Franklin Repository

The past five years brought upon our nation frequent humiliations, and we have many times bowed our heads to the dust in shame and sorrow. Treason, with its attendant crimes, smote us to the breast with the bitter consciousness that men who were of our own flesh and blood, who had been inspired by the same glorious traditions and were sharers in the same grand destiny, were capable of depravity and brutality which other races in darker ages could not parallel.

Shame came upon us in a hundred forms throughout the weary war; when wrong so often prevailed over right, when the arms of the wicked dominated, and the lives and property of patriots were sacrificed in vain; when they whom we honored and trusted proved false, and those whom we relied upon to rescue us were found inefficient and imbecile, and success and glory turned from our loyal hosts to brighten the banners of cruelty and treachery. And at length, when behind the frowning Providence we beheld the smiling face, and triumph after triumph gladdened us, and no mailed hand was uplifted against our peace, and good men's lips moved in thanksgiving to God who gave us the glory and the victory, and loving-kindness and forgiveness stirred all bosoms even towards the authors of our woe and shame, the merciful ruler of our rejoicing people was brutally murdered by the very criminals he was compassionating. Then came the bitter blasting of our hopes by his infamous successor, the man who never blushed that he--amid the most imposing and august inauguration ceremonies, when his illustrious superior spake to the awed multitude with the pathos and fervor and devotedness of inspiration almost,--staggered and hiccuped as he poured his halting, incoherent sentences of self-adulation into the reluctant ears of our highest dignitaries, of the representatives of foreign powers, and of the decent men and women of our land.

Rapidly followed the mortification of the President's abandoning the friends, who with averted faces covered his obscenity with the mantle of charity, and throwing himself into the hands of his harshest revilers--of his wholesale pardoning of the most blood-guilty traitors, of his affiliation with them and his rejection of the tried and true men who kept the government of the people from destruction, and to whom this ungrateful betrayer owed his change from an outlawed, branded fugitive, with a price upon his head, to the most honorable position among men.

From the hour he felt the reigns of government secure in his grasp, he has loaded us with shame. He has caused the Executive Mansion to be the haunt of vileness; he has made its venerated retreats echo with low and brutal vituperation and vulgarity; he has sought to corrupt the pure by bribery; he has sullied his lips with falsehood, and had dyed his hands with blood, shed without rebuke by the executors of his "policy."

The generous words he had spoken, he has cancelled with iniquitous deeds, the kind promises he volunteered, he has redeemed by fierce cruelties; he stands arrayed against his nobler self, an object of disgust and dread, flattered by the bad men who once despised and hunted and would have slain him when he was in the paths of duty, and shunned and feared by his honorable and patriotic countrymen who protected and exalted him when he strove to walk uprightly and loyally.

Such a man one should suppose would hide himself as much as might be from the public gaze, and hedge himself with the dignity of his eminent position. Let the pilgrimage to Chicago speak! Invited as President of the United States, to participate in the consecration of a monument to the memory of the lamented Douglas, he accepted the invitation for selfish and dishonest ends. The invitation was not to Andrew Johnson, as an individual, but to him as the Chief Magistrate. He should have gone humbled and contrite to the grave of the illustrious dead. He should have remembered with what malignity he assailed the honor and ability of Douglas, when he was supporting Breckenridge in the mad effort to rend the Democratic party and effect the dissolution of the Union; and it could only have been as the representative of the American people, to whom the dead Statesman was dear, that Andrew Johnson should have appeared on this solemn occasion at all. Truly, it was ex officio only that his presence at the base of that monumental column could not affront the manes of the illustrious patriot, in whose honor it is rising.

The "translated" and vicious Secretary of State, the handler and trainer of the swaggering President, caught at the opportunity the trip would afford to make an electioneering tour; and artfully hitched Gen. Grant and Admiral Farragut to their car, to attract the grateful people and secure welcomes from the crowds that would assemble to greet the heroes.

It does no credit to the taste of those distinguished men, as it detracts, certainly, from their acuteness, to allow themselves to be used to get up political meetings for the vagabondizing administration. Did they remember in whose behalf the voices, now ringing out cheers and applauses, as, in rebel language, "the rival of Caligula's horse" denounces the opponents of his "policy," were raised, when they were struggling to open the Mississippi? When the Congress that sustained them in their labors, and covered them with honors, was scandalously vilified, were there no compunctious visitings of conscience in their breasts? Did they not sometimes feel as if they were cat's paws of the artful Secretary? We are proud to believe that they had no part or sympathy with the political gypsies, that inveigled them.

