New York, September 27, 1867. THE Republican party in this
State has held its Convention for the nomination of minor State officers, to be elected in November, and for the promulgation of its platform. A political platform in this country is a series of resolutions adopted in State or National Convention, held by each party, and embodying what in the judg- ment of the leaders of the party are good cries with which to go before the people on the approaching election. Fur no one ever heard of a party's needing a platform, unless there was soon to be a chance of losing or a chance of gaining offices. Well, the President of this Convention, on taking the chair, made a set speech chiefly devoted to the denunciation of President Johnson as an apostate,
degraded man, a usurper, and a contemner of the law, and (although he, the speaker, is a Senator of the United States, and therefore one of the bench before whom an impeached President is to be tried) a fit subject for impeachment. The leading Republican newspapers and politicians have declared war against President Johnson, and cry out continually that now he must be removed ; and day by day they assert that the corner-stone of the Republican party is impartial suffrage, without distinction of colour. Yet again I tell you that President Johnson will not be impeached ; nor will impartial suffrage be established without distinction of race (of which colour is a mere accident) ; and I will add that, not- withstanding the strong and repeated intimations of the Radical press that Mr. Johnson is planning an attempt to override Con- gress by force, there will be no civil war. The last of these pre- dictions I know will please all my readers, but that the two that precede it will be equally welcome I very much doubt. It is rather u propos of them, however, than in support of them, that I shall present here, at the risk of being charged with playing the part of Mr. Legality, some desultory views of our political situation quite different from those which have been recently laid before the readers of the Spectator.
The Spectator is not alone in speaking of the " submission " of the President to Congress at the close of its last regular session. But Mr. Johnson did not submit. The President of the United States cannot be called upon to submit to Congress. If he deems a proposed Act of Congress unconstitutional or unwise, it is not only his right, but his duty, to return the Bill to the House in which it originated with his objections; and such a returning has come to be called somewhat loosely a veto,—loosely, because the President has no authority to forbid the passage of a law. If the Bill is passed by the requisite majority it becomes a law, and he is obliged to execute it. And this is all that President Johnson has done. He has never pretended either to stay the execution of a law so passed, or to abandon his opposition to the policy of the majority by which it was passed over his head. He is not bound in any way to execute such laws by the hands of any particular agents, civil or military ; and however his power of appointment or removal may be limited, constitutionally or unconstitutionally, by Congress, his choice of agents among those who are under his command is entirely unfettered. He is yet at least the superior officer of his subordinates ; and Congress has by the Constitu- tion, and has yet assumed, no authority to command the execution of its laws by any particular Marshal or General. Whatever, therefore, may have been President Johnson's motives for transferring Generals Sheridan and Sickles from New Orleans and Charleston to other fields of duty, there is in his action in that respect no ground upon which even his bitterest enemy can pretend to rest a demand for his impeach- ment. Mr. Stanton's case is not materially different. And as regards this eminent and very able War Minister, the truth is that, the first flurry of his removal over, he has fallen almost unmourned. His administration of the War Department, vigorous as it was, seems to have left bim, whether justly or unjustly I do not pre- tend to say, almost without a friend. And it is said, by those who have opportunities of becoming well informed upon such sub- jects, that one reason for his remaining so long in the Cabinet of a President to whose course he was directly opposed, and of his refusal to quit his post when requested by the President to do so, was his reluctance to meet as a private person the consequences of
his official conduct. I myself know of one highly respectable lawyer who has only been waiting for Mr. Stanton to leave the Cabinet to commence three suits against him for grave personal torts committed in his official capacity, but in justification of which he cannot, of course, plead his office.
The supposition that the Liberals, as the Spectator calls them, the Radicals as they are called here,—neither name being very well applied,—" represent two-thirds of the people of the North " is far from being well founded. This faction includes, of course, none of the thorough-going Democrats, but it also includes none of the Free Soil, Free Trade Democrats, in whose strength only the Republican party triumphed. And it does not include even all the members of the Republican party itself, which is now a bare majority in the States, taken together, which are represented in Congress. Its ranks, too, are slowly but daily dwindling. Of the defeat of that party in California you have heard,—California, which was so enthusiastically loyal to the Government during the rebellion. Of the diminished Republican majorities in Maine you have also heard. A'defeat of the Republicans in the approaching election in Pennsylvania is apprehended by many who do not desire it, and although the success of the same party in Ohio is quite sure, a defeat by a large majority of the amendment to the State Constitution giving the right of suffrage to the negroes is looked for with equal confidence. The New York State Constitutional Convention, a body called into existence and controlled by the Republicans, after maundering from spring to autumn, has adjourned until after the November election, amid the derision of the people, and I would say their well deserved contempt, were it not that in this body were men whom I hold in very high respect, both for ability and character, and for whose election as well as for the Convention itself I voted and laboured. The real reason of this adjournment is well known to have been that the result of the approaching election is so very doubtful, that the Republican leaders dare not go before the people at the same time with a constitution which contains a section giving the suffrage to negroes. And why should California, which almost supported the Sanitary Commission during the war, turn upon the Repub- lican party ? California has very few negroes, not enough to make their position of the slightest moment. But it has Chinese,- 50,000 of them; and therefore it will not hear of impartial suffrage without distinction of race. It will vote, and even fight, against their enslavement ; will pay them well for their labour, and pro- tect them in all personal rights, but it will not take them in as an integral part of the body politic. The objection to the Chinese and to the aboriginal Indian in this regard is quite as strong as to the negro.
