Orleans Independent Standard

Mr. Beecher's letter to the Cleveland Convention excited a great deal of remark and sharp criticism, some of which has come to his ears. Another letter from him was read after service in Plymouth Church last Sunday, in which, after regretting that his position is as he says misunderstood, he declares:

"I have not left, and do not propose to leave or be put out of the Republican party. I am in sympathy with its aim, its great principles and its army of noble men, but I took the liberty of criticising its policy in a single respect, and to do what I could to secure what I believed, to be a better one.

Neither am I a "Johnson man" in any received meaning of that term. I accept that part of the policy, which he favors, but with modification. I have never thought that it would be wise to bring back all the States in a body at once, any more than it would be so to keep them out altogether.—One by one, in due succession, under a practical judgment, rather than by a wholesale theoretic rule, I would have them readmitted. I still think a middle course, between the President's and that of Congress, would be wiser than either, but with this my agreement with the President ends,

I have long regretted his ignorance of Northern ideas and sentiments, and I have been astonished and pained at his increasing indiscretion. Unconsciously, the President is the chief obstacle to the readmission of the Southern States. It is enough that he is known to favor a measure to set the public mind against it. This is to be deplored, but it is largely owing to his increasing imprudent conduct. I believe him to be honest, sincere in desiring what he regards as public good, but slow and inapt in receiving help from other minds; proud and sensitive: firm to obstinacy; resolute to hereeness; intelligent in his own sphere, which is narrow. He holds his opinions inflexibly. He often mistakes the intensity of his own convictions for strength of evidence. Such a man has a true sphere in periods of peril, when audacious firmness and rude vigor are needed; but in the delicate tasks of adjustment to follow civil war, such a nature lacks that tact and delicacy, and moral intuition, which constitute the true statesman.

Mr. Johnson's haste to take the wrong side at the atrocious massacre at New Orleans was a shock; the perversion and mutilation of Sheridan's dispatch needs no characterization. I do not attribute this act to him, yet it was of such a criminal and disgraceful nature that not to clear himself of it by the exposure and rebuke of the offending party, amounted to collusion with crime after the fact.

What shall I say of the speeches made in the recent circuit of the Executive? Are these the ways of reconciliation?"

I attribute the recent, misunderstanding in part to the excitement which now exists, to the narrowing of the issues, and to the extreme exaggeration which Mr. Johnson's extraordinary and injudicious speeches have produced. To this may be added my known indisposition to join in criticism upon the President, and the fact that I urged a moderate form of that policy which he, unfortunately for its success, holds. Upon Mr. Johnson's accession I was supremely impressed with the conviction that the whole problem of reconstruction would practically pivot on the harmony of Mr. Johnson and Congress. With that we could have secured every guarantee and every amendment of the Constitution."

"Deeming the speedy admission of the Southern States as necessary to their own health—as indirectly the best policy for the freedmen—as peculiarly needful to the safety of our government, which for the sake of accomplishing a good end incautious men were in danger of perverting, I favored, and do so still favor, the election to Congress of Republicans who will seek the early admission of the recreant States. Having urged it for a year past I was more than ready to urge it again upon the various conventions which preceded the nomination of representatives to Congress this fall. In this spirit and for this end I drew up my Cleveland letter. I deem its views sound. I am not sorry that I wrote it. I regret the misapprehension which it has caused, and yet more, any sorrow which it may have needlessly imposed upon dear friends."