Our cheeks tingle with shame as we read the daily reports of the Presidential progress.

The hospitality of cities is abused by venomous partisan harangues, the people's sense of propriety is shocked at their President's ceaseless boasting of his integrity, of his services, of the public positions he has enjoyed, of his wonderful sacrifices for the common weal, of his inflexible will, and at his parading his political wares like a greedy mountebank, wherever two or three are gathered at a rail road station, and insulting the crowds of citizens who come together to pay their respects to their Chief Magistrate as such, or to do homage to the illustrious Soldier and Sailor who attend him. With impotent anger, he denounces a co-ordinate branch of government, the functions of which he arrogates; he rages at individual statesmen, who differ from him in the plan of reconstruction; he clamors for the hanging of private citizens, guiltless of the sin of rebellion, but guilty of maintaining the rights of man; bandies billingsgate with unknown interlocutors in his promiscuous audiences. Well might he say he cares not for dignity! The twaddle, the ribaldry, the coarse jokes and harlequinry, that this painfully extended tour has begotten is deplorable.

The rudest efforts of the rudest of frontier stump orators surpass in elegance and force the diatribes of the President and the fallen Secretary of State--the Buckeye Blacksmith in his instincts and oratory was a Chesterfield in comparison with Andrew Johnson. He is the first of the Presidents who has lowered the office in his personal habits: all his predecessors preserved the dignity of the station. He alone is unimpressed by its lofty character. We should expect nothing better from him. The melancholy exhibitions on the 4th of March '65, and of 22d Feb. '66, were enough to betray the stuff of which he is made. But we did expect the Democratic party had respect enough for the highest office among us to keep them from encouraging Andrew Johnson to defile it. He is theirs. We freely relinquish him. They may reap the full reward of his defection, take the patronage he commands, use him in all decent ways for their advancement. But we implore them earnestly not to increase our humiliation by inducing, by their plaudits and strategy, the President of the United States to expose himself as a common blackguard and buffoon.

Should the Copperhead and rebel party lately formed at Philadelphia, at the dictation of his accidency Andy Johnson, succeed in obtaining the control of the Government, it would most assuredly adopt and carry out a Rebel policy. The great mass of its supporters would be reconstructed rebels from the South, imbued with all the views and opinions with which they commenced and fought their rebellion. The few renegade Republicans and Johnsonites who may act with them will be of no account whatever in shaping its policy--whilst the couple of score of dirt-eating Northern Democrats who have been so very anxious for the restoration of their "erring Southern brethren" to seats in Congress, will not be able, even if desirous, to control the actions of the party to whom they have sold themselves.

The House of Representatives of the United States, under the last apportionment, consists of 242 members, 85 of which were apportioned to the Slave States. A majority of that body, if every district were represented, would therefore be 122 members.

In the elections that have taken place in the late Slave States, since the commencement of the rebellion, there were 18 Union members elected, who were admitted to their seats, viz: 3 in West Virginia, 3 in Maryland, 2 in Tennessee, 2 in Kentucky and 8 in Missouri. The re-election of Union men in some of these districts is, to say the least, very doubtful. But suppose that they should all return good and true Union men, there would still be 67 re-constructed Rebels returned by the other districts in the lately Slave States.

If to these be added the 35 Democratic votes from the Northern States, we have a total of 102 votes which would be cast as a unit, according to the dictation of the Slave driving Southern majority of the new party. And should this new party succeed in electing twenty new members of Congress in Northern districts which are now represented by Union Republicans, they will have obtained a majority of the whole body--and does any sane person doubt but that Andy Johnson would recognize such a body as the legal House of Representatives?

Among the inevitable results that would follow, would be

1st. The REPUDIATION of our National debt.

It is true that one of the resolutions adopted at Philadelphia by the new party says the National Debt of the United States shall be paid. But we all know now that Convention was engineered. Its members--especially the unpardoned ones from the South--were tongue-tied. They dared not speak their sentiments--and as soon as they learned the purport of the resolutions prepared for them, they left before even the committee reported to the convention, so disgusted were they with the part they had to play.

