Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1872-09-18
Eaoater-. ". Z.
JOHNSON AS A PARDON-BROKER.

Tor ktouIerJ. H. ELDhLDGE
JOHNSON AS a PARDON-BROKER.
For thirty years, f. c. Huntington
Of Columbia, Tennessee, has supported
Andrew johnson. He found him an
ex-alderman, an ex-member of the
Tennessee Legislature, an ex-member o.
Congress, and helped him in be-
coming an Ex-Governor of Tennessee
andan ex-United States Senator. In ad-
dition TO these "exes," Andrew Johnson
is ex-Military Governor Of Tennessee.
ex-Vice-President and ex-President OF
the United States, and now, because
Mr., Huntington will not aid in giving
a political gourmand An opportunity o.
becoming an ex-Member of Congress
for the State at Large, he is traduced by
Mr.. johnson. FOR thirty years Nj.
Johnson has been learning Frank Dun
nington The necessity of supporting the
regular party nominee, and now, be
cause he cannot and viii not
abandon those principles Of party
duty which johnson himself has
woven into every fibre and ligament oi
his nature, he is abused and ridiculed by
the creature Of the convention system
johnson thinks it mOnstrous that he
should be opposed by Huntington, who
Is the recipient OF one 0 fthose worthless
psrdOns which were peddled out by the
President # the United States 70 the
people OF the south. One IF the editors
Of lli- paper IS the happy posstssor Of
one # .he~a piljou9. ii est about two
hundred dollars, borrowed money, and
was never worth as much as a pod Of
r~ea-uepper. 1t was given to provide for
just such al emergency as the present.
Governor Harris, with proud and lordly
disdain, scoTned any pardon which
Andrew johnson could mereifully grant
He was a. free from Johnson's wrath as
were the dupes who rushed o.
Washington and hammered day
after day 1T the door of the White House
for pardons. Johnson's attack on F. {.
Dunnington shows that he set up the
pardoning business, not for the purpose
of really ~benefiting those who had come
under his own condemnation, but il
order TO place men under obligations
in his future aspirations. The his
torian viii gibbet in language of wither-
ing rebuke, everything connected with
this pardoning business. Posterity will
execrate the man who repudiated Grant
and Sherman's terms of surrender, and
originated charges of crime which the
President of the United States could
wash out by the pardoning power. The
war while it ragged was a grand tragedy;
but the p~ardOning business was a redicu-
lOus farce, a shabby afterpiece, in which
Andrew johnson played the harlequin
and his victims the fools. There was nc
necessity for the charges which
were atoned for by the par
dons that were dispensed with as
much grace and pomposity as if
they gave the recipient a passport to
heaven. To see the talent, learning and
wealth Of the South hanging around the
Executive Mansion, like patients before
the door Of a lazar-hOuse, was indeed a
humiliating spectacle. The applicants
hung their heads in shame, and johnson
laughed in his sleeve. AS many as a
thousand "penitents were often seen
lounging around the White House at
time, asking for pardOns, and when
they saw a fresh hack-load coming, they
felt that inward joy which smallpox pa
tients are said 70 feel when they hear
a new CARLOAD dumped out into thei
hospital yard. Doling out Executive
clemency in broken doses, conducting al
4" strictly retail business" in mercy, in
stead Of adding dignity and grandeur
to the pardoning power by general am
nesty 50 soon "a the war closed, was the
cardinal error Of Andrew johnson. The
terms which he exacted were mean.
niggardly and parsimonious. He
made degrading conditions, in order
to bring all the talent and wealth of the
South to his support. At an average
cost of about two hundred dollars each.
thousands of men rushed to Washing
ton 10 secure their ~pardOns, which, after
given them printed on gilt-edge paper
al befrilled with ribbons and stamped
with great seals, were o worth the dir
y rags out Of which the paper was
made. Il was a shameful spectacle to
see the scramble around the White
House for the Presidents pardon. and
it was still more shameful to see
the President of a great people
weighing out leniency by the
grain, hesitating and haggling over
pardon, in order that the obliga-
ton be made the greater. This policy, :
suggested by that same spirit of low
demagOguery which would now, for the
selfish motive, exhume the dead
of secession, was far more bene-
fetal to the greedy-f flock Of pardon-brok
ems than to the fame Of the ambitious
creature who inaugurated it. Mr.. John {
son, in making the necessity for par
dons, was aetuated by that laudable and E
unselfish ambition which prompts the {
farmer TO salt his stock once a week IN |
order that they may come up when
hey are needed. The people of the 9
south can never forget that while '
Mr.. johnson was doing out pardons q
o make friends in the South he I
vas loading Jefferson Davis down e
With chains, permitting him 10 be bad 1
and prosecuted bya Judicial ruff
ian whose name was a stencil in the
of all honorable men, IN order d
hat he might at the same time appease '
he North. The inhuman treatment of n
iE. Davis when a prisoner at Fortress o
donroe, and the utter want of magma g
Unity in the policy Of the Government :,
re dark and ugly spots upon the fame N
# Mr.. johnson, and instead of haunting fr
{ {. Huntington with having given N
i'm a worthless pardon, he should seek "
0 obliterate the shameful fact that he y
required Of a Southern man the So
and humiliation of asking a n'
of
CRATE BROWN. NJ
No candidate for the highest Office in IT
he country ever made such speeches. IN
o faultless in expression and wise in 80
conception as those delivered recently n,
" Nh. Greeley. In fact Mr. Graala,,js a.