The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-06-17
The Attorney-GeneraI's Opinion.

The Attorney Generals Opinion.
Tax publication Of Attorney General Stan
bery,s "opinion' in full confirms the outgiv-
ings ofthe press for the last few days concern
ing its character. It is in effect nulliiication
of the Reconstruction law passed by Congress,
and shows very clearly that the President does
not intend TO execute the law in good taith'
1t is, in truth, his justification for not execut-
ing it. Under a pretense that the law could
not be understood, the Attorney General has
been called upon for construction OF it, and
he has given Just such an one as his master
desired. This sudden difficulty of understand
ing the law is very singular. The President
found no difficulty in understanding it, or pre-
tending to. when the law was before him for
his approval or negation. And, strange enough,
he understood it then in an exactly opposite
sense from what he now adopts. Stanbery
was his ready tool in both instances. He is
said to have written the veto messages, and
now he furnishes the opinion which stamps
the veto messages as deceptive and fraudulent
in every important particular. If this
"Opinion," which Attorney General Stanbery
has manufactured to order for Andrew Johnson,
as his excuse for not executing the Recon-
struction law, be correct, if its allegations
be true, if its construction of the
law be honest, then the messages vetoing the
Reconstruction law, with their high-sounding
denunciations, their impassioned arraignment
of its provisions, their statements of the ex-
traOrdinary powers it proposed to confer, in
deed, their entire tone and spirit, must be put
down as deliberate attempts to deceive the
people under the guise of solemn official decla-
ratiOns, and as the mere clap-trap of the most
ordinary demagoguery. The veto messages
and the opinion cannot both be true. They
are diametrically opposed. They treat of the
same subject, and contain contradictory state
ments upon the same points. Each is complete
refutation of the other. If either be true, the
other cannot possibly be so.
Such state of facts as this is must go far to
deprive Mr. Johnson of what little confidence
anybody still had in him. For instance, how
must any man now feel who read and believed
Mr.. Johnson's arraignment of the Reconstruc-
tion law in his veto messages, when he finds
by the opinion that said law is an entirely diff
ferent thing, and that its supposed specially
obnoxious features had no existence in fact
How much cheap Indignation, according to
this opinion did Mr.. Johnson and his friends
waste upon Congress How grossly he mis-
represented the character of its acts His de-
nunoiations are now seen to have merely been
for effect. 1t was deep political game that his
Excellency was playing, in which the passions
of the people were to be wantonly aroused,
the country gratuitOusly exasperated and the
fires of political agitation unnecessarily famed
to flame. He was an actor, "strutting his
brief hour" upon the national stage; and he
must make his piece lively and entertaining,
at whatever disregard of truth. And this is
the man who never tires of pluming himself
upon his consistency! who always takes the
Constitution for his guide who never ceases
to parade his devotion to the good of the
country
The people never stop to regard technicali-
ties. They go to the root of matters-to the
great questions really involved. Mr.. Stan
bery's pettifogging opinion will not make the
slightest impression upon the public mind, so
far as regards the character of the Reconstruc-
tion law. The people understand that that
law was meant to give effect to a certain policy
of reconstruction, as opposed to certain other
policy. 1t was the triumph of their policy, as
opposed to has policy. And in this "opinion''
they will see nothing but an attempt of the
President to override the popular will, to sub
stitute his own therefor, and to reopen the
contest which so shook the country last fall.