It is also well known that the Southern papers nearly unanimously repudiate the action of the Convention, saying that their delegates had no power to bind their people. How easy therefore will it be for the Southern members of Congress to disregard the action of the Philadelphia Convention, once they are safely restored to their places in Congress. They paid no regard to their oaths, in times past, and what regard will they pay to resolutions now? And that they will either repudiate our National debt--and thus verify the predictions of their orators by making "a cord of greenbacks of no more value than a cord of wood"--or saddle the free people of the North with the payment of the Rebel debt--a debt contracted in the effort to break down our government--we have no doubt. If the people of the country are so deluded as ever to put this new party into power they must expect one or the other of these things to happen, for it is not likely that the meek and submissive rebels of the South will ever pay any part of the debt created in thrashing them if they can get rid of it.

2d. The REPEAL OF OUR PENSION AND BOUNTY LAWS, will then be certain.

Mark our prediction Soldiers of the Union. Elevate the Copperhead and Rebel party to power and they will either pension all their rebel soldiers and widows and children upon the Treasury of the Union, and allow their dirty, greasy, gray-back cut-throats, and their consorts and spawn, to fatten upon the money that rightly belongs to you, and the widows and children of your comrades--or they will repeal all the laws passed by your grateful country for your support, and for the maintenance and support of the widows and families of your comrades. This is no idle thought. It is the settled purpose of the rebels South, if ever they get into power--and they are as much rebels now as they ever were, and hate you and your free government as much--nay more, as when they were fighting you in the field.

Farmers, merchants, mechanics and laboring men of Franklin county, and of the Union, are you prepared to see your national securities depreciated? Are you prepared to see your government bonds, in which you have, perhaps, invested the hard earnings of past years of toil, brought down and sacrificed? Are you prepared to see the pensions of our gallant soldiers taken away from them? Are you prepared to see the widows and orphans of those who fell fighting for the Union and the liberties you enjoy, cast upon the cold charity of the world, deprived of the support a grateful people has voted them, or worse even than this, are you prepared to pay the rebel debt of $3,000,000, in addition to your own, and to saddle yourselves with bounties, pensions, annuities, and pay due the rebel hordes who invaded your territory, burnt your towns and villages, your houses, barns and shops, and slaughtered your husbands, brothers and sons? If you are prepared to stand all this, then sneak out from your homes on the second Tuesday of October next, and vote the Locofoco-Copperhead-Johnson ticket. But if you are for LIBERTY AND UNION, one and inseparable, NOW AND FOREVER," march forth boldly as freemen, one and all of you, and vote the Union Republican ticket, with Gen. John W. Geary for Governor and Gen. Wm. H. Koontz for Congress upon it, and the country will once more be saved from the destroyers.

THE Spirit is thrown into spasms by Mr. Deal's card, and it belches forth a long article of abuse on Mr. Deal and the chief editor of this journal. It is manifest from its article that Mr. Deal learned too much of the purposes of the Democratic managers before he exhibited his true colors, and they are vexed into all manner of follies to prevent him from wounding the Copper-Johnson coalition. That Mr. Deal probed this corruption to the bottom before he turned from its slimy embrace, is evident, and the flutters of the wounded attest how effective is the blow of his fidelity to his own convictions. Mr. Deal needs no vindication at our hands, and the Spirit is welcome to writhe and scold until it wearies of its impotent follies.

THE Spirit devotes a column to the article in this journal of two weeks ago, on the right of deserters to vote, and with characteristic disregard of the truth, charges us with inconsistency.

We hold precisely the same doctrine to-day we expressed in the remarks made in the legislature. The proposition before the House was to disfranchise deserters by legislation after the crime had been committed. It was unconstitutional, and was voted down. But the act of the legislature in force now, is not ex post facto, but is designed to carry into effect an act of Congress.

One of the main grounds on which the act of Congress was objected to, was the interference by Congress in the suffrage of a State; and what courts may hold as to the validity of an act of the State, remains to be seen. One point we have ever maintained--that no other tribunal than the Supreme Court can determine that question.

That the decision of the Supreme Court in Huber vs. Reilly is in conflict with the principle of the act of the legislature, we do not doubt; but it may or may not be declared invalid when judicially decided. Until then no election board can nullify it, and until then it must be obeyed.