"SECT. 3. Until the fourth day of July in the year 1870, all persons who voluntarily adhered to the late insurrection, giving it aid and comfort, shall be excluded from the right to vote for representatives in Congress and for electors for President and Vice-President of the United States.

"SECT. 4. Neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation already incurred, or which may hereafter be incurred, in aid of insurrection or war against the United States, or any claim for compensation for loss of involuntary service or labor.

"SECT. 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."]

[(2) Among the prominent Southern men who had received the pardon of the President, and who, desiring to hold office under the National Government, had their disabilities under the Fourteenth Amendment subsequently removed by Congress, were: M. C. Butler, James L. Orr, and William Aitken of South Carolina; Joseph E. Brown, Henry W. Hilliard, and Lafayette McLaws of Georgia; F. M. Cockrell, George G. Vest, and John B. Clarke of Missouri; J. D. C. Atkins and George Maney of Tennessee; Randall Gibson of Louisiana; Otho R. Singleton of Mississippi; Alexander R. Boteler of Virginia; Allen T. Caperton and Charles J. Faulkner of West Virginia; M. W. Ransom, Thomas S. Ashe, and A. M. Scales of North Carolina; W. B. Machen of Kentucky; John T. Morgan and James L. Pugh of Alabama.

These gentlemen had all held high positions either in the civil or military service of the Confederacy. A great number of additional names might be cited of persons who, having been fully pardoned by the President, were afterwards relieved of their disabilities by Congress. The names quoted are but a few of the more conspicuous of those who have, since the Rebellion, held high official positions under the Government of the United States.]

[(3) The form of the Fourteenth Amendment, as finally agreed upon by Congress and submitted to the States for ratification, is as follows:—

"ARTICLE XIV.

"SECT. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

"SECT. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective number, counting the whole number of persons in each, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, representatives in congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

"SECT. 3. No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds in each House, remove such disability.

"SECT. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for the payment of pensions, and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void.

"SECT. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."]

CHAPTER X.

The hostility of the President to all measures which the Republican party deemed necessary for the proper reconstruction of the Southern States, had made a deep impression upon certain members of his Cabinet, and before midsummer it was known that a crisis was impeding. On the 11th of July Mr. William Dennison, the Postmaster-general, tendered his resignation, alleging as the chief cause the difference of opinion between himself and the President in regard to the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. He had for some months felt that it would be impossible for him to co-operate with the President, and the relations between them were no longer cordial, if they were not indeed positively hostile. Alexander W. Randall of Wisconsin, the first assistant Postmaster-general, was an outspoken supporter of the measures of the Administration, and was using every effort to prejudice Mr. Johnson's mind against Mr. Dennison, whom he was ambitious to succeed. Mr. Dennison felt that he was seriously compromising his position at home by remaining in the Cabinet, though he had been urged to that course by some zealous opponents of the Administration, who desired, as long as possible, to restrain the President from using the patronage of the Government in aid of his policy. Mr. Randall was promptly nominated as Mr. Dennison's successor and proved, in all respects, a faithful follower of his chief.

A week later Mr. James Speed resigned his post as Attorney-general. He had been regarded as very conservative on all pending issues relating to Reconstruction, but he now saw plainly that the President was inevitably drifting, not only to extreme views on the issue presented, but to an evident alliance with the Democratic party and perhaps a return to its ranks. Against this course Mr. Speed revolted. His inheritance of Whig principles, his anti-slavery convictions, his personal associations, all forbade his following the President in his desertion of the Republican party. He saw his duty, and promptly retired from a position which he felt that he could not hold with personal consistency and honor. His successor was Henry Stanbery of Ohio, a lawyer of high reputation and a gentleman of unsullied character. He belonged to that association of old Whigs who, in their extreme conservatism on the slavery question, had been driven to a practical union with the Democratic party.

A few days after Mr. Speed's resignation Mr. James Harlan retired from the Interior Department. He would have broken his relations with the President long before, but for the same cause that had detained Mr. Dennison. He was extremely reluctant to surrender the large patronage of the Interior Department to the control of a successor who would undoubtedly use it to promote the Reconstruction policy of the President, just as Mr. Randall would use the patronage of the Post-office Department. Mr. Harlan had therefore remained in the Cabinet as long as was consistent with his personal dignity, for the purpose of protecting the Republican principles which the President and he were alike pledged to uphold. He was succeeded by Mr. Orville H. Browning of Illinois, who had been a devoted friend of Mr. Lincoln, and had done much to secure his nomination at Chicago. He had served for two years in the Senate after the death of Mr. Douglas, and but for the immediate control over his course by President Lincoln would have been a co-laborer with those who were hostile to the mode in which the war was prosecuted. His faith in Mr. Lincoln, his great admiration for his talents and his strong personal attachment to him, had for the time maintained Mr. Browning in loyalty to the Republican party; but with the restraining influence of the great President gone, Mr. Browning, by reason of his prejudices not less than his convictions, at once affiliated and co-operated with the Democratic party. He was a man of fair ability and of honorable intentions, but always narrow in his views of public policy. Any thing that could possibly be considered radical inevitably encountered his hostility.

The political campaign of 1866 was one of greater excitement than had ever been witnessed in this country, except in the election of a President. The chief interest was in choosing members of the House of Representatives for the Fortieth Congress, and in controlling the Legislatures which were to choose senators of the United States and pass upon the Fourteenth Amendment. In elections of this character, even in periods of deepest interest, the demonstrations of popular feeling are confined to the respective States, but in this instance there were no less than four National Convention, three of them, at least, of imposing magnitude and exerting great influence on popular action.

The first was called by the friends of President Johnson to meet in Philadelphia on the 14th of August. The object was to effect a complete consolidation of the Administration Republicans and the Democratic party, under the claim that they were the true conservators of the Union, and that the mass of the Republican party, in opposing President Johnson, were endangering the stability of the Government. A large majority of the delegates composing the convention were well-known Democrats, and they were re-enforced by some prominent Republicans, who had left their party and followed the personal fortunes of President Johnson. The most conspicuous of these were Montgomery Blair (who for some years had been acting with the Republicans), Thurlow Weed, Marshall O. Roberts, Henry J. Raymond, John A. Dix and Robert S. Hale in New York, Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania, James R. Doolittle and Alexander W. Randall of Wisconsin, O. H. Browning of Illinois, and James Dixon of Connecticut. The Democrats were not only overwhelmingly in the majority, but they had a very large representation of the leaders of the party in several States. So considerable a proportion of the whole number were men who had been noticeably active as opponents of Mr. Lincoln's Administration, that the convention was popularly described as a gathering of malignant copperheads, who, during the war, could not have assembled in the city where they were now hospitably received, without creating a riot. Among the most conspicuous and most offensive of this latter class,—those who had especially distinguished themselves for the bitterness, and in some cases for the vulgarity, of their personal assaults upon Mr. Lincoln,—were Mr. Vallandingham of Ohio, Fernando Wood, Benjamin Wood and James Brooks of New York, Edmund Burke and John G. Sinclair of New Hampshire, Edward J. Phelps of Vermont, George W. Woodward, Francis W. Hughes and James Campbell of Pennsylvania, and R. B. Carmichael of Maryland. Among the leading Democrats, less noted for virulent utterances against the President, were Samuel J. Tilden, Dean Richmond and Sanford E. Church of New York, John P. Stockton and Joel Parker of New Jersey, David R. Porter, William Bigler and Asa Packer of Pennsylvania, James E. English of Connecticut, Robert C. Winthrop and Josiah G. Abbott of Massachusetts, William Beach Lawrence of Rhode Island, and Reverdy Johnson of Maryland.

