We have also news by the same mail which gives
us a clear indication of the President's intentions as to reconstruction, by the policy which he is pursuing in North Carolina. Mr. Holden, who has always been a strenuous antagonist of the Confederate Government, though he, inter alios, signed the ordinance of secession for North Carolina after using his utmost efforts to prevent it, has been appointed by Mr. Johnson "provisional Governor" of that State,—appointed clearly without even the form of election. The President has authorized him to call a reconstructive Convention, "the delegates to which are to be chosen by loyal persons only." The Convention will put the civil machinery in motion, and "is empowered to decide the qualifications of the electors and the eligibility of any person to hold State offices, or it may pass the question for decision to the State Legislature meeting under the new arrangements." How all these Federal dispositions of State affairs are to be legally justified without "the war-power,"—and how the war-power can be asserted to exist after the surrender of every Confederate army even on the other side of the Mississippi,
does not appear, for the Constitution certainly did not contemplate such an emergency. But probably Mr. Johnson cares less about the legal justification than did Mr. Lincoln.
