The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-09-02
GENERAL IMBoDnN's LETTER.

The Wing Of this morning publishes
hard into three.column letter solid from
General Imboden, in defence Of Mr.. Gree
ley and in damaging accusation against the
carpet-bag government of Virginia. The
writer says that but for Mr.. Greeley that
he believes that Virginia would to day be
in the terrible condition of South Carolina"
1t is this charge, or rather belief of Ger
eral Imboden, which.we propose to subject
to The clucible test" of something
besides mere partisan investigaton-to
the truth of history, if the General pleases
that our readers may see whether what
the writer more wittily than elegantly calls
"tho Underwood black and tam conven-
ton, = is chiefly responsible for the evils of
which he complains.
General Imboden will hardly deny the
fact that had the people of Virginia &C.
cepted the conditions of the fourteenth
amendment in good faith, at the time they
were imposed by three-fourths ratification
vste of the States, there would never have
been any occasionto complain Of carpet
bag rule in Virginia, nor would the " black
aud tan convention of which he sneering-
ing speaks been anything like necessity
in Virginia politics. The reconstruction
that might have followed would have been
in the hands of Virgmians, and General I'M
boden might have made a conspicuous mark
for himself, had he advocated some of the
features in the "new constitution" in a
convention controlled by the Virginia Con-
scrvatives.
But unfortunately for the General and
those who might have labored 80 conspicp7
ously and honorably with him, he and the
Conservatives of Virginia generally, insti-
gated thereto By Andrew johnson, If not by
Mr.. Greeley himself, who was at that time
the confidential adviser Of the Johnson adj
ministration, contemptaously spit upon the
provisions of the fourteenth amendment,
which act alone made carpet-bagism possi-
BILE in Virginia. 1t was this defiant
attitude of Virginians and the relent-
less hostility it implied, which brought
nonresident ofice-holders into the
State as mater Of absolute necessity,
ii it did not render more stringent
measures than would otherwise have been
taken, matter of equal necessity. No
other course in fact was left, to maintain
government in The State. AL would have
gone into political chaos and confusion
without it. And this necessity was forced
upon Congress and the Administration by
the action of General Imboden and his
compeers in the Conservative party. They
knew the inevitable consequences, and well
coined them by their own acts, and we
submit whetherit is either just or dignifled
to complain of them at this late date.
But General Imboden complains that the
constitution which came from "the imacu-
lateIlands" of the convention Of 1859,
contained DISTINGUISHING clauses of "unsur-
passed ingenuity and deyil-inspired skill, to
accomplish the utter ruin Of the State.'
But whose immaculate hands" were re-
sponsible for the appearance of those
provisions in the constitution Surely
the proceedings Of that convention
are not so entirely remote in
historic recollection and date as to have
escaped The sharp observation of the Gen
clal, as he marshals his facts in defence of
Greeley and against what he is pleased to
call the " carpet-bag government" of Vir-