Mr. Vallandingham's participation in the proceedings was met with objection. He had not spoken more violently and offensively against President Lincoln and against the conduct of the war than some other members of the convention, but his course had been so notorious and had been rendered so odious by his punishment, both in being sent beyond the rebel lines and afterwards in being defeated for governor of his State by more than one hundred thousand majority, that many of the delegates were not content to sit with him,—a sentiment which Mr. Vallandingham is said to have considered one of mawkish sentimentality, but one to which he deferred by quietly withdrawing from all participation in the proceedings. It was believed, and indeed openly asserted, at the time, that if he had chosen to remain the attempt to eject him by resolution, as was threatened, would have led to a practical dissolution of the convention.

The work of the convention was embodied in a long series of resolutions reported by Mr. Cowan of Pennsylvania, and an address prepared and read by Mr. Henry J. Raymond. Both the resolutions and the address simply emphasized the issue already presented to the country by the antagonistic attitude of the President and Congress. In the resolutions, in the address, and in all the speeches, the one refrain was the right of every State to representation in Congress. The convention challenged the right of Congress to deny representation to a State, for a single day after the war was ended and submission to the National authority had been proclaimed throughout the area of the Rebellion. In every form in which the argument could be presented, they disputed the right of power to attach any condition whatever to the re-admission of the rebel States to a free participation in the proceedings of Congress. One of the resolutions declared that "representation in the Congress of the United States or in the Electoral College is a right recognized by the Constitution as abiding in every State and as a duty imposed upon its people, fundamental in its nature and essential to the exercise of our republican institutions; and neither Congress nor the General Government has any authority or power to deny the right to any State, or withhold its enjoyment under the Constitution from the people thereof; and we call upon the people of the United States to elect to Congress, as members thereof, none but men who admit this fundamental right of representation and who will receive to seats in Congress their loyal representatives from every State in allegiance to the United States." This sentiment was embodied in many forms in Mr. Raymond's address, was, in fact, the one fundamental article in the creed of the Administration and the Democratic party, and afforded the common ground for their political co-operation.

Mr. Raymond undoubtedly marred the general effect of his address by carrying his argument to an extreme point. "It is alleged," said he, "that the condition of the Southern States and people is not such as renders safe their re-admission to a share in the government of the country, that they are still disloyal in sentiment and purpose, and that neither the honor, the credit, nor the interest of the Nation would be safe if they were re-admitted to a share in its counsels." Mr. Raymond maintained, even if the truth of this premise were granted, that it was sufficient to reply that "we have no right, for such reasons, to deny to any portion of the States or people rights expressly conferred upon them by the Constitution of the United States, and we have no right to distrust the purpose or the ability of the people of the Union to protect and defend, under all contingencies and by whatever means may be required, its honor and its welfare."

This assertion of the right of the Southern States to take part at once and peremptorily in the legislation of a country they had sought to ruin, was not conceded by the people of the loyal States. They did not require any refinement of argument to convince them that men who attempt to destroy a Government should not be permitted at once to share in its administration. They believed that the Congress of the United States would be guilty of a great wrong if it should unconditionally surrender its power to the men who demanded admission to peaceful control of the National only because they had failed to disrupt it by war. Mr. Raymond's personal friends and admirers, who were not confined to any one party, were amazed at the recklessness of his position. He did violence to sound logic by claiming more than was necessary to his argument, and he seriously injured his reputation for political shrewdness by attempting to enforce a policy which grated on the sensibilities and aroused the prejudices of the vast majority of those who had filled the ranks of the Union Army.

Great advantage was expected by the President's supporters from the fact that the convention, as they averred, was so truly "National"—having delegates from every State of the Union. This feature was presented as in hurtful contrast with Republican conventions, whose members came almost entirely from the loyal States. A striking spectacle was attempted by having members from Northern and Southern States enter the great wigwam (which had been specially prepared for the meetings of the convention) arm in arm. To intensify the effect Massachusetts and South Carolina headed the procession, General Couch and ex-Speaker Orr typifying in this display the thorough cordiality of Unionist and Confederate in the return of peace and amicable relations. The danger of all such exhibitions is that they may be made a subject of ridicule. This did not escape. The "wigwam" was parodied by the political wits of the Republican party as "Noah's Ark," into which there went, as described in Genesis, "in two and two," "of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth." The humor which this comparison evoked was of a kind especially adapted to the stump and was used most effectively. Indeed the President's supporters, long before the canvass closed, heartily regretted that they had ever resorted to dramatic scenes as a method of promoting a political cause.

The convention of the President's supporters was followed a fortnight later (September 3rd) in the same city—Philadelphia—by a still more imposing assemblage called by the loyalists of the South, who, desiring to explain their exact situation to co-operating friends, invited delegations from the Northern States to meet them. Prominent Republicans from every loyal Commonwealth responded in full force to these men who were endeavoring to reconstruct their States on an enduring basis of Constitutional liberty. Pennsylvania sent a generous delegation as hosts to those who were to enjoy the hospitalities of the State. Governor Curtin haded the list. Associated with him were General Geary, already named as his successor, General Simon Cameron, at that time a private citizen, Colonel John W. Forney, then editor of the Philadelphia Press, and representatives from every Congressional district in the State. Other States responded with equal cordiality. Senators Morgan and Harris, Horace Greeley, and John Jacob Astor, came from New York. Massachusetts sent her governor, her senators, and all her living ex-governors. It became, indeed, the fashion for the New-England States to send governors and ex-governors, and every State was represented in this way. New Jersey did likewise. The Western States were fully represented by their ablest and most zealous men. Two future Presidents were on the delegation from Ohio, with General Schenck and Stanley Matthews and the influential German editor Frederick Hassaurek. Oliver P. Morton came from Indiana, Lyman Trumbull from Illinois, Fairchild and Howe from Wisconsin, Zachariah Chandler and Carl Schurz (then editor of the Detroit Post) from Michigan. The border slave States sent strong men. N. B. Smithers came from Delaware; Senator Creswell, Francis Thomas, and C. C. Fulton of the Baltimore American, from Maryland; Governor Boreman, A. W. Campbell and Nathan Goff from West Virginia; Robert J. Breckenridge accompanied ex-Attorney-general Speed from Kentucky; while Missouri sent Governor Fletcher, sustained by an able delegation, of whom Van Horn, Finkelnburg and Louis Gottschalk were prominent members. A number of business men, headed by E. W. Fox, came from St. Louis.

Many of the Southern States were somewhat scantily represented. It was not safe in certain sections of the South to hold a convention for the selection of delegates, and yet one or more appeared from every one of the lately rebellious States. Thomas J. Durant and H. C. Warmoth came from Louisiana; D. H. Bingham and M. J. Safford from Alabama; G. W. Ashburn from Georgia; and Governor A. J. Hamilton, Lorenzo Sherwood and George W. Paschal from Texas. Albion W. Tourgee, who has since won a brilliant reputation in literature, came from North Carolina with a strong delegation; J. W. Field and H. W. Davis from Mississippi. Virginia and Tennessee, of the original Confederacy, sent a large number of good men. From the former came John Minor Botts, George W. Somers, Lucius H. Chandler, Daniel H. Hoge, Lewis McKenzie, James M. Stewart, and some hundred and fifty others; the latter was represented by Governor Brownlow, Joseph S. Fowler, Samuel Arnell, A. W. Hawkins, Thomas H. Benton, General John Eaton, Barbour Lewis, and many others whose loyalty had been tested by many forms of personal peril.

These names give a fair indication of the character and weight of the convention. It was intended to be, and was, a representative body of true Union men, of the men who had borne persecution for Loyalty's sake, of the men who, having aided in achieving great victory, were resolved that it should not fail to bear its legitimate fruits. The delegates from all the States first assembled in Independence Square, and after a meeting of congratulation, marked by great enthusiasm, proceeded to form into two conventions,—one containing the loyalists who had called the convention, and the other the Northern delegates who had met to welcome them. Of the Southern Convention Mr. Thomas J. Durant of Louisiana was selected as temporary chairman, and Honorable James Speed of Kentucky as permanent chairman; and of the Northern Convention Governor Curtis of Pennsylvania was both temporary and permanent chairman. The motive for thus separating was to leave the Southern loyalists entirely untrammeled in their proceedings, in order that their voice might have greater weight in the country than if it were apparently directed by a large majority of Northern men assembling in the same body with them.

