A large delegation of about sixty gentlemen, representing nine of
the Southern States, called on President Johnson on the 11th September to express their respect and regard for him, their de- termination to co-operate with him iu promoting the welfare of the country, and their sincerity in acquiescing heartily in the ac- complished fact of the failure of secession. Mr. Johnson made a speech of some feeling, in which, while throwing the whole blame freely on the South, he expressed his desire and intention to trust them with the making of their own future, his dislike to a cen- tralizing policy, and his attachment to State rights. When Mr. Johnson expressed his belief that the South would now acquiesce in the extinction of slavery, the deputation very strongly signified its assent, but of coarse nothing was said as to the civil rights of the freedmen. " I know," said the President, " that I am of the Southern people, and I love them, and will do all in my power to restore them to that state of happiness and prosperity which they e :j4pd before the madness of misguided men led them astray, to their own undoing." Not, we hope, precisely " that prosperity," but same other and better, if Mr. Johnson really loves the whole Southern people, and not merely the Southern whites. His recon- struction is going on too rapidly out of the old rotten materials of the former buildings.
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