d by
plausibilities and respectabilities; for when, in political contests,
any great villany is contemplated, there are always found some eminently
respectable men, with a fixed capital of certain eminently conservative
phrases, innocently ready to furnish the wolves of politics with
abundant supplies of sheep's clothing. These dignified dupes are more
than usually active at the present time; and the gravity of their speech
is as edifying as its emptiness. Immersed in words, and with no clear
perception of things, they mistake conspiracy for conservatism. Their
pet horror is the term "radical"; their ideal of heroic patriotism, the
spectacle of a great nation which allows itself to be ruined with
decorum, and dies rather than commit the slightest breach of
constitutional etiquette. This insensibility to facts and blindness to
the tendency of events, they call wisdom and moderation. Behind these
political dummies are the real forces of the Johnson party, men of
insolent spirit, resolute will, embittered temper, and unscrupulous
purpose, who clearly know what they are after, and will hesitate at no
"informality" in the attempt to obtain it. To give these persons
political power will be to surrender the results of the war, by placing
the government practically in the hands of those against whom the war
was waged. No smooth words about "the equality of the States," "the
necessity of conciliation," "the wickedness of sectional conflicts,"
will alter the fact, that, in refusing to support Congress, the people
would set a reward on treachery and place a bounty on treason. "The
South," says a Mr. Hill of Georgia, in a letter favoring the
Philadelphia Convention, "sought to save the Constitution out of the
Union. She failed. Let her now bring her diminished and shattered, but
united and earnest counsels and energies to save the Constitution in the
Union." The sort of Constitution the South sought to save by warring
against the government is the Constitution which she now proposes to
save by administering it! Is this the tone of pardoned and penitent
treason? Is this the spirit to build up a "National Union Party"? No;
but it is the tone and spirit now fashionable in the defeated Rebel
States, and will not be changed until the autumn elections shall have
proved that they have as little to expect from the next Congress as from
the present, and that they must give securities for their future conduct
before they can be relieved from