The Northern Convention concluded its proceedings on the third day with a mass-meeting larger than any that had ever assembled in Philadelphia. The Southern Convention remained in session full five days. The interest was sustained from beginning to end, and besides the delegates present, a vast assemblage of people thronged the streets of Philadelphia during all the sessions of the conventions. In an off year, as partisans call it, there had never been seen so great excitement, enthusiasm and earnestness in any political assemblage. Mr. Durant called the Southern Convention to order with the same gavel that had been used in the Secession Convention in South Carolina. Governor Hamilton of Texas, who presented it for the occasion, reminded his audience that the whirligig of time brings about its revenges, and that it seemed a poetic retribution that a convention of Southern loyalists should be called to order with the same instrument that had rapped the South into disunion and anarchy.

On taking the chair as permanent president of the Southern Convention, Mr. Speed spoke of the Administration, of which for the past few months he had been a reluctant member, with a freedom which, during his connection with it, would have been improper if not impossible. He described the late convention in this place as one with which "we could not act." "Why was that convention here? It was here in part because the great cry came up from the white man of the South,—My Constitutional and my natural rights are denied me; and then the cry came up from the black man of the South—My Constitutional and my natural rights are denied me. These complaints are utterly antagonistic, the one to the other; and this convention is called to say which is right. Upon that question, if upon the truth as you feel it, speak the truth as you know it, speak the truth as you love permanent peace, as you may hope to establish the institutions of this Government so that our children and our children's children shall enjoy a peace that we have not known. . . . The convention to which I have referred, as I read its history, came here to simply record in abject submission the commands of one man. That convention did his commands. The loyal Congress of the United States had refused to do his commands; and whenever you have a Congress that does not resolutely and firmly refuse, as the present Congress has done, to merely act as the recording secretary of the tyrant at the White House, American liberty is gone forever."

Mr. Speed's language was a complete revelation, more emphatic than had yet been made, of the great differences which had prevailed in the Cabinet of the President with respect to his policy; and his words naturally created a sensation, not alone in the convention, but throughout the country. The fact of his identification with the President, in the closest official intercourse, ever since his accession, added vastly to the weight of Mr. Speed's address and gave to it an influence which he had not, perhaps, anticipated when he delivered it. This influence was doubtless enhanced by the fact that the author of the speech was a native and citizen of the South. It was a stimulus to the patriotic zeal of Northern Republicans to find a man from the South taking advanced ground that possibly involved peril to himself before the angry contest should be finally settled.

—The address agreed upon in the Southern Convention was in the form of an appeal "from the loyal men of the South to their fellow-citizens of the United States." It declared that the representatives of eight millions of American citizens "appeal for protection and justice to their friends and brothers in the States that have been spared the cruelties of the Rebellion and the direct horrors of civil war." "Having," said the address, "lost our champion, we return to you who can make presidents and punish traitors. Our last hope, under God, is in the unity and firmness of the States that elected Abraham Lincoln and defeated Jefferson Davis."

—"We cannot better define at once our wrongs and our wants than by declaring, that since Andrew Johnson affiliated with his early slanderers and our constant enemies, his hand has been laid heavily upon every earnest loyalist of the South."

—"History, the just judgment of the present and the certain confirmation of the future, invites and commands us to declare, that after neglecting his own remedies for restoring the Union, Andrew Johnson has resorted to the weapons of traitors to bruise and beat down patriots."

—"After declaring that none but the loyal should govern the reconstructed South, he has practiced upon the maxim that none but traitors shall rule."

—"In the South he has removed the proved and trusted patriot from office, and selected the unqualified and convicted traitor."

—"After brave men, who had fought the great battle for the union, had been nominated for positions, their names were recalled and avowed rebels substituted."

—"Every original Unionist in the South, who stands fast to Andrew Johnson's covenants from 1861 to 1865, has been ostracized."

—"He has corrupted the local courts by offering premiums for the defiance of the laws of Congress, and by openly discouraging the observance of the oath against treason."

—"While refusing to punish one single conspicuous traitor, though great numbers have earned the penalty of death, more than one thousand devoted Union soldiers have been murdered in cold blood since the surrender of Lee, and in no cases have their assassins been brought to judgment."

—"He has pardoned some of the worst rebel criminals, North and South, including some who have taken human life under circumstances of unparalleled atrocity."

—"While declaring against the injustice of leaving eleven States unrepresented, he has refused to authorize the liberal plan of Congress, simply because they have recognized the loyal majority and refused to perpetuate the traitor minority."

—"In every State south of Mason and Dixon's line his policy has wrought the most deplorable consequences,—social, moral, and political."

Upon these indictments a powerful address was based, giving argument, illustration, fact and indisputable conclusion. The address was framed by Senator Creswell of Maryland, and the style and tone were beyond praise. It was received with great applause in the convention, was adopted with unanimity, and created a profound influence upon the public opinion of the North. It was the deliberate, well-conceived and clearly stated opinion of thoughtful and responsible men, was never disproved, was practically unanswered, and its serious accusations were in effect admitted by the South. The one objective point proclaimed in the address, repeated in the resolutions, echoed and re-echoed by every speaker, both in the Northern and Southern Conventions, was the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was evidently the unalterable determination of the Republicans to make that the leading feature of the campaign, to enforce it in every party convention, to urge it through the press, to present it on the stump, to proclaim it through every authorized exponent of public opinion. They were determined that the Democratic party of the North should not be allowed to ignore it or in any way to evade it. It was to be the Shibboleth of the Republican canvass, and the rank and file in every loyal State were engaged in its presentation and its exposition.

The friends of the Administration, feeling the disadvantage under which they labored by an apparent combination of all the earnest supporters of the war for the Union against them, sought to create a re-action in their favor by calling a soldiers' convention to meet at Cleveland, on the 17th of September. A considerable number of respectable officers responded to the summons; but relatively the demonstration was weak, ineffective and in the end hurtful to the Administration. The venerable General Wool of the regular army, the oldest major-general in the United States at the time, was made president of the convention and his selection was significant of the proceedings. He had been all his life a solider and nothing but a soldier. He was a major of infantry in the war of 1812 and had been in continuous service thereafter. He denounced the Abolitionists after the manner that had been the custom in the regular army prior to the war. He thought the convention had been called to protest against another war which he was sure the Abolitionists were determined to force on the county. "Another civil war is foreshadowed," said he, "unless the freedmen are placed on an equality with their previous masters. If this cannot be accomplished, radical partisans, with a raging thirst for blood and plunder, are again ready to invade the Southern States and lay waste the country not already desolated, with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other. These revengeful partisans would leave their country a howling wilderness for the want of more victims to gratify their insatiable cruelty. . . . Let there be peace! Yet there are those among us who are not sufficiently satiated with blood and plunder, and cry for more war." General Wool would have been severely criticised if it had not been remembered that for nearly sixty years he had been a faithful soldier and had loyally followed the flag of the Union in three wars.

Many members of the convention were outspoken Democrats and their presence, therefore, did not indicate and division in the Republican ranks,—the objective point to which all the efforts of the Administration were steadily addressed. Conspicuous representatives of this class were Generals John A. McClernand of Illinois, J. W. Denver of California, Willis A. Gorman of Minnesota, James B. Steedman of Ohio. The delegates who had been Republicans were all of the most conservative type, and it is believed that every one of them became permanently identified with the Democratic party. The most prominent of these were General Thomas Ewing of Kansas, Governor Bramlette and General Rousseau of Kentucky, and Honorable Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio. General Gordon Granger and General George A. Custer of the regular army were very active in organizing the convention. It was evident that the number of soldiers present was small; and the convention really failed in its principal aim, which was to strengthen the President in the loyal States.

