Year: 1868

grounds of Impeachment, cannot be safely
regarded as affordipg any clear indication OF
the result Nor should the repuguance to
extreme measures manifested by .so-called
moderates of the Republican party, such as
Fessenden, Anthony, Trumbull and few
others in Congress. and Raymond, Weed and
others out Of Congress, be accepted as
symptom that less violent and desperate
counsels are likely to prevail in the real
leadership and final policy of the party.
From the beginning of the new political era
which opened about three years ago, the Re-
publican party has been essentially party
of agitation, movement change. In short,
the end of the sectional contest compelled
this party to be revolutionary, or nothing.
The supremacy of the federal government
over both the South and the North being no
longer in dispute, the partisan organization
called Republican could plead no reason for
existence without going beyond the existing
conditions and institutions of the federal
government In other words, it must either
dissolve itself or undertake to dissolve this
government and reconstitute il on a new
basis. Hence the radical extremists naturally
supplied the inspiration and leadership of the
party in its new line of development and desti-
nation.


A mere glance at the history Of the recon-
struction question and the impeachment
question will show how invariably the radical
front has dragged to its own position respect
ing these questions the conservative rear.
No general ever succeeded in bringing up lag
CARDS and towards to the brunt of action as
Phillips and Sumner, Stevens and Wade have
succeeded in causing the hesitating and re-
luctant portion of their purity to support
finally the measures which its extreme section
insisted on taking. The idea of reconstruc-
ton based ON negro Supremacy seemed to the
mass of the Republicans, when it was
first broached, scarcely less revolving, absurd
and inadmissible than it seemed to all other
people Nevertheless, this idea has become
one of the leading features of Republican
policy, and the mass of Republicans esteem
the unconditional and determined adhesion
to it one of the tests of partisan loyalty. The
progress of the idea of impeachment has
been marked by like contrast between the
first impression and the ultimate conclusion.
When, about two years ago, Stevens, inS4
speech in Congress, limited at impeachment,
and when Phillips, in one of his political lee
lures, spoke of the President as San obstacle
that must be removed" hardly public man
in the country, except Mr.. Johnson, appeared
to think that there was in the threat any se-
rious significance or any formidable portent.
1t was generally regarded as, in Stevens,
a mere splutter of impotent malignity, and as,
ON the part of Phillips, the wild dream of an
impracticable reyolutionist. But time has
proved these men to be prophets as well as
dictators to this party. Time has also re-
vealed this very curious feature in the quarrel
between this party and the President, that the
fact of his having penetrated and denounced
the design of the Republican leaders to
get rid of him, either by crushing out his ex-
ecutive power or by deposing him from Of
fee, is arrayed as the chief political crime
with which he is now charged by the congress
sional representatives of the party in their ar
ticles of impeachment


This retrospect is enough to expose the de-
ceptive nature of moderate appearances on
the part of so-called conservative Repub-
licans. Senator Fessenden does not disguise
his opinion that Sumner, in politics and Iegis-
lation, is something worse than an idiot, and
Senator Anthony makes it clear from what he
writes in his paper, at Providence, r. L,
that he considers Stevens to be, as a Repub-
lican and as Congressman, bad old man and
dangerous precipitator. Yet, in the long
run, the protests of such Republicans against
the radical enormities proposed by the worse
than idiotic Sumner, and by the dangerously
precipitous Stevens, prove unmeaning and
barren; and, along with the Republican or
ganization in general, they at length embrace
the propositions of those extremists, with
servility if not with rapture The sort of
historical fatality with which this process has
been again and again repeated heretofore, is
pregnant with suggestion as to the future.
The rearward section of the Republican
party has come into line at the critical mo-
ment with its advanced section, simply be-
cause this was an act of party necessity. The
Republican party could not exist on any other
condition. 1t was impelled by the instinct of
self-preseryation to quarrel with President
johnson. 1t would have quarreled with Mr.


Lincoln, or with any other man, if being Pres
| ident in form, he should have dared to be


President in fact. Its real quarrel has


been with the presidency, with the govern


ment as created by the Constitu-


ton. For it was fated either to go on


to extremity as party of revolution, or to


cease to exist. This fate is now visibly upon


it. Whether the President is to be deposed


by impeachment depends upon whether that


event shall come to be recognized by the


moderates, as well as by the extremists of the
party, as matter of paramount party expe-


diency. Nor can it be supposed that the


same men who shall have virtually DESTROYED


the constitutional presidency to preserve the
existence and the ascendancy of the Repub-
lican party, will hesitate to suppress the con-
stitutional expression of the popular will in
| the presidential election. if no other exna-