ART. X. THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.

NEVER, perhaps, has a President's Message been more anxiously awaited than that which Mr. Johnson sent to the Houses of Congress on the 5th of December, and seldom has there been one more calculated to allay anxiety and to satisfy just expectation. The position in which Mr. Johnson was placed by his sudden and unlooked-for elevation to the Presidency was of such exceptional difficulty, and was so fitted to test alike his ability and his virtue, that the people, with the memory of the Tylers, the Fillmores, the Pierces, and the Buchanans still fresh in their minds, could hardly help awaiting with solicitude, almost with distrust, the development of the new President's policy. The power of the Executive had been so greatly increased by the necessities of the preceding four years, the opportunities for good or evil in his hands were so multiplied, and the questions instantly brought before Mr. Johnson for answer, if not for settlement, were of such unexampled importance, transcending so immeasurably the common questions of politics, that no man could seriously contemplate the chance of his failure in honesty and intelligence of purpose, or in appreciation of the peculiar nature of the responsibilities which lay upon him, without a natural reluctance to estimate the consequences of such a misfortune. It was almost beyond even American confidence to believe that Mr. Lincoln had been succeeded by a man of his own type in integrity and simplicity of character, and of his own school in political opinion.

The first acts of Mr. Johnson were not fitted to reassure those who believed that the war was not over so long as the supremacy of the principles for the maintenance of which it had been waged was still unacknowledged by the vanquished, or to satisfy those who believed that the Union could be securely restored only upon the foundation of exact and impartial justice. It was impossible, in the absence of any full knowledge of Mr. Johnson's intentions, to feel otherwise than gravely doubtful, not only of the results of the plan of reconstruction which he adopted, but also of the motives which led him to adopt it.

Congress would not meet for some months. Meanwhile there

was ample time for an ambitious and wilful President to do irreparable mischief, and to create, by the skilful exercise of patronage, a party bound to support whatever measures he might recommend, with little consideration for the true interests of the state.

That this condition of feeling was widely spread, and that the ignorance of Mr. Johnson's real principles and intentions was quite sufficient to serve as a ground for distrust, was made evident by the course of the leaders of the remains of what was once the Democratic party. Seeing that there was a chance, supposing Mr. Johnson could be induced to Tylerize, whether he were led to such a course by mere selfish considerations or by a genuine though mistaken notion of what was best for the country,—seeing, we say, that in such a case there was a chance for the party to regain power and office by becoming expressly the President's party, they at once began to gather around him, and to flatter themselves with the anticipation of his weakness and their own consequent advantage. That party, which had sunk so low during the war that it seemed impossible to sink lower, found a still meaner depth of baseness. The point in Mr. Johnson's policy, so far as it was disclosed, which excited the most apprehension in the minds of honest men, was that it afforded but imperfect protection and partial justice to the freedmen, whose rights and privileges the whole nation was in an especial manner bound to secure and maintain. But it was this very point in which the remains of the Democratic party took chief satisfaction; and during the autumn their conventions and their newspapers were never weary of repeating the feeble sophism, "This is a white man's country, and the American Constitution is a charter for white men alone." Their new watchwords, resolutions, and nominations were in vain. But the public ignorance concerning Mr. Johnson may be measured by their persistence in their clumsy arts from June to November. The game they were playing was too open, and it was too clumsily played. The people were not more disposed to trust to such professions, than they were to pronounce judgment on the President.

Meanwhile, as the results of his earlier steps became apparent, Mr. Johnson somewhat altered his course; and this altera

tion gave indication both of the soundness of his intentions and of the readiness with which he accepted and learned the lessons of events. The temper of the South displayed itself in one State after another, and it was not of a kind which could inspire confidence. The temper of the North showed itself in the elections. The display on both sides was instructive. The South had as yet not learned the key-word of its new position, which is, that it is to be no longer the South, but is to be, and if necessary is to be made to be, an undistinguishable, compact, genuine portion of the United States. The South is hereafter to be simply a geographical term, not a political designation. Upon this the North was resolved. It was not ready to let the war go for nothing. It was not to be cheated out of its victory. It was not to be deluded by specious promises, or by oaths taken to be violated. It had been ready to receive back the seceded States with generous and merciful confidence; but the first indication of this willingness and of the liberality of its disposition was received by the South with such sullenness, and such manifestations of the prevalence of smothered hate and of the old spirit of rebellion, that the cordial temper of the Northern people rapidly cooled, and the elections from Maine to California showed that, although still magnanimous, they would not yet trust the fate of the Union to the hands of its recent enemies.