A telegram, expressing sympathy with its proceedings, was received by the convention from a number of Confederate officers who were gathered at Memphis. But it was unfortunate that General N. B. Forrest was a conspicuous signer; still more unfortunate that the convention passed a resolution of thanks to Forrest and his rebel associates for the "magnanimity and kindness" of their message. Forrest's name was especially odious in the North for his alleged guilty participation in the massacre at Fort Pillow. All other circumstances united did not condemn the convention in Northern opinion so deeply as this incident. Further investigation of the Fort Pillow affair has in some degree ameliorated the feeling against General Forrest, but at that time his name among the soldiers of the Union was as bitterly execrated as was that of the Master of Stair among the Macdonalds of Glencoe, or of Haynau, at a later day, among the patriots of Hungary.

The only noteworthy speech in the convention was delivered by General Thomas Ewing. It was able, but extreme in its hostility to the policy of Congress. He and Mr. Browning were law-partners at the time of Mr. Johnson's accession to the Presidency. Both had supported Mr. Lincoln, and both now resolved to oppose the Republican party. General Ewing's loss was regretted by a large number of friends. He had inherited talent and capacity of a high order, was rapidly rising in his profession, and seemed destined to an inviting political career in the party to which he had belonged from its first organization. In supporting the policy of President Johnson he made a large sacrifice,—large enough certainly to free his action from the slightest suspicion of any other motive than conviction of duty. General Ewing has since adhered steadily to the Democratic party.

The fourth of the National Conventions which this remarkable year witnessed, was that of the citizen soldiers and sailors, held at Pittsburg on the 25th and 26th of September. Nine out of ten, perhaps even a larger proportion, of those who had defended the Union with arms, were hostile to the President's policy. As soon therefore as it was attempted to secure a political advantage for the Administration by calling the Cleveland Convention, the great mass of Union soldiers demanded that a convention be held in which their true position might be proclaimed. The response was overwhelming both in numbers and enthusiasm. Pittsburg was literally overrun. In addition to the large number of regimental and company officers who had done their duty in the service, there was an immense outpouring of privates. It was said that not less than twenty-five thousand who had served in the ranks of the Union army were present. A private soldier, L. Edwin Dudley, was chosen temporary president, and a majority of the prominent officers of the convention were privates and non-commissioned officers. Mr. Dudley was a clerk in the Treasury Department at Washington, and being refused a leave of absence for two days to attend the convention, he promptly resigned his place and joined his brethren at Pittsburg. The incident of the resignation strikingly illustrates the depth of feeling which the contest between the President and Congress had developed among the soldiery of the Union.

Officers of high rank in the volunteer service were not wanting. Generals Butler and Banks of Massachusetts, Palmer and Farnsworth of Illinois, Negley, Geary, Hartranft and Collis of Pennsylvania, Cochrane, Barnum and Barlow of New York, Chamberlain from Maine, Schenck and Cox from Ohio, Duncan and Harriman from New Hampshire, Daniel McCauley of Indiana, and many of their fellow-officers, took active and zealous part in the convention. Every loyal State except possibly Oregon was represented. Far-off California and Nevada, then without the facility of railway connection, sent delegates. The border States of the South were present in full force, and Union men who had borne their part in the civil contest came from every Confederate State. General John A. Logan had been unanimously elected as permanent president of the convention, but at the last moment he found himself unable to attend and his place was filled, with equal unanimity of selection, by General Jacob D. Cox of Ohio. General Cox, on taking the chair, made an address of great firmness. It was even radical in its positions and aggressive in its general tone.

He said it was "unpleasant to recognize the truth that it is in the minds of some to exalt the Executive Department of the Government into a despotic power and to abase the representative portion of our Government into the mere tools of despotism. Learning that this is the case, we now, as heretofore, know our duty, and knowing, dare maintain it. The citizen soldiery of the United States recognize the Congress of the United States as the representative government of the people. We know and all traitors know that the will of the people has been expressed in the complexion and character of the existing Congress. . . . We have expressed our faith that the proposition which has been made by Congress for the settlement of all difficulties in the country [the Fourteenth Amendment] is not only a wise policy, but one so truly magnanimous that the whole world stood in wonder that a people could, under such circumstances, be so magnanimous to those whom they had conquered. And when we say we are ready to stand by the decision of Congress, we only say as soldiers that we follow the same flag and the same principles which we have followed during the war."

The resolutions, read by General B. F. Butler, were explicit and unqualified in their declarations, and were indorsed with absolute unanimity. They declared that "the action of the present Congress in passing the pending Constitutional amendment is wise, prudent and just. That amendment clearly defines American citizenship and guarantees all his rights to every citizen. It places on a just and equal basis the right of representation, making the vote of a man in one State equally potent with the vote of another man in any State. It righteously excludes from places of honor and trust the chief conspirators and guiltiest rebels, whose perjured crimes have drenched the land in blood. It puts into the very frame of our Government the inviolability of our National obligations, and nullifies forever the obligations contracted in support of the Rebellion." The resolutions further declared it to be "unfortunate for the country that the propositions contained in the Fourteenth Amendment have not been received with the spirit of conciliation, clemency and fraternal feeling in which they were offered, as they are the mildest terms ever granted to subdued rebels."

The members of the convention were in a tempest of anger against the President. They declared "that his attempt to fasten his scheme of Reconstruction upon the country is as dangerous as it is unwise; that his acts in sustaining it have retarded the restoration of peace and unity; that they have converted conquered rebels into impudent claimants to rights which they have forfeited and to places which they have desecrated. If the President's scheme be consummated it would render the sacrifice of the Nation useless, the loss of her buried comrades vain, and the war in which we have so gloriously triumphed a failure, as it was declared to be by President Johnson's present associates in the Democratic National Convention of 1864." Many other propositions of an equally decisive character were announced by the convention, and General John Cochrane declared that "a more complete, just and righteous platform for a whole people to occupy has never before been presented to the National sense."

Of the four conventions held, this, of the soldiers who had fought the battles of the Union, was far the most influential upon public opinion. In its membership could be found representatives of every great battle-field of the war. Their testimony was invaluable. They spoke for the million comrades with whom they had stood in the ranks, and their influence consolidated almost en masse the soldier vote of the country in support of the Republican party as represented by Congress. Their enthusiasm was greater, their feeling more intense, their activity more marked than could be found among the civilians of the country who were supporting the same principles. They declared the political contest to be their own fight, as they expressed it, and considered themselves bearing the banner of loyalty as they had borne it in the actual conflict of arms. Their convention, their expressions, their determination were felt throughout the entire Union as an aggressive, irresistible force. From their ranks came many of the most attractive and most eloquent speakers, who discussed the merits of the Constitutional amendment before popular audiences as ably as they had upheld the flag of the Union through four years of bloody strife. Their convention did more to popularize the Fourteenth Amendment as a political issue than any other instrumentality of the year. Not even the members of Congress, who repaired to their districts with the amendment as the leading question, could commend it to the mass of voters with the strength and with the good results which attended the soldier orators who were inspired to enter the field.

Other events powerfully contributed to the political overthrow of the President. After the change in his policy in the summer and autumn of 1865, which has already been noted, the Southern rebels, who had at first been cast down and discouraged, saw before them the prospect of regaining complete ascendency in their respective States. As the division between the President and Congress widened, their confidence increased; and as their confidence increased, a reign of lawlessness and outrage against the rights of the defenseless was inaugurated. The negroes, who had begun to learn their freedom, were not only subjected to laws of practical re-enslavement, but to a treatment whose brutality could not have been foreseen. It was estimated that before the adjournment of Congress more than a thousand negroes and many white Unionists had been murdered in the South, without even the slightest attempt at prosecuting the murderers. Though the aggregate number of victims was so great, they were scattered over so vast a territory that it was difficult to impress the public mind of the North with the real magnitude of the slaughter. But this incredulity vanished in a moment when the nation was startled on the 30th of July, two days after the adjournment of Congress, by a massacre at New Orleans, which had not the pretense of justification or even or provocation.

