The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-02-25
AFFAIRS IN WASHINGTON.


The dispatches from Washington do not
show that any crisis has been reached in the
contest with reference to the war Office. The
correspondents protest that the President does
not intend to take any measures which might
precipitate collision, and the radicals are not
apt to provoke conflict in which they might
lose the advantages which they suppose them
ton holds on to the Office with grim tenacity
which has in it something Of the ludicrous.
He eats in the war department building and
sleeps there to obviate the risk of finding
himself excluded in the morning by some in
trusiye friend of the President. A staff officer
of General Emory's is at his side, and General
Grants soldiers guard his doors. In all this
there is the appearance, and even the reality
of war against the executive. 1t is q
declaration that the Stanton-Grant party
are ready to fight if any violent assault is
made on their programme. Such spectacle
has never before been seen in any country.
The common sense of the world recognizes
the right of chief magistrate to select his
own official advisers-the agents through
whom he exercises his executive functions
the officers who sit with him in counsel, and
who are supposed to aid him in the discharge
of his duties Usually mere intimation that
the presence of one of these agents is not
agreeable TO the Executive, is sufficient to
call forth an immediate resignation. Any
other theory renders successful executive
government impossible. Without harmony
in the cubinets with one or more of the cati-
net officers in open antagonism to the Presi-
dent. endeayoring to thwart, instead of
trying to assist him; conspiring to defeat
his wishes, aud allying themselves with
bis political and personal enemies, the
executive department of the government
loses all the yigor and vitality which the Con-
stitution intended to confer on it. The mere
statement of such a proposition sufices to
condemn the course Of the party which has
produced the result, and to array public
opinion against the men who have achieved
it. No clubbing about law can weaken the
force of the plain and palpable fact that the
radicals have allied themselves with Grant
and Stanton to elevate O subordinate and SUBJ
sidiary department of the executive Office
into supremacy above the executive Office
ITSELF Nothing can conceal or mitigate the
obvious attempt of Congress to reduce the
President to nonentity by separating the war
department. from the executive, of which it is
part. and consummate their plans by MAX
ing the secretary of war the superior of the
President
On such an issue the radicals could not go
before the country. But they do not intend
that the country shall settle this question.
They are already condemned. by public opin-
ion; their policy is repudiated; their schemes
are rejected. They have resolved to maintain
their supremacy by means of Legislative expe-
dents; and, if necessary, by the sword of the
commander to whom they have promised the
Presidency in return for his services. Every
step they take only confirms the odium in
which they ere held; but every step makes
necessary those further advances which carry
them into the lower depths of odium and
infamy.