The Manitowoc Pilot

PRESIDENT JOHNSON.

Wherein He is Right and Wherein He is Wrong.

From the New York World, July 24.

The country has practiced toward Mr. Johnson a more generous forbearance than has been accorded to any other president since Washington. This is less a tribute to the man than a patriotic impulse set in action by the appalling circumstances of his accession. Under that sudden shock the country, for the first time, was alarmed for the existence of the government. The instant unanimity with which all parties stood by the new president was a protest against assassination, against anarchy, against attempts to change the personnel of the government or the politics of the country except by the republican methods of free discussion and regular elections. Nothing more creditable has ever occurred in our history. But the danger which struck us all with sudden dismay is past; and henceforward President Johnson, like every ruler of a free people, must encounter the criticism by which responsibility is enforced upon public officers.

There has been, thus far, a disposition to discriminate between President Johnson and his official advisers. These advisers were not of his appointment, and it was presumed that their stay in the cabinet was a temporary convenience. If he had intended to keep them, it was assumed he would control them; and it was impossible to believe that the outrageous acts of Secretary Stanton were approved by any honest statesman sworn to defend the constitution. It was easy to see how, in closing a great war and settling an enormous mass of unfinished business, the services of an officer familiar with its details might be valuable, especially as the president had had no personal connection with the administration of the war. With the great mass of new business emerging, he could not afford to master the unwieldy details of a system that had served its day, and was falling into disuse. Shockingly as Stanton had violated the constitution, it was not difficult to discover plausible reasons for his temporary retention, but Mr. Johnson is in his fourth month, and, for aught that appears, the cabinet is as firmly seated under him as under his predecessor that appointed it.

An indulgent country cannot much longer consent to distinguish between the acts of the administration and the acts of its responsible chief. If the most conspicuous and offensive heads of departments are to go with Mr. Johnson through his term, or through any large and considerable part of it, the country is justified in concluding that he keeps them because he approves of their conduct: that their acts are his acts; and that he ought to be held responsible for their usurpations.

The country will come reluctantly to this conclusion. Even after its confidence is shaken, it will, for a long while, hope against hope. But certain it is, that this people, cradled in liberty, will stand by no man who abandons the principles of the constitution. The subordination of the military to the civil power, government by law instead of government by arbitrary will, the habeas corpus, trial by jury, free speech, a free press, and free elections, will be resolutely claimed; and no man or party can stand who are faithless to these guarantees. Great allowance was made, during the war, for the difficulties of the situation; but the plea of an over-ruling public necessity will no longer avail. The people now demand that officers sworn to support the constitution shall keep their oaths. They will give their confidence to no public officer who is deliberately recreant to republican principles of government.

On one great subject President Johnson satisfies the just expectations of the country. If he stands by his recognition of state rights in the reorganization of the state governments, the people will support him till that battle is won. But the other great question of the supremacy of the law is too urgent to be much longer adjourned; and considering how the law has been trampled under foot, defied and spit upon, even since Mr. Johnson's accession, we can see no other suitable atonement than a removal of the offending members of the cabinet, and filling their places with honest, law-abiding citizens.