The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-03-04
PRESIDENT JOHNSON IN HISTORY.


This day consigns the presidency OF Anarew
johnson to history From the -Four tnas Ne
leaves the White House his fame Will pegln 70
emerge from the murky exhalations OF Ocsn
friendly and unfriendly prejudice. By de-
grees it will cease to appear In fragment OF In
distortion, and will, we confidently predict,
grow in its just proportions upon the Judg-
ment of the world, until, among all the pub
lie characters of his time, none VIII APPEAR
more extraordinary and distinguished, per-
haps none more potent, benefeeht and great
than Andrew johnson, Vice President elect,
and President in fact fromathe 18th OF April
1865, to the 4th of March, 1869. And yet, to
judge of him by the degree in which he sue
ceeded in adapting specific means to specific
ends, It cannot be asserted that he came up to
the standard either of the clever politician or
the practical statesman. Looked at from this
standpoint, his presidential term was crowded
beyond example with infelicities, mistakes
and miscarriages, and the sum Of it may be
expressed in one word-failure. But this Is
narrow view, based upon narrow criterion of
success and of wise and worthy endeavor. .
It is now evident that, from the first to the
last stage of his administration, Mr.. johnson
has acted upon settled theory of govern
ment and that the grand purpose OF his
policy, to which his specific aims were
merely incidental and subsidiary, was to
vindieate this theory at all hazards amid
the storm of revolutionary passions and
licentious propensities raging at the
conclusion of a war waged against the spirit
OF the federal Constitution, and which it left
as PROSTATE at the feet of the conqueror as
the vanquished enemy. Though staunch
Democrat before his utilization with the Re-
publican party, he had not belonged to what
was known as the State rights school of the
Democracy. But when the conflict ended,
he seems, with philosophical sagacity. to
have penetrated the truth that the essence of
State rights is equivalent to natural rights
which lie deeper than constitutions, broken
OF unbroken, and which the march of victori-
GUS armies cannot permanently tranaplo out
And he seems also to have OWNED that the
party which had elected him was destined to
become more and more retrogressive, more and
more hostile to the conditions of free govern
ment, more and more bent on subjecting the
whole country to the remorseless power of a
central despotism. What was he to do?
Should he lead his party in this direction
Should he give the whole weight of his execu-
tive position, and especially the enormous
power devolving upon him as commander-in-
chief of a conquering army, in the hot, blind
work of precipitating state of things in which
the horrors of despotism might be but the
prelude to chaos? Or should he boldly set
his face against the forces of revolution and
usurpation and strenuously endeavor to shape
affairs in consistency with the perpetuation of
free and constitutional government? He
chose the last course, as no President who
was mere politician would have done, as no
President who was a practical statesman in
the common acceptation of this name would
have done, in view of the slim availabilties
and the numerous obstacles and hazards
which would lie before such choice.
What followed it is needless to recapitulate.
A sharp rupture with his party was matter
of course. He was denounced, prosecuted,
impeached, threatened with the direst ven-
geance of political ferocity and fanaticism.
But he bore the brunt without finching. The
dint fell on flint which flashed back in sparks
of fire. To the last, he did not change, nor
falter, nor fatter, nor recant, nor repent 1t
was spectacle of moral courage and of logi-
cal honesty, frmness and. persistency that
shamed the profigate time in whose barbarous
dialect these public virtues had been trans
lated into public crimes. And though Grip
pied, and almost completely Frustrated in re-
spect to his executive prerogatives, he has
come out moral victor and in personal safety.
And in this particular at least his fortune has
been rarely felicitous; for there have been few
instances in which men bearing similar rela-
tons to revolutionary and icentious factions
have with equal impunity defed their vindic-
tive fury. ------
On the infencltes and mistakes of Mr.
Johnson's administration it is needless to
dwell in detail. The catalogue began with
his rejection of Gen. Sherman's terms of
surrender granted to Gen. Johnston-terms
which embraced all the elements of his own
plan of reconstruction, subsequently adopted,
differing from the specific features of that
plan only in laying down broader and SIM
pier basis. Had he promptly ratified this ar
rangement, and stood by Sherman, he might
have counted on having with him in carrying
out the policy of the speedy restoration of
the Southern States the personal gratitude of
that general, and the whole of his military
prestige and political influence. Then came
his sanction of judicial butchery by military
commission. To the same list may be added
the infatuation under which he retained
| Stanton in his cabinet when Stanton's hos
tility had ceased to be treachery, SO openly
| was he in league with the Presidents
enemies. But enough. He has been singu-
larly deficient in TACT and singularly slow
to suspect men about his person of sinister
motives and aims. But these are more often
| the faults of great than of small natures and
so, We take 1t, history viii adjudge most OF
the salient and eventful shortcomings and
| = 81 A. TIL T~;a l..