The circumstances that led to it may be briefly stated. The convention which formed the free constitution of the State in 1864 was ordered to re-assemble by its president, upon authority which, he held, was conferred upon him by the convention at the time the constitution was formed. Apprehending that some measures were to be taken hostile to the re-establishment of rebel power in the State of Louisiana, it was resolved by the opponents of the Republican party that the members of the convention should not be allowed to come together and organize. Threats were insufficient to effect this end. Intimidation of every character had been tried in vain. The men who thought they had the right, as American citizens, to meet for conference refused to be bullied out of their plain privileges under the guarantees of the National Constitution. There was a dispute as to their legal right to take any action touching the constitution of the State—a dispute altogether proper for judicial inquiry. Even if they had assembled and proceeded to amend the constitution, their action could have had no binding effect until approved by the vote of the people. The question which lay at the bottom of the agitation was that of negro suffrage; but the negroes were not entitled to vote under the constitution as its stood, nor could they vote upon an amendment to the constitution conferring the right of suffrage upon them. Whatever the convention might do, therefore, would be ineffectual until approved by a majority of the white men of the State. It obviously followed that the men who violently resisted the assembling of the convention could not justify themselves by the declaration that negro suffrage was about to be imposed upon them. Their position practically was that a majority of the white population should not exercise the right of giving suffrage to the negro.

When the convention attempted to assemble against the desire and remonstrance of their political opponents, a bloody riot ensued—not a riot precipitated by the ordinary material that makes up the mobs of cities, but one sustained by the obvious sympathy and the indirect support of the municipal authorities of New Orleans, and by the leading rebels of the State. General Absalom Baird, an able and prudent officer of the regular army, was in command of the district, but was purposely deceived by the municipal authorities, to the end that troops might not be at hand to quell the riot and stop the assassination which had been planned with diabolical ingenuity. The slaughter, in point of numbers, resembled that of a brisk military engagement in the field. The number killed outright was about forty. The wounded exceeded one hundred and fifty, of whom perhaps one-third were severely injured, many of them mortally. The city police of New Orleans aided the rioters. General Sheridan, in command of the department, officially reported that "the killing was in a manner so unnecessary and atrocious as to compel me to say it was murder." The lamentable transaction was investigated by a committee of Congress, composed of Messrs. Eliot of Massachusetts, Shellabarger of Ohio, and Boyer of Pennsylvania, the first two being Republicans, the last-named a Democrat. An investigation was also made under the direction of the War Department, by a commission of military officers, composed of Generals Mower, Quincy, Gregg, and Baldy. These officers reported that in their opinion "the whole drift and current of the evidence tend irresistibly to the conclusion that there was among the class of violents known to exist in the State, and among the members of the ex-Confederate associations, a preconcerted plan and purpose of attack upon the convention, provided any possible pretext therefor could be found."

The majority of the Congressional Committee took the same view, declaring that "the riotous attack upon the convention with its terrible results of massacre and murder was not an accident. It was the determined purpose of the mayor of the city of New Orleans to break up this convention by armed force." The Congressional Committee did not make their investigation until the succeeding winter session of 1866-7. "We state one fact," said the committee, "significant both as bearing upon the question of preparation and as indicating the true and prevailing feeling of the people of New Orleans. Six months have passed since the convention assembled, when the massacre was perpetrated and more than two hundred men were slain and wounded. This was done by city officials and New-Orleans citizens, but not one of those men has been punished, arrested or even complained of. These officers of the law, living in the city and known to that community, acting under the eye of superiors, clothed with the uniform of office, and some of them known, as the proof shows, to the chief officer of police, have not only escaped punishment but have been continued in their places."

Not only were the men who instigated and committed the terrible murders left unpunished, but, as the committee said, "the gentlemen who composed the convention have not, however, been permitted to escape. Prosecutions in the criminal court, under an old law passed in 1805, were at once commenced and are now pending against them for breach of the peace." Another authority declares that "the judge of the criminal court in New Orleans instructed the grand jury to find bills of indictment against the members of the convention and the spectators, charging them with murder; giving the principle of law and applying it in this case, that whoever is engaged in an unlawful proceeding from which death ensues to a human being, is guilty of murder, and alleging that as the convention had no right to meet and the police had killed many men on the day of its meeting, the survivors were, therefore, guilty of murder." The Congressional Committee did not hesitate to declare that "the facts tend strongly to prove that the criminal actors in the tragedy were the agents of more criminal employes, and demonstrate the general sympathy of the people in behalf of the men who did the wrong against those who suffered the wrong."

The President came in for a full share of censure in connection with this unhappy event. The committee reported that "The President knew that riot and bloodshed were apprehended. He knew what military orders were in force, and yet, without the confirmation of the Secretary of War or the General of the Army, upon whose responsibility these military order had been issued, he gave orders by telegraph, which if enforced, as they would be, would have compelled our soldiers to aid the rebels against the men in New Orleans who had remained loyal during the war, and sought to aid and support, by official sanction, the persons who designed to suppress, by arrest and criminal process under color of law, the meeting of the convention; and all this, although the convention was called with the sanction of the governor, and by one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Louisiana claiming to act as President of the convention. The effect of the action of the President was to encourage the heart, to strengthen the hand, and to hold up the arms of those who intended to prevent the convention from assembling." Mr. Boyer, the minority member of the committee, submitted a report dissenting from the conclusions of the majority, and making, as nearly as could be done, a defense of the men who had really been the guilty aiders and abettors of the crime; but he did not deny the fact of the riot nor of the great number of its victims.

The substantial correctness of the report made by the majority of the Congressional Committee was never shaken, though it was angrily attacked by the supporters of the Administration. Aside from the credit imparted to it by the conscientious character of both Mr. Eliot and Mr. Shellabarger, the corroboration of all its material statements by the Commission of Army officers was invaluable. The military men were not suspected of partisan motives. They had no political theories to maintain, no animosities to indulge, no personal revenges to cherish. They proceeded as coolly as though they were investigating alleged frauds by army contractors or were hearing evidence touching the damage to frontier settlers by an Indian raid. The intelligence and impartiality of investigations entrusted to army officers have become proverbial, and their report of the facts in the New Orleans riot arrested the attention of the North in an unprecedented degree. Every thing possible was done by the opponents of the Republican party to break the force of the damaging facts, but apparently without success. Indeed the people of the United States have rarely been stirred to greater excitement than that aroused by the full details of this nefarious transaction as it came to them through the public press and through official reports. The effect was disastrous to the President, and was hurtful, in the extreme, to the cause of prompt reconstruction. The Northern people shrank from the responsibility of transferring the government of States to the control of men who had already shown themselves capable of desperate deeds. In their wrathful zeal for justice they would hear no apology and no defense of the President. They held him as an accomplice in the crime,—as one having in advance a guilty knowledge of the pre-arranged assassination. In every way in which public indignation can be expressed, in every form in which public anger can vent itself, the loyal people of the Northern states manifested their feelings, and did not spare in their bitter denunciations the personal character of the President or the unspeakable guilt of his Southern supporters.

The bloody tragedy of midsummer, which had weighed down the people with a sense of the gravest solicitude, was followed by what might well be termed its comedy. During the early spring the President had accepted an invitation from the citizens of Chicago to attend the ceremony of laying a corner-stone for a monument to be erected to the memory of Stephen A. Douglas. The date fixed for the President's visit was September 6th, and he left Washington on the 28th of August, accompanied by Secretary Welles, Postmaster-general Randall, General Grant, Admiral Farragut, by a considerable number of army officers and by a complement of private secretaries and newspaper reporters,—apparently intending to convert the journey into a political canvass. Mr. Seward joined the company in New York. The somewhat ludicrous effect produced by combining a series of turbulent partisan meetings to be addressed by the President with the solemn duty of paying respect to the memory of a dead statesman, did not fail to have its effect upon the appreciative mind of his countrymen, and from the beginning to the end of the tour there was a popular alternation between harsh criticism and contemptuous raillery of Mr. Johnson's conduct.

