The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-02-15
IMPEACHMERT.

1t is announced by telegraph from Wash
ington, that the Judiciary committee of the
House of Representatives has again pro-
nounced against impeachment. TIE vote
stood six to three, the minority being COM
posed of Messrs. Stevens, Boutwell, and
Farnsworth. Mr.. Bingham, who was sup
posed to have joined the impeachers, voted
against them in the committee. This result
is regarded, in some places, as death blow
to the impeachment project, and as an indi-
cation that this Eporton of the radical pro-
gramme has been abandoned. Such sup
position exhibits very limited knowledge of
the character and designs of the radical
party. There is no question that the Re-
publicans in Congress want to get rid of the
President, and that, if to get rid of him were
an absolute necessity to the contamination
of their plans, they would make
the effort at once. But, as matters now
stand, the more prudent and circumspect
Of the party perceive the necessity
of making out at least a plausible
case. If they can bind the manacles
of legislation around the executive and thus
deprive him of power to thwart their schemes,
their purposes will be served quite as well as
by the more audacious, and more dangerous
plan of impeachment But, unhappily for
them, there is always a slip in the knot which
they are trying to tie. After all their efforts,
all their devices, all their expedients, they
still confess that President Johnson is an in
superable obstacle to the projects which they
ore of 10 70 T. =,
in their path. He tears through the meshes
which they strive to fling around him
Among themselves, they admit that to remove
him from Office may become a necessity.
But, in the face Of the public, they dare not
proclaim that they wish to remove him simply
because he is an impediment to the accom-
plishment of their purposes. They feel that
they must wait for some act, on his part.
which they can assert to be high crime
and misdemeanor, without making them
selves ridiculous before the world. In
short, it is plainly their wish and their design
to provoke an issue with the President, by
adopting some measure which it will be ut
terly impossible for him to execute without
practically abdicating all his executive func-
tons, and abandoning his sworn guardianship
over the Constitution. Such measure would
be the military dictatorship bill-or some
other act of a similar character. It is proba-
bly,, with this view, rather than with any ex-
pectation of influencing the course of legal
reconstruction in the South, that this measure
was introduced. 1t has not been passed yet
because the radicals supposed that they might
achieve their purposes without it. Their de-
feat in Alabama has shown them the fallacy of
this expectation and their prospective defeat
in the proximate elections will demonstrate
that the majority, even in the so-called loyal
States, is hostile to them. From
the embarrassment produced by their
failure in Alabama, they can es-
cape only by the adoption of some mea-
sure even more direct and despotic than the
existing reconstruction acts; and the popu-
lar majority against them eau be overcome or
suppressed only by resorting to legislative ex-
pedients still more extraordinary and still
more audacious than those which have been
already adopted. These two necessities gray
itate logically, and almost inevitably, to the
military dictatorship bill, Sherman's bill
ignoring the Southern vote against the radi-
cal Constitutions, and the impeachment and
removal Of the President 1t would, there
fore, not be surprising if this impeachment
project were to be resumed with the full con-
currence Of the Republicans, at some day not
very distant from the present. The radicals
are restrained only by considerations of ex-
pediency. Whenever they think that the
maintenance Of their supremacy depends
on getting rid Of the President, they will
provoke an issue with him and attempt to de-
pose him.