New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-06-28
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IN

ALABAMA.
Gen. George L. Spencer was an Iowa law
yer and politician when the tide of patriotism
carried him into the war with staff commits
sion, in 1862. Andrew Johnson, in the pursuit
Of his policy of reconstruction, appointed him
q Register in Bankruptcy for the Fourth Dis
trict of Alabama, and in 1868 he became one
of the carpet-bag Senators who are reckoned
among the choicest boons conferred by the
generous North upon its conqu cred and peni-
tent sister States. That the people of Ala
bama, if they could have freely expressed
their preferences would have chosen this
young military lawyer from the North West
to represent them in the Senate of the United
States, not even Mr.. Spencer himself, in his
most complacent hours can possibly have
supposed. GOvernOrships, COllectOrships, Regis
terships, seats in the Senate, were the przes
of conquest, that fell by right to the disbanded
army, and the Southern people were to be
treated as idiots and children, who must be
taken care of by their betters. And Mr.,
Spencer was not so much to blame
for his theory. The Reconstruction and
Disfrancbisement laws had all been framed
under similar principles. The educated and
experienced men of the South had been care
fully excluded from places of trust; and even
to this day the particular friends of the Re-
publican President are unwilling, by a full act
of amnesty, to restore genuine representative
government to the reconstructed States. IL
Mr.. Spencer, therefore, having no special
knowledge of Alabama, no sympathes with
her people, and no acquaintance with her
wants, presumed by species of election pretty
well understood, to choose himself Senator
from that State, he did no more than Congress
had told him he ought to do; and if he repre-
sents at Washington nobody's interests but his
own, and speaks for no constituency but the
Federal office holders, he is no worse than a
good many of his associates at the Capitol.
Having got his seat in pay for past or
prospective services to the party in power 1T
was natural that he should look upon the gen.
eral administration of government in Alabama
as a sort of personal property, to be distrib-
uted without regard to the wishes of the gov
erned, but solely as the spoils of conquest or
the consideration for personal fealty. He
made a bargain with President Grant. The
exact terms of the arrangement have not been
disclosed, but we are left in no doubt as to its
general character. In the letter which we
published yesterday he speaks of it as a
" compact" and complains that, while he
Loyalty stood by his obligations, he had not
received from the White House the full con-
sideratOn TO which he deemed himself en-
titled. ." / performed each and every specific
" act of our compact in honor and good faith.
F." Recently, at Montgomery addressed
" a large assemblage of Republicans openly
" advocating your denomination, and applaud
" ing, indorsing, and defending the acts Of
+" your administration" There ought to have
been a pretty high consideration for an in
dorsement TO such a heavy amount as that,
and the bargain seems TO have been that Mr..
Spencer should have The distribution OF Fed
erai Offices all over tho STATE But the Presi-