His journey was by way of Philadelphia and New York, to Albany; thence westward to Chicago. At all the principal cities and towns along the route large bodies of people assembled. Democrat and Republican, Administration and anti-Administration, were commingled. The President spoke everywhere in an aggressive and disputatious tone. It has been the decorous habit of the Chief Magistrate of the country, when upon a tour among his fellow-citizens, to refrain from all display of partisanship, and to receive popular congratulations with brief and cordial thanks. President Johnson, however, behaved as an ordinary political speaker in a heated canvass, receiving interruptions from the crowd, answering insolent remarks with undignified repartee, and lowering at every step of his progress the dignity which properly appertains to the great office. At Cleveland the meeting resembled occasions not unfamiliar to our people, where the speaker receives from his audience constant and discourteous demonstrations that his words are unwelcome. The whole scene was regarded as lamentable and one which must have been deeply humiliating to the eminent men who accompanied the President.

He made the tour the occasion for defending at great length his own policy of Reconstruction, and arraigned with unsparing severity the course of Congress in interposing a policy of its own. The most successful political humorist of the day(1), writing in pretended support of the President, described his tour as being undertaken "to arouse the people to the danger of concentrating power in the hands of Congress instead of diffusing it through one man." Wit and sarcasm were lavished at the expense of the President, gibes and jeers and taunts marked the journey from its beginning to its end. "My policy" was iterated and reiterated, until the very boys in the streets, without knowing its meaning, knew it was the source and subject of ridicule, and made it a jest and a by-word at Mr. Johnson's expense. The whole journey came to be known as "swinging around the circle," and its incidents entered daily into the thoughts of the people only as subjects of disapprobation on the part of the more considerate, and of persiflage and ribaldry on the part of those who regarded it only as a matter of amusement. With whatever strength or prestige the President left Washington, he certainly returned to the Capital personally discredited and politically ruined. Upon the direct public issue which he had raised he would undoubtedly have been beaten in nearly all the Northern states, but when his weakness had brought him within fair range of ridicule, he became powerless even in the place of power.

Meanwhile, during the National Conventions referred to and during the remarkable tour of the President, the cause of his opponents was urged in every State and in every district, with extraordinary energy on the part of leaders, with corresponding interest on the part of the people. The contest for the governorship of New York between Reuben E. Fenton and John T. Hoffman, and for the governorship of Pennsylvania between John W. Geary and Hiester Clymer, excited deep interest far beyond the borders of either State. The vote for these candidates was looked to as giving the aggregate popular expression touching the merits of the Administration, and carried with it the united interest which attached to all the Congressional districts. When at last a test was reached and the people had an opportunity to speak the Administration was overwhelmingly defeated. Vermont, usually so strong in its Republican vote, now increased the ordinary majority by thousands. Maine elected General Chamberlain governor by twenty-eight thousand majority.

Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Iowa were then all known in current phrase as October States. They voted for members of Congress and State officers on the second Tuesday of that month. The result was a significant verdict against the Administration. In Pennsylvania Geary, on a much fuller vote than was cast at the Presidential election two years before, led Clymer by nearly as large a majority as that by which Lincoln led McClellan. The Congressional elections resulted in the choice of eighteen Republicans to six Democratic representatives. Ohio, on her State ticket, gave forty-three thousand majority against the Administration, and elected sixteen Republican representatives in Congress, leaving only three districts to the Democrats. In Indiana, a State always hotly contested, the Republicans secured the popular vote by a majority of nearly fifteen thousand and carried every Congressional district except three. Iowa gave a popular majority of thirty-six thousand and carried every Congressional district for the Republicans.

Under the impulse and influence of these great victories in October the November States recorded a like result. New York, of course, absorbed the largest share of public interest. Two years before, Lincoln had beaten McClellan by less than seven thousand votes. Fenton had now double that majority over Hoffman and the Republicans carried two-thirds of the Congressional districts. Throughout the West, Republican victory swept every thing before it. Michigan gave thirty-nine thousand popular majority and a unanimous Republican delegation in Congress. Illinois gave fifty-six thousand popular majority, with nearly all the representatives. Wisconsin gave twenty-four thousand popular majority and elected every Republican candidate for representative except one. Northern States which had been tenaciously Democratic gave way under the popular pressure. New-Jersey Republicans elected a majority of the members of Congress and a majority of each branch of the State Legislature. Connecticut was carried by Governor Hawley against the most popular Democrat in the State, James E. English. California gave seven thousand majority for the Republicans, while Oregon elected a Republican governor and Republican representative in Congress.

The aggregate majority for the Republicans and against the Administration in the Northern States was about three hundred and ninety thousand votes. In the South the elections were as significant as in the North, but in the opposite direction. Wherever Republican or Union tickets were put forward for State or local offices in the Confederate States, they were defeated by prodigious majorities. Arkansas gave a Democratic majority of over nine thousand, Texas over forty thousand, and North Carolina twenty-five thousand. The border slave States were divided. Delaware, Maryland and Kentucky gave strong majorities for the Democrats, while West Virginia and Missouri were carried by the Republicans. The unhappy indication of the whole result was that President Johnson's policy had inspired the South with a determination not to submit to the legitimate results of the war, but to make a new fight and, if possible, regain at the ballot-box the power they had lost by war. The result of the whole election was to give to the Republicans one hundred and forty-three representatives in Congress and to the Democrats but forty-nine. The defeat was so decisive that if the President had been wise he would have sought a return of friendly relations with the party which had elected him, or at least some form of compromise which would have averted constant collision, with the certainty of defeat and humiliation. But his disposition was unyielding. His prejudices obscured his reason.

It was well known that the President felt much cast down by the result. He had, as is usual with Presidents, been surrounded by flatterers, and had not been advised of the actual state of public opinion. Political deserters, place-seekers and personal sycophants had constantly assured the President that his cause was strong and his strength irresistible. They had discovered that one of his especial weaknesses was an ambition to be considered as firm and heroic in his Administration as General Jackson had proved in the Executive chair thirty years before. He received, therefore, with evident welcome the constant adulation of a comparison between his qualities and those of General Jackson, and he came to fancy that he would prove, in his contest for the unconditional re-admission of Southern States to representation, as mighty a power in the land as Jackson had proved in his struggle with the Bank monopolists and with the Disunionists of South Carolina. But those who had studied the character of Johnson knew that aside from the possession of personal integrity, he had few qualities in common with those which distinguished Jackson. Johnson was bold and fluent in public speech, irresolute and procrastinating in action: Jackson wasted no words, but always acted with promptness and courage. Johnson was vain, loquacious, and offensively egotistic: Jackson, on the other hand, was proud, reserved, and with such abounding self-respect as excluded egotism. The two men, instead of being alike, were in fact signal contrasts in all that appertains to the talent for administration, to the quick discernment of the time for action, and to the prompt execution of whatever policy might be announced.

The Republicans had found an easier victory over Johnson than they had anticipated. They were well led in the great contest of 1866. In New England the President really secured no Republican support whatever. Soon after his accession to the Presidency he had induced Hannibal Hamlin, with whom he had been on terms of personal intimacy in Congress, to accept the Collectorship of Customs at Boston, but as soon as Mr. Hamlin discovered the tendency of Johnson's policy he made haste, with that strict adherence to principle which has always marked his political career, to separate himself from the Administration by resigning the office. It was urged upon him that he could maintain his official position without in any degree compromising his principles, but his steady reply to earnest friends who presented this view, was that he was an old-fashioned man in his conception of public duty, and he would not consent to hold a political office under a President from whose policy he instinctively and radically dissented. Mr. Hamlin's course was highly applauded by the mass of Republicans throughout the country, and especially by his old constituents in Maine. His action took from Mr. Johnson the last semblance of a prominent Republican friend in New England and gave an almost unprecedented solidity to the public opinion of that section.

