The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1868-05-18
Impea clu,ent n Party Test Question
The Revelation Goes On.

Impeachment has failed in the Senate on one
point. 1t has ten points left and will carry
these to Chicago, and will thence, without doubt,
put its case before the country in the republic
can party platform. The convention that
meets on Wednesday will be an impeaching
convention. So say the party hucksters, and
they are, perhaps, right; for when we see that
every republican in Congress-save only those
few of the high minded men in the Senate who
regard duty as above all other infuences-is
savagely eager for impeachment, we cannot but
suppose it will find equal favor in an assem-
blage of the low morality and narrow intellect
that are the distinctive characteristics of nomi-
mating conventions. 1t will be an impeaching
convention, and one, consequently, in which
Butler, Stevens and Sumner will be the master
spirits; and it is not to be supposed that these
men, having all Congress and this convention
at command, should relinquish case that they
could have carried if they could have changed
single vote Can they not change single
vote by the whole pressure of party power?
Can it be that the virtue and irmness
of the Senate are such as to stand above all the
pressure that party can apply, when all that is
needed is only to change one vote /? These
men cannot believe it, and so they will essay
this power to the utmost, and use the conven-
ton and its platform only as one grand ma
chine to force Senators up to the mark.
Impeachment will be put in the party platform
and made the test of party fidelity, and all who
then refuse to come up on the call of some
other Of the ten articles will understand that
failure to vote as party demands will rule them
outside of party lines. Such is the undoubted
resolve and programme of the impeachers in
now adiourning their case from the court to
the convention.
II will then remain to be seen who shall
suffer most-the men so ruled out or the party
so ruling; for this is case that grows as it
moves, and will not have the limit of a party.
The whole country comes into it.
In all this struggle what is the real Issue +?
What is it that men are for or against What
is it that the radicals desire to secure What is
il that they who oppose them hope to prevent
Slavery is dead and gone-swept away in the
rapids of our intellectual activity, till it seems
II il not that IL is another issue altogether
II is the constitution. II is the political system
embodied in that instrument, and by which the
nation lives, around which the battle
now gathers mp and concentrates its
fury. Because the constitution and slavery
stood together they who have seen the death
of slavery believe that the constitution may go
next and seeing field for mad ambition in
the destruction Of that great charter OF the ma
tons existence they endeavor to confuse the
popular thought-to force on the people the
notion that the destruction of the one is not
complete until they have destroyed the other.
Hence what We now see in progress is neither
more nor less than a war against the constitu-
ton Of the United States-a war whose sole
object is the abrogation Of that fundamental
law. Naturally this war takes the form Of
conflict between the lawmaking power and the
Executive, as similar wars have done always;
for the Executive is the appointed guardian Of
the government, the power whose sworn duty
IL is 10 enforce the laws and defend the con-
stitution, and the popular assembly is the
convenient medium Of revolutionary Influences.
They, therefore in this struggle who on the
surface seem only to espouse the cause of
President on his trial, do in reality thing of
grander and deeper significance They espouse
the cause Of the country they stand by the
law; they struggle TO retain in lie purity
and power that grandly conceived sys-
tenn Of government whose foundations
were cemented by the blood shed
at Saratoga, at Monmouth and at Yorktown
On the other hand, they who follow the wild
clsmor against the President are, by the cry for
the publication Of the law, deceived to lend
themselves TO an attempt TO destroy the law,
and to set up in its place the wild imaginings
Of fanatic madmcn, to further the purpose Of
scoundres who see an unlimited field for plum
der'ng In their victory over the law.
] In the head and front Of the conservative