Nashville union and dispatch. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1866-1868, 1867-06-06
II uiaa aud 9ispatfh.
THURSDAY. JUNE g, 1857.
Largest Circulation in City and State.
THE ATTEMPT TO IDENTIFY PRES
IDENT JOHNSON WITH THE As
SAsSTNATION. a.

The Washington correspondent of the
Cincinnati Gazette has seen fit to string to-
gether batch of lies to implicate Presi-
dent johnson in the assassination of Mr..
Lincoln. This letter is eagerly snapped
up by the more disreputable of the Radi-
cal press, and heralded to the public as
most important and startling revelations.
The Press and Times is one of this number.
We subjoin portion of an editorial notice
of this letter by the Cincinnati CONNER.
cial, which, though Radical is not lost to
all sense of deceney. 1t says:
Mr.. johnson spoke disrespectfully of the
Yankee influence" on various occasions,
and that his private Secretary was guilty Of
the same improperly, aud this is called
evidence that he purposed the betrayal of
his party. All that loose talk is easily and
clearly explained when we consider a sim
gle circumstance. Mr.. johnson was then
decidedly antagonistic to the idea that
there were any States ont Of the Union. He
considered Mr.. Sumner the representative
man of the idea that there were States de-
strOyed by the war, and he spoke in his
Tennessee stump style of Mr.. Sumner and
others, according to whose doctrine Ten
nessee was not then a State in the Union.
Mr. Johnson's strong point, next to the
fact that he was Andrew Johnson, was that
Tennessee was a State, and ALWAYS had
been and always should be- and couldn't
help herself, and could not be prevented,
and all that. And at that time a majority
OF the Republican party agreed with him.
Mr.. Lincoln was understood to hold simi-
lar views. On this point Mr.. johnson
has not changed his ground but the Re-
publican party, under the pressure of the
difficulties of reconstruction, have changed.
Concerning the movements around the
KirkwoOd House, on the 18th of April
better testimony than cit is said" is re-
quired before it will be credited that John
son was in communication with Booth, and
making ready the murder of Lincoln. To
suppose that Mr.. johnson, knowing what
Booth was about, would have had inter
views with him during the afternoon before
the assassination, is to assume that he is an
IDIOT And it may not be irrelevant to OBJ
serve that if the domestic relations of
Booth and johnson were complicated at
Nashville, the fact will explain Booths
calls, If he made any, at Washington. The
trial OF the conspirators was, as all the world
knows, conducted in a manner not at all
satisfactory to those seeking the whole
truth; but we do not believe Mr.. John
son was directly responsible for its pc
culiarities. The trial was the handi-
work of Stanton and Holt. Their char
acteristics were displayed in it from first
to last. Were they, too, conspirators?
They were but few years before bitter and
intOlerant members of the Democratic
party. No one ever denounced Yankees
with more venom than Holt did. Stanton
was always a coarse, brutal, oyerbearing
man to those who were subordinate to him, |
or were afraid of him, and he was very
savage ON abolitionists, and was a member |
OF Mr.. Buchanan's cabinet. Holt and Stan |
ton are in office now, though they pretend |
70 be Radicals. Were they, also, cpnfede- |
rates of Booth? Mr.. Johnson's position in |
respect to the assassins of Lincoln was deli |
cate in this that their crime had elevated |
him TO the highest Office. Naturally he |
did not feel like meddling in their trial. |
Suppose he had insisted that they should |
not be tried by military commission, but |
by civil court, and then that some of them |
had been acquitted, couldn't the Gazette have |
found an indictment against him for high |
treason? The stories about a widespread |
knowledge Of the plot that are told in the /
Washington letter of the Gdzette are the |
usual pigments of the Imagination that gath
er about a startling and tragic fact. They |
are as worthy of the consideration of a |
Of Congress as the dreams of |
Ca4sar's wife, and the signs and wonders |
seen in the heavens and along the streets of /
Rome the night before Caesar was assassi-
mated