Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

every day with a violent dissolution of its political institutions, to be too quickly followed by domestic anarchy, and afterwards by imperial, and possibly foreign despotism! Would to God that the patriots of Mexico had never, in the midst of her civil commotions, taken to themselves the comfort of indifference and repose! But all is now changed. The civil war is ended. Death has removed his victims; liberty has crowned her heroes, and humanity has canonized her martyrs; the sick and the stricken are cured; the surviving combatants are fraternizing; and the country - the object of our just pride and lawful affection - once more stands collected and composed, firmer, stronger, and more majestic than ever before, without one cause of dangerous discontent at home, and without an enemy in the world. Why should we not felicitate each other on this change, and upon the new prospects which open before us?

These prospects, however, cover a broad field. I could not rightly tax your kindness so much as to survey the whole of it; and even if I were willing, you would kindly remember that at the present moment my power of speech is abridged.1 Only magnanimous themes are worthy of your intellectual understanding, or compatible with the feelings which have moved this interview.

[ocr errors]

We have lost the great and good Abraham Lincoln. He had reached a stage of moral consideration when his name alone, if encircled with a martyr's wreath, would be more useful to humanity than his personal efforts could be beneficial to any one country as her chosen chief magistrate. He is now associated with Washington. The two American chiefs, though they are dead, still live, and they are leading the entire human race in a more spirited progress toward fields of broader liberty and higher civilization.

In the place of Abraham Lincoln we have a new President. To most of you he is personally unknown. The people around me, with their customary thoughtfulness, are inquiring of those who are nearer to him than themselves what manner of man Andrew Johnson is, and what manner of President he may be expected to be. When, in 1861, treason, laying aside, for the moment, the already obnoxious mask of slavery, and investing itself with the always attractive and honored robes of democratic freedom, flashed its lurid light through the Senate chamber, and announced, as already completed, a dissolution of the Union, then a leader, who should be at

1 By the wounds of the assassin.

1

first a senatorial and afterward a popular leader, was required, to awaken sleeping loyalty and patriotism throughout the land, to rouse its unconscious hosts and to inspire them with the resolution needed to rescue the Constitution, suppress the rebellion, and preserve the integrity of the Republic. To me reason seemed to suggest, in this case, as a necessity resulting from circumstances, that that leader, while he should be a capable, inflexible, and devoted patriot, should also be a citizen of a hesitating border state - a slaveholder in practice, though not in principle, and yet in principle and association a democrat. Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, completely filled these complex conditions, and with the consent of the whole American people he assumed the great responsibility. The insurrection soon became flagitious, insolent, defiant, and announced, to the astonishment of mankind, that the pretended free empire which it was building by usurpation within forbidden borders was founded upon the corner-stone of slavery! The newly inaugurated President, with decision, not unaccompanied by characteristic prudence, announced that thenceforth slavery should be deemed and treated as a public enemy. Andrew Johnson accepted the new condition of his popular leadership which this announcement created, and thenceforward he openly, freely, and honestly declared, not only that the erection of the new edifice should be prevented, but the corner-stone of slavery itself, the rock of all our past as well as of all our then future dangers, should be uplifted and removed, and cast out from the Republic. Whatever may have been thought by you, or by me, or by others, at that time, it is now apparent that the attempted revolution culminated when the national banner was for the first time successfully replanted by our gallant army on the banks of the Cumberland, and when Tennessee, first among the border states which had been reluctantly carried into rebellion, offered once more a foothold and a resting-place to the authorities of the Union. From that time, while it was yet necessary to prosecute the war with such energies as human nature had never before exerted, it was at the same time equally needful, with wisdom which had never been surpassed, to prosecute the beneficent work of restoring the Union, and harmonizing the great political family which, although it had been temporarily distracted, was destined, nevertheless, to live and grow forever under that majestic protection. The abolition of slavery was thenceforth equally an element of persistent war and of returning peace. He neither reads history with care nor studies the ways of Providence with reverence, who does not see that, for the prosecution of these double, diverse, and yet equally important purposes of war and peace, Andrew Johnson was fitly appointed to be a Provisional Governor in Tennessee the first of a series of Provisional Governors afterward to be assigned to the insurrectionary states - and was subsequently elected Vice President, and in the end constitutionally inaugurated President of the United States.

