The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-24
FRIDAY, JUNE "a, 1870.
CONTINUATION or AKERMAN.

COEFLRAATTON or AKERMAN.
THE Seuate yesterday confirmed thei nomi-
nation of Amos Tappan Akerman as Attorney
General of the United States, and thus placed
a colonel Of the Rebel army in one of the
most responsible positions in the Cabinet.
The propriety of this action is exceedingly
questionable. We cordially favor a forget
fulness of the bitter passions and prejudices
of the war, and have no objection to the ap-
pointment of men with Rebel records to lu-
crative and responsible Offices in their respect
i've States. We appreciate the peculiar po-
sition Of men who, like Akerman, labored
zealously after the termination of their SER
vice in the Rebel army to reconstruct their
Commonwealth on republican principles,
and find no fault with the administration for
rewarding them with liberal share of local
patronage. But limits of some kind should
be affixed even to universal amnesty. We
should not think it quite the correct thing to
elect and inaugurate Jefferson Davis as the
next President of the United States, and yet,
in principle, there is no
material difference between such
proceeding and the nomination and confir-
nation to high Cabinet position of a man
who, according to his own formal confession,
voluntarily entered the Confederate service,
and acted for eighteen months as one of its
military officers. For this course of the new
Attorney General various excuses have been
made. We are told that he was against dis
union before the secession ordinances were
passed, for the Union as soon as its re-
establishment was placed beyond all doubt
or peradventure, and in the Rebel army only
while there was a plausible prospect of the
success of the Rebel cause. No skilful time
server could have regulated his movements
with greater precision. Mr.. Akerman's
skill in calculating the chances and in making
his principles conform to the varying for
tunes of the struggle can only be excelled by
the French politician who swore to maintain
forever a dozen constitutions in as many
months. When we are told that his reason
for voluntarily entering the Rebel army was
his desire to secure self f-protection and an
opportunity to remain in the State of
Georgia, from which he might otherwise have
been expelled, our admiration of his tactics
and character is immeasurably heightened.
In a time when every day was replete with mag
nifcent new illustrations of American heroism,
this wise lawyer sought personal safety in the
command of troops who were presumably
organized to fire upon his own Northern kin
dred. His love for his adopted State of
Georgia, where, according to the statement
of one of his friends, 'he lad accumulated q
competent estate" was so great that he felt
compelled to remain near the scene of his
property, even at the hazard of completely in
the slaughter of the friends, of his youth,
and with the certainty of casting his whole
moral, political, mental, and military in
huence against the Union cause!
Although mankind reveres the martyrs of
all great faiths, it has no right to demand
the martyrdom of any one; and it is quite
clear that if it demands steadfast adherence
to the right never so loudly, Mr.. Akerman
will not respond one instant longer than pru-
dence, founded on an impartial study of i'm
mediate emergencies, shall dictate. There is
none of the martyr-stuff in his composition
If his future is to be judged by his past, he
will always be found ready to attach his for
tunes to the winning side, and to cringe as
graciousiy to Grant to-day as he would have
cringed to JEFF. Davis seven years ago. In
the economy of nature such men may have
their uses, but if the nation places many citi-
zens of the Akerman stamp in its highest
official positions, no one should be surprised
if the Cabinet again becomes a hot-bed OF
treason.