Raymond vs. Sumner.
from the New York Times.
If it is imagined by any Congressmen who do not agree with the reconstruction policy of President Johnson that anything is to be gained on their side by hard words against him, they will soon discover their mistake.--He is a man so strongly intrenched in the respect and confidence of the people that all imputations upon him are sure to recoil upon their authors. If Senator Sumner deems it his duty to oppose the reconstruction methods of President Johnson, he has the clear right to do so, and if he would confine himself to fair argument, would be listened to respectfully. But he has damned his cause at the outset in charging misrepresentation upon President Johnson in the message sent to the Senate respecting the condition and feeling of the South. If he had it in his power to show that the President had been misinformed, the country would have been obliged to him for the correction. But when he charges the President with a deliberate intention to white-wash and deceive, he affronts the good sense and the decent sentiments of the people. President Johnson was sustained in all he said by the report of Lieutenant-General Grant; but his bare representation ought to be enough of itself to shield him from all such aspersions as this Senator has vented upon him.
Mr. Sumner is fond of alluding to his long Senatorial experience. Well, there are two kinds of lessons which may be learnt by experience. The one is most commonly expressed by the proverb that experience makes fools wise. But experience has also another teaching. It has its evil as well as its good side; it tends not only to eradicate errors, but in some cases to confirm and make them inveterate. In other words, it acts not only on the understanding, but on the feelings, and while it is generally supposed to enlighten the former, it not unfrequently warps and distorts the latter. The cause for which a man has suffered becomes sacred in his eyes, and the feelings which these sufferings have called forth are apt to become more violent and more intense just in proportion as they ought to die away and subside. We fear that Mr. Sumner's peculiar experience has peculiarly unfitted him for any leading part in the great work of reconciliation. He starts at every Southern bush, as an old-fashioned lord of the bludgeon and the lash. We doubt whether, to his dying day, he will cease to see red whenever he looks south wards. Yet, however excusable this may be in him, he should avoid abusing those who do not see as he does. At all events, he should make an exception of one so high in official position and public estimation as President Johnson.