Whether " the first summons of Congress would set half a million of trained soldiers in full march for Washington," I shall not venture to say. In some cases it would, in others it would not ; and any confident reckoning upon such enthusiastic military support would be very unwise. It is very difficult to surmise what, short of such an attempt upon Congress as will not be made, would excite the military ardour of the people. But you may dismiss from your number of possible events the sudden reassem- bling of Congress, and a resolution to make the session permanent until a new President has been installed. Congress finally adjourned in July ; and in the absence of any special law, its time of reassembling is fixed by the Constitution on the first Monday in December, before which time the authority of convening it is, in the same manner, vested in the President himself. And to return to the soldiers, I have been surprised during the past year to find how large a number of the trained soldiers that I meet and hear of, men who fought intelligently and determinedly all through the war, are not only opposed to the Radical policy, but dislike the Radicals as a body, and would prefer seeing their old opponents in the field have their full share of political power, to seeing the country ruled by Radicals and Negroes. This feeling seems to influence a large proportion of our late Army mach more than it does the President. He was nominated Vice-President not as an empty compliment to one of the few loyal Southern men, but because of his earnestness and his sacrifices in the cause of the Union, and his vigorous adminis- tration as Military Governor of Tennessee. He to this day, I be- lieve, thinks, as he once said, that treason should be made odious, and would, on the one hand, punish, and, on the other, govern ac- carding to the Constitution and the laws, those whom the Radicals would at once pardon and place without the pale of the Consti- tution.
That General Grant (who, by the way, has a very small chance of nomination to the Presidency by the Radicals, by whom he will be taken only if they must) and Mr. Johnson represent, the former the flexible, pliable element, and the latter the resisting, dragging element of the Constitution, or that the Constitution has or was intended to have those elements, is not so clear on this side of the water as upon the other. The Constitution of the United States is neither a progressive nor a retrogressive instrument or institution. It is adapted equally to a progressive, a stationary, or a retrogressive mood of the public mind. It is simply an organic law, supreme over President, Congress, and people on all points on which the national Government has any authority whatever; and it is either that, or it is nothing at all. If it is not absolute, it had better be burned by Mr. Wendell Phillips to-morrow. As to the President's position under it in relation to the people, he comes more directly from them than one of the Houses of Congress does. He is elected for four years and the Senators are elected for six, and not by the people, but by the State Legislatures. It was not only intended that he should be independent of Congress and a check upon it ; but, unless I greatly err, his position in this respect is really regarded by the people as one of the greatest safeguards of their best interests, and of the perpetuity of their Government. Do not look for a time, in this generation at least, when the President "will be removable at the pleasureof Congress." You could not indulge in a wilder vision. To have the Executive, the individualwho administersthelaws and who appoints its °Sam, removable by the body which makes the laws ! The one appa- rently immutable feature in the organization of our Government, and the one which is most deeply rooted in the convictions of this people, is the absolute independence of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the Government, neither of which can limit, extend, or modify the functions of the other, while each checks or operates upon the other two. When that principle is abandoned, then, indeed, chaos will have come again.
To return from the abstract to the concrete. Congress will not meet until December, and when it does meet, Mr. Johnson will be very roughly treated in very furious speeches. Congress will go on passing "those damned unconstitutional laws," which Mr. Johnson, at his discretion, will veto without mitigation or remorse, and which will probably all be passed over his head by a two- thirds vote, and will then be executed by the President until they are pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, he choos- ing the officers by whom they are to be executed. He will worry through his term, will not be the candidate of either party (and he knows it) for re-election. General Grant will act as balance- wheel to our political machine for a while, and may possibly be our next President. But that is extremely doubtful, and so, in
fact., is the very issue of the election. A YANKEE.
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