Knoxville weekly chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1875, 1872-09-25

1
nounces A. j. every day, it is well enough
to know what it meant month ago. was
Il sincere then? Is it sincere to-day |
Have any new facts relative to Mr.. John-
sons public career been developed in q |
fortnight? Or is his crime merely that OIL
having become an independent candidate, |
instead of the candidate of a packed con-
yention? AS the case now stands, the Ap- |
oeaps evidence is impeached, 1t having
testified 10 not only Mr. Johnson's guilt
but to his innocence.
DID ANDY JOHNSON ENCOURAGE sECEs. |
SION?
The Memphis Appeal in leading edi-
torial raises n question in the triangular
Congressional contest that is of interest to
East Tennesseeans. Heretofore, the OBJ
lection urged against ex-President John
son was his alleged desertion of his South
ern friends.n This charges also, that he
encouraged secession in supporting Breck-
inridge, until he found he could not lead,
when he changed. Here is what the Ap-
peal says:
It would be as appropriate to accuse Ar
mold of loyalty, after he had apostatised for
price from the Continental cause, as to
charge Johnson with "Unlonlsm." III
there be, in this Commonwealth, one class
of citizens who, more than another, should
oppose his return to political power, it is
the body of honest Unionionists who de-
veloped their strength at the bal
lot-box in 1860 in voting for John Bell
and Stephen A. Douglass, There is
no man in the South who did more
Tennessee up to the doctrines of secession
| than Andrew Johnson. There is no man
whose political teachings, political associ-
| atoms and conduct, up to certain time,
more encouraged the policy of secession
than did Andrew Johnson. An examine
| ton of the history of parties i'll Tennessee
and the nation will show him associated,
| in action and utterance, with those now
| designated as secession leaders, up to the
| time when he found that it would pay
| him better to go back on his record than
| to pursue it consistently. When he made
this change and engaged in this betrayal of
his post, actuated precisely by the same
motives that induced the mercenary bands
of the middle ages to change sides in the
midst of the battle, it was too late to with
draw the people from the strait, whittier
they had followed his teachings. Even in
the last Presidential contest that preceded
the war, he refused to take sides either
with Union Wings or Union Democrats
either to vote for Bell or Douglass. But
on the contrary he voted for and advocat-
ed the election of Breckenridge, whose
candidacy was the assertion of the right of
secession and q well understood me-
mace of its exercise in the event
of the election of Mr.. Lincoln. None
can deny that the circumstances OF
this candidacy in the very nature of things
was an agitation of the extreme views OF
the STAKEHOLDER as to the legal status of his
slave property in the Union. These ex-
IRENE views were necessarily, and in the
South avowedly, accompanied with seces'
sion as the proper policy to pursue for the
protection of their property in the slave
States, in the event of the success in tha
canvass of the Republican party. Andrew
johnson was one of the chiefest OF thes'
agitators for the extension of slavery, anC
| fiery zealot for the triumph of that pc
litical organization that held within al
this combustible material. After the traiI
| had been laid, in the laying of which h,
had eminently and consciously assisted
and after it had been fired, in the firing o
which he had assisted also, when it hat
: nearly reached the magazine, and wheI
it was too late to prevent the fatal result
he claims to have warned the people no
) to explode the magazine. His motives 10
this late and tardy warning are wei
known. These were purely selfish, anC
:, simply because he discovered that III
r could not play as leading role in tn,
f Confederate movement, as he desired
Z, He became, then, not Unionist, bu
an apostate adversary of his people, jus
e as Arnold did not, in fact, become, on hi
!, desertion of the patriotic forces, a Loyalis
: or Tory, but simply the enemies OF IN
Q colonies. If he had been moved in hi
y conduct after the commencement of tn
e war, by the sentiments of honest Union
= ism he would as Southernor have either
P like Judge Nelson, retired from public life
! unable to 90 with his people in opinion
g and unwilling to aid in their destruction
: or, like Emerson Ethridge, endeavored t
a shield them from the utmost rigors OF war
s and to conserve in the bloody struggle con
e stitutional liberty. Grattan, in the lrlsl
8 rebellion of 1913, pursued the course OF Mel
/ son, Curran that of Etheridge, and An
n drew Johnson did neither, but on tn
g contrary, like Alp, the renegade, mani
e tested q special ferocity toward the peopl
3, of his section. Whatever of weakness Il
= craftsmanship, whatever of crime attache
It to the ante-bellum leaders of secession, h
!. participated in, his note of counter In
d struction was sounded too late to avert tn
is catastrophe, and under circumstances to
l. suspicious to bring him the poor credit {
re even q deathbed repentance. If BreckiT
D ridge, who had always been a more moderat
n man than Johnson, had drawn his swor
10 on the South, or had aided in her oveI
re throw, all would instinctively have erie
q out "For shameW Johnson was as niue
rs committed to the South as Breckinridg'
n and far more responsible for the wa
g Ought he not to be under as deep sham
d as Breckinrige would have been If he ma
er failed to redeem his honor? Is 1t not b
ce cause of Johnson's Unionism that he is OF
n ,,nga1 for of tlic he naUar i'm fact had an