These elections were of great service to Mr. Johnson, as indicating to him the true objects of the popular will, and the current of public opinion. With a man of different political convictions, they would have had less weight. Mr. Johnson had not only been bred in the school of democracy, but the nature of his understanding, and his original principles, led him to regard this manifestation of public opinion as of final authority in determining the course which he ought to pursue. This became obvious almost at once in the changed character of the edicts which he addressed from time to time to the officers of his appointment, his proconsuls, so to speak, in the Southern States. Desirous as he was to promote the speedy re-establishment of civil order, and the regular processes of civil government in those States, and having originally adopted a policy of the most liberal description to secure those ends, he found him

self obliged, by the failure of the Southern people to accept the results of defeat as accomplished facts, and by the resolution of the North not to be content with anything less than the honest. acceptance of these results, to continue the exercise of military power over the Southern States. In fact, no less than 'in theory, the war is not at an end, although purely military operations have ceased. The volunteer troops enlisted "for the war" are not yet all discharged from service. The President still possesses his supreme authority as Commander-inChief over the territory of the people lately in rebellion, and he has continued to govern them up to the present time, not by virtue of his civil magistracy, as President of the United States, but in his military capacity.

It is a misfortune not to be lightly considered, that Connecticut and Wisconsin, by their recent votes denying the right of suffrage to their black denizens, should have shown that a large section of the Northern people is yet very imperfectly instructed as to the true nature of the principles upon which our institutions are founded, and is far from possessing those moral instincts and convictions which are required for the permanent existence and for the full vigor of those institutions. Plain as it has become that, to establish peace at the South, to secure the blessings of genuine freedom to the emancipated negroes, to destroy the evils of a caste system, and to prevent the continued growth of a spurious aristocracy, the full rights and privileges of citizenship must be shared by the Southern blacks on equal terms with the whites, and that whatever restrictions be imposed upon the exercise of the franchise must apply alike to black and white, and must rest on no arbitrary distinction of race, color, or other superficial difference; it can hardly be too deeply regretted that these Northern States thus disgraced themselves by voting for the perpetuation of an injustice within their borders that springs from the most irrational of prejudices, and that their course in this respect has rendered the attainment of the necessary preliminaries of peace and reconstruction more difficult and remote. And it is the more to be regretted, because, by this action, Mr. Johnson found himself confirmed in the most doubtful point of his policy, and in the unwillingness to take upon himself the responsibility of an act

of justice which became the more difficult the longer it was delayed.

Public confidence in the integrity of the President, and in his willingness to conform to the plainly expressed will of the people, had been gradually increasing during the autumn; but it was still felt that the data for forming a satisfactory and confident opinion of his intentions and his character as Chief Magistrate were very imperfect. His Message to Congress, being the first opportunity afforded him of a free expression of his opinions, was consequently awaited, as we have already said, with eager and solicitous expectation.

The Message clears away many doubts and anxieties. Its most remarkable characteristic is its moderation, its entire freedom from passion, from dogmatism, and from autocratic temper. From beginning to end it is the Message of a true democrat, of a President who esteems himself as the servant, not the ruler, of the people. Possessed of power, which, if skilfully used, is almost unlimited, holding the vast executive authority of the government in his hands, able if he chose to exert this authority for the promotion of personal views or party aims, Mr. Johnson exhibits no trace of despotic disposition, of selfwill, or of fondness for personal power. The Message bears the imprint of sincerity; and no one after reading it will question the truth of his assertion, that it has been his "steadfast object to escape from the sway of momentary passions, and to derive a healing policy from the fundamental and unchanging principles of the Constitution." Not less striking as an expression of his simplicity, and his keen sense of the dangerous temptations of his office, is the following sentence, when, in speaking of the continuance of military government at the South, he says: "The powers of patronage and rule which would have been exercised, under the President, over a vast and populous and naturally wealthy region, are greater than, unless under extreme necessity, I should be willing to intrust to any one man; they are such as, for myself, I could never, unless on occasions of great emergency, consent to exercise. The wilful use of such powers, if continued through a period of years, would have endangered the purity of the general administration and the liberties of the States which remained loyal."