Litchfield enquirer., 1876-01-20
Amnesty.

Congress was & scene of great excite ment, Last week. A bill of general amnes- ty having been offered by the Denocrass, Mr. Blaine moved an amendment except ing Jefferson Davis from that amnesty on the ground that the cruelties practiced at Southern prisons with his knowledge proved him unworthy of the clemency it was proper to extend to other persons inn plieated in the late rebellion. MT. Hill, of Georgia, responded with @ justification of Davis and bitter attack on the North for its treatment of Southern prisoners. ] Messrs. Cox, Randall, Garfield, Banks and others participated in the debate and, af- ter a week of bitter crimination and re- crimination, and much parliamentary scuf- fling. the bill and all substitutes therefor were rejected. ,-..
 Whatever may be the political effect of such 6 controversy, there can be no doubt that on the public st large it can only work injury. .g There IS strong, and, we think. just feeling among moderate Republicans that Mr. Blaine has raised an unnecessary issue and set the example of unnecessary bitterness in it's discussion. It may have been good political move to set the National House afire in order to . make his own or his party's pot boil, but it is not statesmanship. There is 6 general feeling that Mr. Blaine's political style is -uhsuited to the Centennial year and the peculiar needs of tue country in that year. He may have convinced the world that Sam Cox is blackguard and Ben Hill an unrepentant rebel. but is he really repre- senting the Republican party when he i kills a measure which the last Republican House considered eminently proper, rather than fOrego last kick at the corpse of poor, old Jefferson Davis ? Unless we greatly mistake the feeling of our party. MT. Blaine grievously misrepresents it in this regard. We do not undertake to say what the feeling of that party may become if sufficiently around by such appeals as those of Mir. Blame and such attacks as those of Mir. Hill, but. week since, no body thought of Jefferson Davis or of An dersonville. except as things of the dead past. We all felt that VIC were just enter ing on the second century of the Repub- lie and that the passions and preiudices of it's first century should be allowed to pass into oblivion.
 We do not accuse Mr. Blaine of con- sciOusly acting from selfish or partisan motives. He undoubtedly does what he considers for the best good of his country as well as of his party. He believes that the nation is still in imminent danger f.om Southern dlsloyalty, that the North has grown lethargic, and that it needs to be aroused to that danger. It is an unpleas, ant sight, that of @ national House of Representatives full of late Confederates, nov sitting at Washington to legislate for country they were so, lately trying to dismember, which we who live at dis. tance cannot be expected to dislike as keenly ss do Mir. Blaine and the other old leaders of Chat House, now in minority. He sees and naturally wishes the country to see how bitter the reconstructed South erner still is against the party that saved the nation from dismemberment at his hands. Natural, therefore, as we concede that MT. Blaine's views and feelings are, they seem, nevertheless, the narrow views and excited impulses of the enterprising soldier on the skirmish line, rather than the broad conceptions of the competent leader whose cool tactics can be relied on to win the battle. Still less do they dis close the insight and patriotism of the statesman who contends, not for single victories, but for lasting and benifcent results.
 Our objection to Mir. Blaine's recent maneuvers is, that, seeing the necessity of a choice of evils he chooses the greater. Just now it is more important that the South should be honestly than that it should be Loyalty governed. Such has not always been the case. There have been times when loyalty was the firstrequi- site: honesty. the second. Now, however, if we understand the feeling of the coun- try, it is this: Southern state governments reconstructed in the interests of loyalty have proved dishonest, not merely to disreputable but to a disastrous extent It is better for the South and for the whole country that the Southern State governments should be entrusted to hon. esty and intelligence, even though un- friendly to the negro and the party that enfrAnchised the negro. than to loyalty and ignorance that have proved utterly incompetent to the task of local govern ment. But if the old Confederate IS en- trusted with the government of states, he must also be given his fair influence in the government of the nation, and it seems both unfair and iniudicious to meet his return to his place in the national councils with taunts of his old dlsloyalty, before he has had time to earn a new and a better reputation.
 We think there is also feeling in the country that while it is better that the property and intelligence of the South should control its local governments it is also best that the party which carried through the war should still administer the national government. It is evident to any one examining recent election returns that. if.there is Democratic majority in the next Congress, much more than half that majority must come from the South ern States. Thus the controlling influence in the dominant party would substantially belong to the men who fought for the late Confedsracy, and we cannot but be- lieye that such 6 Congress would be le- garded with distrust and disfavor by that great majority of the nation through whose efforts the war was pushed to 8 favorable issue and the Union restored.