The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1868-04-18
The Revolution mt Washington-What Arc
We Coming TOT

The Revolution mt Washinston-What Are
We Coming TOT
When that incompetent sold public iunc-
tonary" james Buchanan, in December, 1850,
was brought face to face with the secession OF
South Carolina the best that he could do was
to put in the miserable excuse before Congress
that he could find no authority in the constitu-
ton to coerce seeding State. When the
great Southern rebel conspiracy had seized
United States forts, arsenals, minis and custom
houses, from Charleston to Galveston, and
when South Carolina, Joined at Montgomery by
Georgia, Florida Alabama, Mississippi, Lou
isiana and Texas, proceeded under JEFF Davis
to set up an independent Southern confederacy
on the corner stone of African slayery, still
adhering to the State sovereignty fallacies of
Calhoun, the best that Buchanan could do was
to fold his hands in despair and groan over the
dissolution of the Union, pitfully deploring that
his would be the last administration under the
Union and the constitution of our fathers; and
this was his legacy to Abraham Lincoln.
Under Buchanan's theory secession was a
reserved right of State sovereignty lying be-
hind the constitutional fallacy which would
make the Union rope of sand, liable at any
time to be broken by the caprice of the domi-
nant party in any State But even upon this
ground, in going behind the constitution, Lin
coin hit the nail upon the head in declar-
| ing that when State goes back to
first principles in this matter of break
mi haC
! to first principles in holding the Union to-
| gether. His first act, therefore, in response
to the initial act of war by the Southern
rebel conspirators, was his proclamation
calling for seventy-fve thousand men to re-
cover, by force of arms, certain forts, arsenals,
custom houses and other United States pro-
perty seized by those conspirators in the rebel
States. This was an assumption Of the war
power belonging only to Congress; but had not
President Lincoln at once assumed this RESPONSE
bility the government itself, in the absence of
Congress, might have been overthrown. With
the meeting of Congress-, therefore, the Presi-
dents conduct was approved on the supreme
law of selfpreservation, as the responsible
head of the government; and then, through
four years of the most formidable and tenacious
rebellion in the history of mankind, the repres-
sive measures of Congress were, to some
extent, from the very nature of things, behind
and outside the constitution and based on the
laws of war and the law of nations, unless we
may assume that the power expressly given to
Congress ''to provide for calling forth the
militia to execute the laws of the Union, sup
press Instructions and repel INVASION" is
ample authority for all that Congress did in the
work of suppressng this instruction of the
so-called Confederate States
In any event, ''the Union, as it was" under
Buchanan, and ''the constitution as it was
under fancy, were turned topsy-turvy in the
suppression of this Southern rebellion. Under
"the Union as it was" the slaveholding oil
garchy of the tobacco and cotton States were
masters of the government. Supplanted in
Lincoln's election, they undertook the establish
ment of an Independent slaveholding confed-
eracy. With their subjugation their paramount
institution of slavery, which, through two hun
dred years of cultivation had given shape and
character to their industry, their politics, their
religion and their social laws and distinctions,
went down. The amendment since added to
the constitution interdicting slavery, though
eminently proper, may thus Of itself be called
a radical revolution from the original structure
of the government 1t has opened wide the
doors to further revolutionary innovations,
including universal negro suffrage in Southern
reconstruction and the project of universal
negro suffrage throughout the Union by act Of
Congress. In the same way the extraordinary
exercise of the powers Of Congress during the
war prepared the two houses for their still
more extraordinary assumptions Of power
since the war, in their conflict with President
johnson.
Thus we find that since the establishment of
their provisional military relationships over
the still unrecognized rebel States the two
houses of Congress have rapidly advanced to
the absorption of the constitutional powers
heretofore accorded to the Executive and Judi
cial departments The President of the United
States is reduced to a mere automaton, subject
to the pleasure of the Senate in his removals
as well as his appointments, while the Supreme
Court, with its mind made up on
an important case involving Congress
sional reconstruction is compelled to be silent
under special act of Congress. What, then,
are we coming to, looking to the removal of
President Johnson for ''the high crime and
msdemeanor" of daring to remove an OBJ
noxious Cabinet officer without first consulting
the Senate?
Who can answer this question? We cannot,
looking at the chain of revolutionary events
behind us, without the warning that the end of
the chain is still before us; for this great and
comprehensive revolution, opened seven years