Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1868-12-24
Tn. L.st Johnsoni.n E.s.x.

Its biilingsgate, its malice, its def
ance, its shamelessness, and all. 1t wa!
the work of "Laneelot, and no
another Ai.single such man in any
country is enough to make all its Other
demagogues appear respectable by com
parison.l Once we supposed that no
president would ever again commit an
official atrocity equal to Millard Fill
more's singing of the Fugitive Slave
law; but Mr.. Fillmore is a saint of the
calender in comparison with Mr.. John.
son. This Tennessean's statue (if he is
to have one) should be wrought in brass,
and represent him Sinking both fists al
the walls of the Capitol. Nor can one
help fancying him grating his teeth as
he penned some of the bedeviled SEN
tences of his message, they are so full OF
hatred, passion and revenge. s4-
Estates to which the Constitution
guarantees republican form of govern
ment,n he says. have been reduced to
military dependencies, in each oflwhich
che people have been made subject to
the arbitrary will of the commanding
general" And yet this self-same critic
of the reconstruction measures was him.
self military governor, and one of the
earliest agents of the Federal Govern
ment in inaugurating the very system
which he condemns! saf l.t 5f.,
sThere seems no good reason" he
says, ''why the reconstruction measures
should longer remain on the statue
book" And yet this perpetual eulogist
of popular majorities knows very well
land trembles in knowingly that all the
states of the Union, except haif-a-d0zen,
voted overwhelmingly to ireafflrm,, to
maintain, and to enforce these identical
reconstruction measures. .u5la ae.
1.-The attempt,' he says, ''to place the
white population under the domination
of persons of color in the South has i'm
paired, if not destroyed. the kindly
relations that had previously existed
betweea them.p And yet the author of
these -wOrds once stood on the steps of
the state house at Nashville, and, with
hands uplifted toward heaven, swore an
oath to these same "persons of colorr
that he would be their Moses! rsT ayr
ut would be. just and equitable y he
says, "that the 6 per cent. interest now
paid by the Gov lment should be ap-
piled to the reduction of the principal "
And yet the man who has the effrontery
to say this knows well enough that to
pay the interest of debt, and then to
count the paid interest as so much re-
duction of the principal, is to cheat the
creditor out of the principal altogether,
and is nothing less than shameless rob-
berry. A man who would claim that in
paying the interest he was paying the
principal might just as well deny that he
owed either principal or interest atHall.
Mr.. johnson will go into history as
man whose public seareer has exhibited
him in the three -Eoli character of drink
ard, rebel, and repudiator. -5,f...' '.-.i
One would have supposed that the
President, in closing his official. term, In
making his farewell address to the
American people, in bequeathing his
last will and testament 70 posterity,
would have endeavored tqsyin back
some of those golden opinions With
which bis countrymen unwittipgly hon
cred him at the beginning of the war
But, ever since he 'hrst disclosed his real
self to the worlds eye, 1t has been APP
parent that his final epitaph would be
Macaulay's remark of Sir Antony Ashley
Cooper: Every part Of his life reflected
infamy on every other"
When, in few weeks. his term shall
end, and he shall 20 back to lead i'm per-
son the Ku-Klux Klals in Tennessee,
he will be found by his old neighhors to
be more rusted, corroded, and mildew-
ed thing than the ancient tin sign In
which still says IA job nson,
TIE sight of that rusty Sign
will, perhaps, make him wish that be
had never laid aside his needle and
thread; and he will then, for the first
time in three years, be of the same opin-
ion with his fellow-countrymen.-lThe