The adherence of Mr. Seward to the Administration, the loss of Thurlow Weed as an organizer, and the desertion of the New-York Times, had created great fear as to the result in New York, but the popularity of Governor Fenton, supplemented by the support of Senator Morgan and of the younger class of men then coming forward, of whom Roscoe Conkling was the recognized chief, imparted an energy and enthusiasm to the canvass which proved irresistible. In Pennsylvania the contest was waged with great energy by both parties. The result would determine not merely the control of the local administration, not merely the character of the delegation in Congress, but the future leadership of the Republican party of the State. Simon Cameron sought a restoration to his old position of power by a return to the Senate. During the five years that had elapsed since he retired from the War Department Mr. Cameron's supremacy had been challenged by the political coterie that surrounded Governor Curtin. They boastfully proclaimed indeed that the sceptre of power was in their hands and could not be wrenched from them. But the reaction against them was strong and did not cease until Cameron had driven his leading enemies to seek refuge in the Democratic party.

In the West the hostility to the President and the support of the policy of Congress were even more demonstrative than in the East. All the prominent Republicans of Ohio were on the stump and the canvass was extraordinarily heated, even for a State which has had an animated contest every year since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Governor Morton's candidacy for the Senate gave great earnestness to the struggle in Indiana, while Senator Chandler not only rallied Michigan to the necessity of giving an immense majority, but with his tremendous vitality added nerve and zeal to every contest in the North-western States. The whole result proved to be one of commanding influence on the future course of public events. The Republicans plainly saw that the triumph of President Johnson meant a triumph of the Democratic party under an alias, that the first-fruits of such a victory would be the re-establishment of the late Confederate States in full political power inside the Union, and that in a little more than five years from the firing upon Sumter, and a little more than one year from the surrender of Lee, the same political combination which had threatened the destruction of the Union would be recalled to its control.

The importance, therefore, of the political struggle of 1866 cannot be overestimated. It has, perhaps, been underestimated. If the contest had ended in a victory for the Democrats the history of the subsequent years would, in all probability, have been radically different. There would have been no further amendment to the Constitution, there would have been no conditions of reconstruction, there would have been such a neutralization of the anti-slavery amendment as would authorize and sustain all the State laws already passed for the practical re-enslavement of the negro, with such additional enactments as would have made them cruelly effective. With the South re-admitted and all its representatives acting in cordial co-operation with the Northern Democrats, the result must have been a deplorable degradation of the National character and an ignoble surrender to the enemies of the Union, thenceforth to be invested with the supreme direction of its government.

There was an unmistakable manifestation throughout the whole political canvass of 1866, by the more advanced section of the Republican party, in favor of demanding impartial suffrage as the basis of reconstruction in the South. It came from the people rather than from the political leaders. The latter class, with few exceptions, shunned the issue, preferring to wait until public sentiment should become more pronounced in favor of so radical a movement. But a large number of thinking people, who gave more heed to the absolute right of the question than to its political expediency, could not see how, with consistency, or even with good conscience and common sense, the Republican party could refrain from calling to its aid the only large mass of persons in the South whose loyalty could be implicitly trusted. To their apprehension it seemed little less than an absurdity, to proceed with a plan of reconstruction which would practically leave the State governments of the South under the control of the same men that brought on the civil war.

They were embarrassed, however, in this step by the constantly recurring obstacle presented by the constitutions of a majority of the loyal States. In five New-England States suffrage to the colored man was conceded, but in Connecticut only those negroes were allowed to vote who were admitted freedmen prior to 1818. New York permitted a negro to vote after he had been three years a citizen of the State and had been for one year the owner of a freehold worth two hundred and fifty dollars, free of all incumbrances. In every other Northern State none but "white men" were permitted to vote. Even Kansas, which entered the Union under the shadow of the civil war, after a prolonged and terrible struggle with the spirit of slavery, at once restricted suffrage to the white man; while Nevada, whose admission to the Union was after the Thirteenth Amendment had been passed by Congress, denied suffrage to "any negro, Chinaman or mulatto." A still more recent test was applied. The question of admitting the negro to suffrage was submitted to popular vote in Connecticut, Wisconsin and Minnesota in the autumn of 1865, and at the same time in Colorado, when she was forming her constitution preparatory to seeking admission to the Union. In all four, under the control of the Republican party at the time, the proposition was defeated.

With these indisputable evidences of the unpopularity of negro suffrage in the great majority of the Northern States, there was ample excuse for the reluctance of leading statesmen to adopt it as a condition of reconstruction, and force it upon the South by law before it had been adopted by the moral sense of the North. The period, however, was one calculated to bring about very rapid changes in public opinion; and there had undoubtedly been great advance in the popular judgment concerning this question since the elections of the preceding year. The question was really in the position where it would be materially influenced by the course of events in the South. The violence and murder at New Orleans in July had changed the views of many men; and, while the more considerate and conservative tried to regard that outbreak as an exceptional occurrence, the mass of the Northern people feared that it indicated a dangerous sentiment among a people not yet fitted to be entrusted with the administration of a State Government.

While these views were rapidly taking form throughout the North, they were strongly tempered and restrained by the better hope that the people of the South would be able to restore such a feeling of confidence as would prevent the exaction of other conditions of reconstruction and the consequent postponement of the re-admission of the Southern States to representation. The average Republican sentiment of the North was well expressed by the Republican State Convention of New York, which, after reciting the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, and declaring that "That amendment commends itself, by its justice, humanity, and moderation, to every patriotic heart," made this important declaration: "That when any of the late insurgent States shall adopt that amendment, such State shall, at once, by its loyal representatives, be permitted to resume its place in Congress." This view was generally concurred in by the Western States; and, if the Southern States had accepted the broad invitation thus given, there is little doubt that before the close of the year they might have been restored to the enjoyment of every power and privilege under the National Constitution. There would have been opposition to it, but the weight of public influence, and the majority in both branches of Congress, would have been sure to secure this result.

[(1) Petroleum V. Nasby.]

CHAPTER XI.

The rejoicing over the result of the elections throughout the free States had scarcely died away when the Thirty-ninth Congress met in its second session (December 3, 1866). There was no little curiosity to hear what the President would say in his message, in regard to the issue upon which he had sustained so conclusive a defeat. He was known to be in a state of great indignation, and as he had broken forth during the campaign in expressions altogether unbecoming his place, there was some apprehension that he might be guilty of the same indiscretion in his official communication to Congress. But he was saved from such humiliation by the evident interposition of a judicious adviser. The message was strikingly moderate and even conciliatory in tone. The President re-argued his case with apparent calmness and impartiality, repeating and enforcing his position with entire disregard of the popular result which had so significantly condemned him. After rehearsing all that had been done in the direction of reconstruction, so far as his power could reach it, and so far as the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution was an essential part of it, the President expressed his regret that Congress had failed to do its duty by re-admitting the Southern States to representation.

"It was not," said he, "until the close of the eighth month of the session that an exception was made in favor of Tennessee by the admission of her senators and representatives." "I deem it," he continued, "a subject of profound regret that Congress has thus far failed to admit to seats loyal senators and representatives from the other States, whose inhabitants with those of Tennessee had engaged in the Rebellion. Ten States, more than one-fourth of the whole number, remain without representation. The seats of fifty members in the House and twenty members in the Senate are yet vacant, not by their own consent, nor by a failure of election, but by the refusal of Congress to accept their credentials. Their admission, it is believed, would have accomplished much towards the renewal and strengthening of our relations as one people, and would have removed serious cause for discontent upon the part of the inhabitants of those States." The President did not discuss the ground of difference between his policy and that of Congress, simply contenting himself with a restatement of the case, in declaratory rather than in argumentative form. He did not at all seem to realize, or even to recognize, the vantage ground which Congress had obtained by the popular decision in the recent elections. He apparently did not understand that every issue dividing the Executive and Legislative Departments of the Government had been decided in favor of the latter by the masters of both—decided by those who select and control Presidents and Congresses.

