The New York herald., 1868-04-29

commenced yesterday in the Court OF General SeS-
sions Recorder Hackett presiding. The for the
prosecution having been stated several witnesses
were examined and the case adjourned till hafpast
ten this morning.
The Impeachment and the New Departure
Of the Republican Party.
The impeachment of President johnson,
with his removal, will mark new departure
of the republican party. The extreme radi-
calls, who have worked their way into the
foreground, will rule in every department of
the government, and with clear field before
them we may well be somewhat apprehensive
of the consequences. What will be the fate of
this dominant party we may predict from the
lessons of history, which teach us that however
strong and compact for time may be ruling
party which rises into power on the wave of a
great political upheaval it is resistlessly borne
along over all obstructions till shattered among
the rocks and sands of the shore or carried back
by the reboundng billow and left in scattered
fragments adrift on the sea. Meantime, from
the lights behind us it may be profitable to in
quire what is the prospect before us, starting
from the initial point of Andrew Johnson's
| removal. ssut
The republican party came into power on
the great idea of no further extension of
slavery. The slaveholding oligarchy of the
South took the alarm. They knew that the
restriction meant the destruction of slavery and
its dominant political faction. The Southern
rebellion followed, and, though all men saw
that slavery, with the extension of slavery,
was the cause, the controlling spirit, the
strength and the object of the rebellion,
Abraham Lincoln, sticking to the fixed
slavery landmarks of the constitution,
in his prosecution of the war for the
Union, withheld for two hong years his
decisive emancipation proclamation. lie
thought in 1862 that Fremont in Missouri was
too fast, that Hunter in South Carolina was too
fast, and he said to the committee of par
sons who called upon him at the White House
to urge that deadly blow against slavery that
such a proclamation would ''be like the Popes
bull against the comet" At last, when he made
his proclamationin 1868 as war measure, he ex.
cepted certain slaveholding States and districts
as compensation for their quasi loyalty. In
short, President Lincolns controlling idea dur
| ing the war and at the end of the war was
Cancellation. Had JEFF Davis, when the end of
the war was apparent to all the world, accepted
his overtures at Fortress Monroe, an immedi-
ate restoration of the rebel States would doubt
less have followed, on the basis of general
amnesty and qualified negro suffrage Had
Lincoln's life been spared this settlement
would, perhaps, have been consummated within
six months from Lees surrender.
Andrew johnson, as President, started in
the footsteps of the generous Lincoln, though
Johnson had much to recall in the way of de-
nunciations of traitors. He had been a radi-
cal, but invested with the mantle of Lincoln
he became conservative So powerful too,
though rapidly in the opposite course losing
sight of the radcals-so powerful, we say, was
his body of conservative supporters in the
republican camp, that it was not until the sum-
mer Of 1866 that definite rupture was pro-
claimed between Johnson and the republican
party. Upon the constitutional amendment
known as Article XIV, carried by the conser-
tatives of Congress, johnson committed his
fatal mistake. Had he, instead of opposing
that amendment, assisted in carrying it through,
he might have risen to the control of Congress
! upon that very thing. In opposing it he drove,
with few proftless exceptions, the
conservative republicans over to the radicals
as in a common cause against him. Then,
relieved of Johnson, we end the radicals of
Congress in 1867 cutting loose from that amend
ment, which leaves, under certain conditions,
the regulation of suffrage with the several
States, and we see them adopting the ultra
radical theory of universal negro suffrage in
| Southern reconstruction. From this point the
conservative wing of the republican party in
Congress almost entirely disappears, and the
whole camp becomes essentially radicalized.
Andrew Johnson, however, still in control Of
the executive department, If he can make no
Roadway against two-thirds vote In each
house of Congress, can battle and embarrass
them; and still In their conflicts with johnson
we observe occasional outcroppings Of con-
servatism Of the old red sandstone group suffi-
cient to check the leading radicals Thus two
deliberate attempts at Johnson's impeachment
are defeated but in the third, under a panic
and hurrah, impeachment is carried in the
House by solid republican vote, and, as ''Old
Thad Stevens has it, the Senate also, by the
record, stands committed to Johnson removal.
Here, then, the conservative element of the
republican party in Congress wholly disappears,
and with Johnson's removal such men as Chief
Justice Chase and Senators Fessenden. Sher-
man, Anthony and their conservative brethren
of the House will have to be content with back
seats, while such as Wade, Sumner, Chandler,
Stevens and Butler come to the front and shape
the policy of the government, the distribution
of the spoils and the nominations, principles
and measures of the republican party
This ia the new departure dependino unon