Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1867-12-04
The Presidents Message.

1863.
The President's Message.
This important document reached us in
the Cincinnati Commercial at II O'Clock yes
terday forenoon. and was Immediately put
in type and distributed as an extra. Our
citizens thus read it before it was delivered
In Congress.
President JOINS ON, in relation to what
Radicalism calls Reconstruction, at once
cuts the gordian knot by the declaration
that the Union of our fathers cannot exist
when all the States are not allowed to ex-
crcise their constitutional right of rep
resentation in Congress. The process of
restoration Is to him perfectly plain, and
consists only in giving to each State and
to the people thereof their full rights under
the Constitution and the laws made in pur-
suance thereof. No act of portion of the
people of State, can deprive State of the
Union of its rights within the Union. A
State cannot commit crime-cannot be
punished, and hence, as long as the
Union lasts, its rights as SOW
ereign State of the Republic must
remt ain intact. While this is true,
1t Is equally so that the people of State
can be tried, and if found guilty of treason
or other crime, can be punished, but not so
a State. In civil action, State cannot
be sued, because it possesses the attributes
of sovreignty, and to say that State
which cannot even be compelled by law,
to pay just debt to one of its own citi-
z,ns, can be punished by a body of men,
composing Congress of the United States,
by withdrawing the safeguards OF the
Constitution from them, is an absurdity,
that it is only necessary to state, to show
its utter absurdity.
If.he States lately in rebellion. the Pres
1ient says, are not still met1bers of the
Union, when did they cease to be so? The
secession ordinances were declared null and
void by the States that enacted them. The
war that was waged to preserve the Union,
the men who fought and the men who gave
material aid, out of their limited NEE rs, to
carry the war to successful conclusion, GER
tainly never dreamed, after the surrender
of LEE and JOHNSON and the other Confed-
crate leaders, that the war was failure and
that the thousands of millions of treasure
expended and the hundreds of thousands
of lives lost, were sacrificed to aid the swim
die that the Union could not be discovered,
when. if Radiralism is correct, it was dis
severed the very day the people decided that
it was indissoluble. @-.1s
Believing the Republic still Union of
States, such as our fathers contemplated,
President JOHNSON would be derelict in
duty did he not recommend the sweeping
from the statute book all laws which have
a tendency to keep ten States of the Re-
public out in the cold, and this he does, in un-
mistakable language denying at once their
constitutionality and their expediency.-
In this connection. the President is equally
frank in his hostility to Congress trans
cending its powers in making voters of the
negro race and denying the same right to
a large portion of the white race. The
subiugation of States to negro domination
would, in his opinion, be even worse than
the military despotism under which the
people Of Virginia, Georgia, and
other States, now excluded from
their Constitutional rights, are now
suffering. sit is not proposed"
the message truly says, "merely that they
(the Negroes) shall govern themselves, but
that they shall rule the whole race. make
and administer State laws, elect Presidents
and members of Congress, and shape to
greater or less extent, the future destiny
of the whole country" This power the
Radical majority in Congress are endeav-
oring to fasten upon the country-to make,
as the dominant race in the South, people
that has shown less capacity for govern
ment than any other race or people, on
the habitable globe, while it is taken
from that race, acknowledgedly the
most enlightened on Gods footstool. 1t is
to make the late slaves the masters, the
late masters the slaves. AS clincher to
his argument on that subject President
JOHNSON says that it cannot have escaped
the attention of Congress that, from the
day ''the proposition was formally made
by that body to govern the Southern States
by military force. with view to the ulti-
mate establishment of Negro supremacy,
every expression of public sentiment has
been more or less averse to it." This fact
was shown in the elections in Ohio, New
York, New Jersey, California, Pennsyl-
vania and other States, where Radical-Ne-
gro Suffrage -Republicanism received its
terrible overthrow.
In our necessarily hasty reading OF the
Message, we found much to admire and
hut little to condemn. AS a litl rary effort,
it ranks far above the Messages of the last
seven years, and in its recommendations il
is excellent. As whole, it is State paper
that re fleets high credit on the ability and
the patriotism of its author.
DIR. ARNOLD once lost all patience with a
dull scholar, when the pupil looked up in
his face and said: "Why do you speak so
an2rily, sir? Indeed 1 am doing the best
can" Years after the Doctor used to tell
the story to his children and say: II never
felt so ashamed in my life. That look and
that speech have never forgotten"
The English language constantly grows
by the manufacture of new words. A single
issue of one of our western exchanges con-
tains two additions to the language. There
are full accounts of how party 'festivi-
tied" recently, and of the trial of .'cul-
pritess."
Ar the time of bis death Mr.. Lincoln's
debts amounted to thirry-eight dollars and
thirty-one cents. Few things in his career
are more creditable to his character than
this. He was evidently as prudent and
conscientious in his private as in his pub
lie affairs Faw mon in puhI;o I;co 1-..-