Weekly Calaveras chronicle., 1867-03-02
Back Seats.

Wne0 ne declared tlaI traitors WOuiu LoNe
to take back seats in the reconstruction and
future government of the rebel States. How
he carried this declaration into practice, in
the forming of his bogus State Governments,
has passed into history. His reconstructed
States, wherein rebel regiments. brigades and
divisions voted their commanding officers in
to the control of the civil administration, and
those officers were pardoned by the President
for the express purpose of rendering them ell
igible to official position, afford striking
example of how the fairest promises may be
most sadly blighted in their execution. The
rebel conspirators accomplished, by intrigue
with johnson. what they failed to do with
all their armies during Lincoln's term-they
captured President in the National Capital.
Having possession of Johnson, they have at
tempted, through him, to gain in the Nation
al Government what they secured by his help
in the rebel States they have sought to oc-
eupy the front seats in the reconstruction and
government of the nation. In this they have
attempted the impossible, as they did when
they attempted secession, from misunder-
standing the people of the North and failing
to appreciate their intelligence and power.
Southern leaders have been accustomed to
state of society where they were everything
and the people nothing they decreed
all measures, and the people simply submit
ted to the orders of their chiefs, and they
have failed entirely to understand that differ
ent order of things which holds sway in the
North, where the people command and their
behests are carried into execution by their
elected servants. The people, in all truly
democratic governments, are supreme, and
what they decree there is always a legal
mode of doing, or, rather, the modes of car
rying their DEGREES into effect are made legal
by public sanction. They are Indifferent to
technicalities and look only at substances
Had johnson been faithful to his pledges, in
making treason odious and loyalty respecta-
BILE, and had he organized loyal State Gov
ernments in the South, however illegal such
action of the Executive may have been, the
people would have overlooked the illegality
and sanctioned the result, and the want OF
authority in the President to have settled the
question of reconstruction would not have
been inquired into. The shameful surrender
of Johnson to the rebels turned the people
from him to Congress as their next resort in
carrying to its completion the reorganization
of the General Government with the recon-
struction of civil government in the South in
conformity to the requirements of the ad-
vanced loyal sentiment of the country. He
lost his power when he deserted the people
and went over to their enemies, and Congress
holds its commanding position because it
represents the people. No measure of the
present Congress will be more popular with
the loyal people than the provision in the
Reconstruction Act which prohibits the
leaders of the rebellion from participating in
the reconstruction, of the South, and puts
them where johnson promised to put them
in back seats. The folly of trusting the f.
deity Of men who have once been trusted
and found faithless, is too apparent to need
demonstration, but is automatic. and had any
proof of so self evident a proposition been
wanting, the course of the Southern leaders
since the cessation of hostilities, has provided
it. They foreswore all the oaths they had
ever taken to support the Constitution of the
United States, when they precipitated the
South into rebellion for the accomplishment
of their own selfish purposes, and men who
are so facile in boiling oaths have no right
to complain if the people decline to trust
them any further. The tenacity with which
they have held their power over the masses
Of the South has prevented the Southern
States from ever being anything more than
democratic in form, in reality they have rul-
ed their section in all the spirit of despotism,
and their hold on power must be broken be-
fore any regeneration of the South can be ac-
complished. The effect of the triumph of the
national arms in the war of the rebellion,
was to release the people of the South from
the military control of these leaders, and no
end to the war could ever have been reached
without it. Though the war broke their
military hold upon the masses of their Sec
tion they have still kept their grippe on the
political power, and until that is broken no
progress in liberal and democratic ideas in
the South is possible. Their incapacity as
political leaders was demonstrated when they
inaugurated civil war and brought desolation
on themselves and their people, Having
convicted themselves of incapaclty and want
of fidelity, they have no just ground for COM
plant when Congress applies to them the
Jeffersonian test, and, finding them wanting,
places them permanently on back seats.
STOCKTON OvERFLOwED.-On Friday last
the Calaveras overfowed its banks and COW
cred the plains to the east of Stockton for
miles in extent, and came rushing through
the various water channels of that city with
great force. Travel is interrupted through
out the entire eastern part of the city, num-
Der of ungraded streets being submerged to
the depth of several feet. Moseville, north
of Weber avenue, and east of Aurora street,
appears like an inland sea, and the southeast
quarter of the city, says a dispatch, as far
west as the Catholic Church, is one contlnu-
Gus sheet of water. The flood came very
suddenly, so much so that many ladies who
were out shopping were compelled to do
some wading before they could reach their
houses. Others were carried home in the
arms OF gentlemen. Within three hours the
water rose over two feet. A heavy stream is
blowing along FL Dorado s,-oo. :; A. 49,