Cleveland Morning Leader

Gov. Seymour's Objection to the Amnesty Considered.

The friends of Governor Seymour look upon his recent message as unanswerable in its objections to the Amnesty Proclamation. Professedly sustaining the necessity for war and the restoration of the Union, he bends all his energies to an attack upon the financial and political policy of the Administration, thus giving, so far as words can, positive aid and comfort to the rebels.

His objection to the Proclamation of Amnesty we will give in his own words: "Governments thus formed would represent not the interests of the citizens, but the wills and interests of the power that creates and sustains them. The nine States thus controlled would balance in the House of Representatives in the choice of President, and at all times in the Senate, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Kentucky and Wisconsin, with a united population of 16,583,383, which is more than one-half of that of our whole country. The one-tenth who would accept the proclamation for the price of power, would not only govern the States made by Executive decrees, but they would also govern the North. While the plan is harsh to the body of the Southern people, it is still more unjust toward the North. Fourteen hundred men in Florida would balance in the Senate of the United States the power of New York. Less than 70,000 voters in the nine States named in the President's proclamation would wield a power sufficient to weigh down that of the nine most populous States in the Union."

We have a few words of reply to the above.

1. That portion only of any rebel State will send Representatives which can. Though North Carolina sent ten before the Rebellion, probably no more than three would come from that State, those being from the coast counties. The same is true of other States, and although the Representatives who take their seats may cast the entire vote for President, this is not the work of Abraham Lincoln, but of the framers of the federal Constitution.

2. It does not necessarily follow that every loyal man in the South will support the present Administration. The oath to be taken by the one-tenth who shall have power to organize a State, does not in any way make any political opinions binding.

3. The objection that only a fraction of a State will be represented by two Senators, applies as much to the Union in days gone by as now. Delaware and Rhode Island have always balanced off New York and Ohio. This objection, therefore, lies against the Constitution with as much force as it does against the President's Proclamation.

4. We regard the necessity for protecting the loyal men of the South and reorganizing the rebel State governments in the support of the National Government, so great, that even less than one-tenth would be a wise choice, provided this work could not be accomplished otherwise. We look upon the President as under the most sacred obligation to do this, and we have no fears that the American people can be deluded into Governor Seymour's ideas of Reconstruction, by which men whose hands are dripping with the nation's blood, shall take their seats once more in the Council chambers of the nation, and in the halls of State Legislation. God forbid that the nation should ever come to such a sorry pass of imbecility as to commit the interests of the South to a few miscreant rebels, who to obtain place and power, would submerge a world in seas of blood.