We are continually hearing debates concerning the origin and authority of the plan of restoration. New converts, North and South, call it the President's plan. All speak of it as if it were a new and recent development. On the contrary, we now see that it is not specially Andrew Johnson's plan, nor even a new plan in any respect. It is the plan which abruptly yet distinctly offered itself to the last administration, at the moment I have before recalled, when the work of restoration was to begin; at the moment when, although by the world unperceived, it did begin; and it is the only plan which thus seasonably presented itself; and, therefore, it is the only possible plan which then or ever afterward could be adopted. This plan, although occasionally requiring variation of details, nevertheless admits of no substantial change or modification. It could neither be enlarged nor contracted. State conventions in loyal states, however favorable, in disloyal states, however hostile, could not lawfully or effectually disallow it; and even the people themselves, when amending the Constitution of the United States, are only giving to that plan its just and needful sovereign sanction. In the meantime, the executive and legislative authorities of Congress can do no more than discharge their proper functions of protecting the recently insurgent states from anarchy during the intervening period while the plan is being carried into execution. It is essential to this plan that the insurrectionary states shall, by themselves, and for themselves, accept and adopt this plan, and thereby submit themselves to and recognize the national authority. This is what I meant when I said to Mr. Adams, in a passage which you may possibly recall, that in the sense in which the word subjugation was then used by the enemies of the United States, at home and abroad, it was not the expectation or purpose of this government that the Southern States should be subjugated; but that I thought that those states would be brought, by the judiciously mingled exercise of pressure and persuasion, to a condition in which they would voluntarily return to their allegiance. This was the explanation which Mr. Adams gave to Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister of England, when that great, and, as I trust, not unfriendly statesman, said that he did not believe that the Federal Union could be restored, because he knew that while any man can lead a horse to the water, no man could make him drink. The plan, therefore, recognizes not the destruction, nor even the subversion of states, but their actual existence; and it reasons from facts as they are, not from assumed or possible changes to be effected by continual war - much less does it reason from mere chimeras. This absolute existence of the states which constitute the republic is the most palpable of all the facts with which the American statesman has to deal. If many have stumbled over it into treason and rebellion, the fact, for all legitimate deductions and purposes, nevertheless remains. In a practical sense, at least, the states were before the American Union was. Even while they were colonies of the British crown, they still were embryo states several, free, self-existing, and indestructible. Our Federal Republic exists, and henceforth and forever must exist, through, not the creation, but the combination of these several, free, self-existing, stubborn states. These states are not stakes driven into the ground by an imperial hand, nor are they posts hauled together, squared, and hewed, and so erected loosely upon it; but they are living, growing, majestic trees, whose roots are widely spread and interlaced within the soil, and whose shade covers the earth. If at any time any of these trees shall be blown down or upturned by violence, it must be lifted up again in its proper place, and sustained by kindly hands until it has renewed its natural stability and erectness! If at any time the American Union is fractured through a lesion of one of its limbs, that limb must be restored to soundness before due constitutional health and vigor can be brought back to the whole system. If one of these limbs offend, we have indeed the power and I will not cavil about the right - to cut it off and cast it away from us; but when we should have done that, we would have done just what other nations less wise than ourselves have done, that have submitted unnecessarily to amputation, and given up a material portion of their strength, to save themselves from apprehended destruction. We know the inherent strength, vitality,

}

and vigor of the whole American people. We neither passionately torment any offending limb, nor consent to its being cut off, because we know that all of our limbs are capable of being restored, and all are necessary to the prolongation of our national life.

You will ask whether a reconciliation which follows so closely upon military coercion can be relied upon. Can it be sincere? Can it be permanent? I answer: Do you admit separation to be in any case possible? Does anybody now believe that it ever will hereafter become possible? Will you yourselves now or ever consent to it? You answer all these questions in the negative. Is not reconciliation, then, not only desirable, but imperative? Is any other reconciliation, under the circumstances, possible? Certainly you must accept this proposed reconciliation, or you must purpose to delay and wait until you can procure a better one. Good surgery requires that even simple wounds, much more severe ones, shall be healed, if possible, at the first intention. Would not delay necessarily prolong anarchy? Are you sure that you can procure a better reconciliation after prolonged anarchy, without employing force? Who will advocate the employment of force merely to hinder and delay, through prolonged anarchy, a reconciliation which is feasible and perfectly consistent with the Constitution? In what part of the Constitution is written the power to continue civil war against succumbing states, for ultimate political triumph? What would this be but, in fact, to institute a new civil war, after one had ended with the complete attainment of the lawful objects for which it was waged? Congress and the administration have power to levy wars against foreign states for whatever cause they see fit. Congress and the President have a right to accept or even make war against any part of the people of the United States only under their limited power to suppress sedition and insurrection, and for that purpose only. What then? Must we give up the hope of further elevation of classes in the several states without any new guarantees for individual liberty and progress? By no means. Marching in this path of progress and elevation of masses is what we have been doing still more effectually in the prosecution of the war. It is a national march, as onward and irresistible as the late conflict between free and slave labor was vigorous and irrepressible. The plan of reconciliation we are pursuing has given us two great national advances in this progress of moral and political elevation, which are now to

« AnkstesnisTęsti »