The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-02-28
IMPEACHMENT.

There are indications of vacillation and tre-
pidation among the radical conspirators at
Washington. The impeachment resolutions
were hurried through the House with impa-
tent and vindictive haste; the representative
impeachers appeared in the Senate Chamber
and declared. that the House would soon pre-
sent its charges; Mr.. Wade responded that the
Senate would take due action in the premises;
and people fancied that the affair would be
pres ed forward to the ultima thule of radical
hopes. But it seems that the House is in a
qusndary. Andrew johnson has been i'm
peached of high crimes and misdemeanors;
but nobody seems exactly to know in what the
crime or the misdemeanor consists. 1t is a
general indictment without specification;
very much as if a grand jury were to find
true bill for murder without stating who had
been murdered.
What is to be done in this emergency? 1t
is easy enough to call the President hard
names to stigmatize him as a traitor to his
party; as a sympathizer with 'srebels;" as an
impeachment to reconstruction; but these are
abstract figures of rhetoric which do not
constitute crime or misdemeanor. With
Stevens and Boutwell, and Butler the
task Of framing specifications would not be
difficult Simply to prove that the President
is in opposition to the Republican party, is,
on the theory of those persons, a sufficient
reason for deposing him. To turn him out of
Office on the ground that he is not radical
would be precisely analogous with the expul-
sion of representatives and senators from
their seats, on the ground that they are OPP
posed to the Republican party. The ultra
radicals ask for no other and no better
reason than this. But the absurdity
of such a proceeding seems to have
become evident to a portion of the Republic
can members. They are anxious to get rid
of the President; but they do not like to con-
fess that their desire is prompted solely by
partisan luminosity and the hope of party ad-
vantage. The country knows that the i'm
parchment scheme is purely party project (;
but the Republican managers cannot afford to
admit that the country is right. Nevertheless
they are in this dilemma-they have i'm
peached the President and they must declare
the facts on which the impeachment is based.
| They have charged the President with high
crimes and misdemeanors, and they must
specify in what those crimes and misdemean-
ors consist. It is true that they cannot afford
to confess that they are influenced by partisan
motives alone, but still less can they afford to
make themselves ridiculous. 1t costs party
less to be audacious, than to be foolish. But
in this case audacity and folly seem to be
combined. There is no conceivable contin-
gency in the successful impeachment and re-
moval of the President that can benefit the Re-
publican party. 1t will not gain single
electoral vote for their candidate; but it may
| cost him many. The patronage of the admin
istration is now almost wholly enjoyed by radi-
cal ofice-holders, who are protected By the
tenure-of-ofice act; and thus they would gain
little in this respect. But even if they should
gain all that this patronage can give them, il
would not suffice to save them from defeat.
No party ever yet has succeeded even with
the aid of all the offce-holders in the coun.
try. in overcoming settled public opinion.
That opinion is fixed against the radicals and
their policy and every expedient adopted by
them increases the strength of the adverse
sentiment. Of all the blunders committed
by them impeachment is the most glaring and
the most disastrous. If they carry out the
plan they gain nothing, and only arouse q
still stronger feeling of indignation through
out the country. If they fail, they make
themselves ridiculous. They have ruined
themselves by wickedness and folly, and by q
perversity entirely unexampled in the history
of parties.