent adhesion to negro suf-
frage in its reconstruction policy that is
very apparent, for when the caucus which
undertook TO settle the question whether
negro suffrage should enter the great plan
of Congress met in the Senate Chamber it
was equally divided, IA to IA, and on one
Senator saying, Well, you do not allow
us 20 report it in that shape to the Senate,
| shall move it in the Senate Chamber"
one man changed his vote; Is to Is was
the close, tiny majority by which Congress
pledges itself on point which enables us
to distinguish it from the President; other
wise they are mixed in an uncomfortable
muddle. Only Is to Is, and in that l3, in
that marVelonsly large minority of 13, were
included all the Senators whose-almcst
all the Senators, one or two excepted
names rise to You when you speak OF the
statesman of the Republican party-the
leaders of the Republican party. Put into
the White House a man whose has il the
other way, a man whose preiudices or as.
sociations gravitate against this final, i'm
mediate and utter settlement of the ques-
ton, and he has behind him the strength
of the Senate reluctantly msrshaled behind
this plan, but ready at any moment to sur
render it into what they consider a wiser
and more available policy. Congress has
spent two long years in the avowed object
of checkmating the President, on the
ground that he could not be trusted with
the powers of a President. The XXXIXth
and XLth have spent every hour
of their official lives which have
not been wasted, every hour in the effort
to put on the statute books laws which
would take from the President the usual
power Of President. They have patient
| ", Systematically been at work building
up a machine which impedes the President,
impedes him from all power such as the
| constitution endbws him with, on the
ground that the individual who holds the
| Office conld not be trusted with its powers
and when we said to them, why, instead of
thus worrying your victim, don't you stran-
| gle him, why, instead of like the cat per-
petually plaguing your captive, don't you
cut his head off, they said "the public
won't bear it. We are going to follow the
| policy of checkmatiDg the President, and
| then it won't be necessary to impeach him"
But in that policy, in pursuing it, they
have forfeited all the support and stirred
on the Presidents side all the sympathy of
the nation, so to-day the Congress stands
with all the evil done that impeachment
in 1866 would have resulted in and none of
the good obtained. They have taken a
| course with this affected claim Of superior
craftsmanship and tried it. 1t has not an
swered its purpose, and it has produced all
the difficulties that the opposite would have
done. More than that, that moment the
| President, looking at these statutes passed
over his head by two-thirds vote, under
takes. in the full blaze Of the nation, to
trample them under his foot, to defy Com
gress, and fling its laws in IFS face, to take
| the very man in whose behalf, and for whose
protection this civil office tenure bill was
passed-Edwin NJ. Stanton (applause), and
put him out of office. Congress leaves him
out of Office would not betsixpence that he
would ever go back to Office. There is no sign
at Washington that tberssis any courage in
either House TO vindicate this civil Office
bill. Why, when the English Parliament
met in the days of Charles |, the very first
hour of its session it took up in FIVE minutes
the act which Charles ], had undertaken
to violate. 1t listened to nothing; it
! neither adjourned nor asked for message .
| it neither appointed committees nor did any
| other of the usual routines of the House
| of Commons; its first voice heard in the
hall was "where is the law we passed last
session ?" and, if this Senate had meant
anything--1 Andrel0 Johnson had not cowsd
| them beneath has heels, the first voice heard
| in that Senate Chamber when they met in
November would have been, "Where is
Edwin NJ. Stanton and the civil tunure
bill p lApplause. And Grant, if the
idol General himself had sent them paper
from the War Office, they should have flung
it in his face and said, eve do not acknowi-
edge you as the Secretary of War; there
is but one War Secretary in the light of
the law, and his name is Stanton, and no
paper coming from the War Department
without his signature should have been
acknowledged by that Congress. II, tramps
ling respect for Gen. Grant under one foot
and fear of the President under the other,
the Senate had grappled with the White
House, we should have sailed out Of this
difficulty on to a heaven-smiling sea. But,
instead of that, no voice is heard until the
day before yesterday to rebuke this defiant
and ostentatious attempt of the President
to balk Congress of its most favorite pur-
pose.
MISDTRFCTFD I,FTTFRs A ccording To