e from power
that radical party who are daily trampling under foot the Constitution,
and fast converting a constitutional Republic into a consolidated
despotism." The terms to which South Carolina is asked to submit, before
she can be made the equal of Ohio or New York in the Union, are stated
to be "too degrading and humiliating to be entertained by a freeman for
a single instant." When we consider that this "radical party"
constitutes nearly four fifths of the legal legislature of the nation,
that it was the party which saved the country from dismemberment while
Mr. Orr and his friends were notoriously engaged in "trampling the
Constitution under foot," and that the man who denounces it owes his
forfeited life to its clemency, the astounding insolence of the
impeachment touches the sublime. Here is confessed treason inveighing
against tried loyalty, in the name of the Constitution it has violated
and the law it has broken! But why does Mr. Orr think the terms of South
Carolina's restored relations to the Union "too degrading and
humiliating to be entertained by a freeman for a single instant"? Is it
because he wishes to have the Rebel debt paid? Is it because he desires
to have the Federal debt repudiated? Is it because he thinks it
intolerable that a negro should have civil rights? Is it because he
resents the idea that breakers of oaths, like himself, should be
disqualified from having another opportunity of forswearing themselves?
Is it because he considers that a white Rebel freeman of South Carolina
has a natural right to exercise double the political power of a white
loyal freeman of Massachusetts? He must return an affirmative answer to
all these questions in order to make it out that his State will be
degraded and humiliated by ratifying the amendment; and the necessity of
the measure is therefore proved by the motives known to prompt the
attacks of its vilifiers.

The insolence of Mr. Orr is not merely individual, but representative.
It is the result of Mr. Johnson's attempt "to produce harmony between
the two sections," by betraying the section to which he owed his
election. Had it not been for his treachery, there would have been
little difficulty in settling the terms of peace, so as to avoid all
causes for future war; but, from the time he quarrelled with Congress,
he has been the great stirrer-up of disaffection at the South, and the
virtual leader of the Southern reactionary party. Every man at the Sout