The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-27

like Davis and Toombs, even though amnes-
tied, would be; and as some few hide-bouud
Democrats and nearly every Republican of
the North, except Gratz Brown and Carl
SchurE, prominent before and during the
war; are disqualified. Like mill-horses which
have been serviceable in one situation, they
do not know how to be otherwise serviceable
in another situation, and so when hitched to
a wagon, drag it about circle as if
straight road to journeys end were an uu-
principled or impossible thing. But Mr..
Stephens is capable to recognize a situation,
and to make the best of it when what he
would like better is not to be had. No man
fought for the Union more stanchly than he.
When Georgia seeded (for he believed in
her right to secede) he accepted the situation
and did his best in the constitution of the
Confederate States to fortify and guard every
one of the old Constitutions guarantees of
civil liberty. This, too, marked his work as
Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy.
He fought against military and executive en-
croschments of power as those here who never
ceased to wsge q like contention can scarcely
presume to appreciate; for here, whatever
Republican brawlers and frightened fanatics
may have said, our contention never him
de1ed, those encroachments never
helped, the victory of the North;
but the South was foredoomed, and
to deny her those unlawful weapons must
have seemed to many the denial of last
and only chance of life. We have not for
gotten his noble letter on martial law to the
Mayor of Atlanta (whom General Bragg had
appointed civil governor there), denouncing
the ''palpable usurpation;" we never eau
forget his speech to the Georgia Legislature
in 1864; his denunciation of the habeas cor
pus suspension act as unwise, impolitic, un-
constitutional, and dangerous to public
nrf, hs,, 1>o1l i II
sails for q dictatorship; his denial to President
Davis and to Congress of every power
not specifically conferred-and all this
when the Confederacy was in its mortal
struggle and when he himself was charged
with attempting counter-revolution. So too
when the Rebellion was crushed, who more
promptly or more manfully than he accepted
the duties of that new, changed, transformed
situation Pin his reply to Boutwell, before
the Reconstruction Committee saying, "The
sword was appealed to to decide the question,
and by the decision of the sword am willing
to abide'-and so like Lee pointing the
Southern people their true path, and saying,
Patience; patience"
But Mr.. Stephens not only lacks disqualifi-
cations, he has exceptional qualifications for
public usefulness We have limited one of
them. Not any true lover of civil liberty.
none at least SO capable as he can be spared
from the fight with the imperialists who are
steadily shaping our republic into an empire.
These men have entered upon what Carl
Schurz calls ''encroachments and usurpa-
tions; what Senator Trumbull calls ga revo-
luton in the form and structure of our Gov
ernment; what William G. Bryant calls "a
new rebellion by act of Congress-" These
Northern Rebels owe this Southern Rebel his
return match; and may the rebellion which
would Coesarize the Government get its coup
de grace like the Rebellion which would have
discovered the republic! Keener weapons.
brighter with use than those Mr.. Stephens
wields, no man will bring to the field where
more and what is of more consequence than
all we won at Appomattox will be the prize Of
victory. The Federal unity is worth all it
cost; but that soul of liberty is priceless,
which 1T was formed and constituted to
guard.
Concerning the three amendments Mr..
Stephens position, misrepresented by radical
journals, in fact is this. Amendment XIII,
abolishing slavery, he regards as valid part
of the organic law because ratified by the
constitutional constituencies of a sufficient
number of States, (though some had no share
in its proposal from Congress through volun-
tary absence). Amendments XIV and XIV
he, like all Democrats, regards as the Off
spring of gross usurpations of power passed
of which ten States of the Union were denied
a voice, and in the ratification of which they
were submitted to constituencies not en-
braced in their constitutions, unknown to the
Constitution of the United States, and carried
through under military despotism. But
MIR. Stephens goes further, and thinks them
invalid.
Whether his be the sounder legal opinion
or no, on the point of validity, he would
doubtless feel compelledsto defer to deci-
sion of the Supreme Court thereupon, which
as at present constituted would not fail to
affirm the same. But as to Amendment XIV
the difference is not great in practical point
of view, for Mr.. Stephens in an authorized
paper has declared his belief that negro suf-
frage ''does not belong to Federal politics in
any way, and his approval of qualified
negro suffrage. And as to the remaining
Amendment XIV, leaving out the part which
vote of Congress can extinguish, and re-
ferring to its prohibitions upon States, we
have no doubt whatever that Mr.. Stephens
concurs with the progressive Democrats of
the North in the wholesale denial of any the
ton law or the outrageous Ku-klux act
This practical concurrence of Mr.. Stephens
with the Democracy of the Northern States,
not to mention the Southern, though a con-
currence which is not unlimited by any means,
will increase the usefulness of his influence,
which, if exerted in opposition to their de-
cision to recognize the results of the war,
would for obvious reasons be less than
nothing.
PRESIDENTIAL.
From the N. Y Tribune.
Those who either hope or fear that this