The Daily Empire

THE DAILY EMPIRE
H. H. ROBINSON,
PUBLISHER AND PROPRIETOR.
[From the Richmond Whig.]
A Northern View of the Situation.
We have been permitted to make the following extract from a late private letter, written by one of the most distinguished and sagacious statesmen in the North, to one of our fellow-citizens. The name of the writer, were we at liberty to give it, would secure instant and eager attention to his utterances. He has been a consistent, thorough, bold opposer of all radicalism for years past, and sagacious enough to have predicted, long ago, many of the results which we are now witnessing. It is to be hoped that his sagacity may fail him in regard to the anticipations expressed in this letter. It will be seen that he advises a warm, steady, hopeful support of the President in all his attempts to restore the Government under the Constitution. Having spoken of other matters, he says:
"Meanwhile, I hope that martial law may be removed from Virginia, and habeas corpus fully restored. If Andrew Johnson lives, this will probably happen; and yet, after all, I am just the reverse of sanguine that quiet and full republican government, the rights of the States and of the people, will ever be restored without another bloody convulsion. In fact, I have never believed it. Both nature and the lessons of history forbid it. Like Job, I may say, the spirit of the coming trouble passes before my eyes, but I can not discern the form thereof.
"The result of the war has left us all in a situation alike unnatural, illogical and impossible of continuance. Southern independence failed, as I always believed it would; and you know I was always against it. But the evil now is that truth, justice, the right, liberty, statesmanship, manhood, religion, and all that the word gentleman includes are undermost, and their opposites in the ascendant. The vain-glorious boast of Ward Beecher—strictly true as to the last five years—sums it all up—'New England ideas govern the country.' All this will be reversed. But when, how, through what tribunal, who shall say?
"And then, that perpetual, perplexing sphynx to the South—free negroism—to vex and harass you for years, and then to be solved at last, after a bloody and horrible war of races, by extermination, in part of the blacks, and deportation of the survivors! Think of the tender mercies of New England abolition philanthropy! Slavery abolished after four years of a scourging, desolating war, and a cost of four thousand millions of dollars; and then another scene of horrible carnage and stupendous cost to deport the entire negro population which may chance to survive the conflict!
There is, in my judgment, but one way of escape, and that is the way toward which the policy of the Infernals of the North and West is now directed—total and thorough amalgamation of the races—a nauseating impossibility.
-But, in whatever troubles are before us all, it is of immense concern that the Federal Executive is for a return to the old Government, the old Union, the old order of things, and it is the duty of all patriots, and especially of the South, to extend to him now a cordial support. In that direction lies hope."
God grant that the evils foreboded in the above extract may be averted, and that the advice in the last paragraph may be heeded. Twelve months ago, few men were more thoroughly disliked and abused in the South than Andrew Johnson. To-day, no man is more thoroughly trusted and esteemed. We frankly confess that we then mistook the man and his character. His bold, manly, heroic defense of the right; his stern abnegation of self; his sublime magnanimity, in forgetting the abuse that had been heaped upon him; his lofty superiority to revenge, have conquered us more thoroughly than the armies of Grant and Sherman ever could. The South never yet failed to recognize and honor the bold, honest, true man. Nor will the North fail to recognize him; for there he has won as great a victory as here. Not in high favor with his party when he came into power, and held in utter detestation by those who opposed his election, he has won his opponents, because they recognize in him the defender of the Constitution and restorer of the Union, and is gathering from his own party all that is sound, patriotic and national. As every shade of political opinion rallied around the late President to conquer the disunionists in arms, so will they rally around President Johnson to conquer the disunionists in legislation. As the North conquered in that war, so must they conquer in this, in which they shall find us allies, and not foes, for we are for the Constitution and the Union.