The President's position in pursuing a policy which had been so pointedly condemned, excited derision and contempt in the North, but it led to mischievous results in the South. The ten Confederate States which stood knocking at the door of Congress for the right of representation, were fully aware, as was well stated by a leading Republican, that the key to unlock the door had been placed in their own hands. They knew that the political canvass in the North had proceeded upon the basis, and upon the practical assurance (given through the press, and more authoritatively in political platforms), that whenever any other Confederate State should follow the example of Tennessee, it should at once be treated as Tennessee had been treated. Yet, when this position had been confirmed by the elections in all the loyal States, and was, by the special warrant of popular power, made the basis of future admission, these ten States, voting upon the Fourteenth Amendment at different dates through the winter of 1866-67, contemptuously rejected it. In the Virginia Legislature only one vote could be found for the Amendment. In the North-Carolina Legislature only eleven votes out of one hundred and forty-eight were in favor of the Amendment. In the South-Carolina Legislature there was only one vote for the Amendment. In Georgia only two votes out of one hundred and sixty-nine in the Legislature were in the affirmative. Florida unanimously rejected the Amendment. Out of one hundred and six votes in the Alabama Legislature only ten could be found in favor of it. Mississippi and Louisiana both rejected it unanimously. Texas, out of her entire Legislature, gave only five votes for it, and the Arkansas Legislature, which had really taken its action in the preceding October, gave only three votes for the Amendment.

This course on the part of the Southern States was simply a declaration of defiance to Congress. It was as if they had said in so many words: "We are entitled to representation in Congress, and we propose to resume it on our own terms; and therefore we reject your conditions with scorn. We will not consent to your Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. We will not consent that the freedom of the negro shall be made secure by endowing him with citizenship. We demand that without giving negroes the right to vote, they shall yet be counted in the basis of representation, thus increasing our political power when we re-enter Congress beyond that which we enjoyed before we rebelled, and beyond that which white men in the North shall ever enjoy. We decline to give any guarantee for the validity of the public debt. We decline to guarantee the sacredness of pensions to soldiers disabled in the War for the Union. We decline to pledge ourselves that the debts incurred in aid of the Rebellion shall not in the future be paid by our States. We decline, in brief, to assent to any of the conditions or provisions of the proposed amendment to the Constitution, and we deny your right to amend it without our consent."

The madness of this course on the part of the Southern leaders was scarcely less than the madness of original secession; and it is difficult, in deliberately weighing all the pertinent incidents and circumstances, to discover any motive which could, even to their own distorted view, justify the position they had so rashly taken. Strong as the Republican party had shown itself in the elections, it grew still stronger in all the free States, as each of the Confederate States proclaimed its refusal to accept the Fourteenth Amendment as the basis of their return to representation. The response throughout the North, in the mouths of the loyal people, was in effect: "If these rebel States are not willing now to resume representation on the terms offered, let them stay out until their anger ceases and their reason returns. If they are not willing to concede the guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment, and to give that pledge to the country of their future loyalty and their common sense of justice, they shall find that we can be as resolute as they, and we shall insist on the right as stubbornly as they persist in the wrong." These were not merely the declamations of statesmen, or of the press, or of the popular speakers of the Republican party. They came spontaneously, as if by inspiration, from the mass of the people, and were based on that instinctive sense of justice which the multitude rarely fails to exhibit.

It was naturally inferred and was subsequently proved, that the Southern States would not have dared to take this hostile attitude except with the encouragement and the unqualified support of the President. He was undoubtedly in correspondence, directly and indirectly, with the political powers that were controlling the action of the insurrectionary States, and he was determined that the policy of Congress should not have the triumph that would be implied in a ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment by those States. Telegraphic correspondence clearly establishing the President's position, subsequently came to light. Governor Parsons of Alabama telegraphed him indicating that the rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment might be reconsidered by the Alabama Legislature, if in consequence thereof an enabling Act could be passed by Congress for the admission of the State to representation. Johnson promptly replied on the same day: "What possible good can be obtained by reconsidering the Constitutional Amendment? I know of none in the present posture of affairs, and I do not believe the people of the country will sustain any set of individuals in attempts to change the whole character of our Government by enabling Acts or otherwise. I believe on the contrary, that they will eventually uphold all those who have patriotism and courage to stand by the Constitution and who place their confidence in the people. There should be no faltering on the part of those who are honest in a determination to sustain the several co-ordinate Departments of the Government in accordance with the original design." It was evident from this disclosure that Johnson's hand was busy throughout the South, secretly as well as openly, and that he inspired the resolute obstinacy with which the insurrectionary States resisted the fair and magnanimous offers of Reconstruction made by Congress. The Rebel element of the South had gradually come to repose implicit confidence in Johnson, and this fact increased his power to sow dissension and produce discord. His stubborn and apparently malicious course at this time, was inspired in large part by a desire to be avenged on the Northern States and Northern leaders for the stinging rebuke administered to him in the recent election.

Sustained by the same popular sentiment which had given offense to the President, Congress did not doubt its duty or hesitate in its action. Its course, indeed, was firm to the point of severity. It met the spirit of defiance on the part of the South with an answer so decisive, that the misguided people of that section were rapidly undeceived as to their power to command the situation, even with all the aid the President could bring. The principal debates for the first two months of the session related wholly to the condition of the South, and on the 6th of February (1867) Mr. Stevens, from the Committee on Reconstruction, reported a bill which after sundry amendments became the leading measure of the Thirty-ninth Congress. In its original form the preamble declared that "whereas the pretended State governments of the late so-called Confederate States afford no adequate protection for life or property, but countenance and encourage lawlessness and crime; and whereas it is necessary that peace and good order should be enforced in said so-called Confederate States, until loyal State governments can be legally established; therefore be it enacted that said so-called Confederate States shall be divided into military districts, and made subject to the military authority of the United States, as hereinafter prescribed; and for that purpose Virginia shall constitute the first district, North Carolina and South Carolina the second district, Georgia, Alabama and Florida the third district, Mississippi and Arkansas the fourth district, and Louisiana and Texas the fifth district."

It was made the duty of the General of the Army to assign to the command of each of said districts an officer not below the rank of Brigadier-general, and to detail a sufficient force to enable such officer to perform his duties and enforce his authority within the district to which he was assigned. The protection of life and property, the suppression of insurrections, disorders, and violence, and the punishment of all criminals and disturbers of the public peace, were entrusted to the military authority, with the power to allow civil tribunals to take jurisdiction and try offenders; and if that was not sufficient in the officer's judgment, he was authorized to organize military commissions, "any thing in the constitutions and laws of these so-called Confederate States to the contrary notwithstanding." It was further declared that all legislative acts or judicial processes to prevent the proceedings of such tribunals, and all interference by "said pretended State governments with the exercise of military authority under this Act, shall be void and have no effect." The courts and judicial officers of the United States were forbidden to issue writs of habeas corpus, except under certain restrictions which further established the military authority over the people. Prompt trials were guaranteed to all persons arrested, cruel and unusual punishments were forbidden, and no sentence could be executed until it was approved by the officer in command of the district.

Mr. Stevens, in his speech upon introducing the bill, did not attempt to conceal its positive and peremptory character. "It provides," said he, "that the ten disorganized States shall be divided into five military districts; that the Commander of the Army shall take charge of them, through his officers not below the rank of Brigadier-general, who shall have the general supervision of the peace, quiet and protection of the people, loyal and disloyal, who reside within those precincts; and that to do so, he may use, as the law of nations would authorize him to do, the legal tribunals whenever he may deem them competent; but these tribunals are to be considered of no validity per se, of no intrinsic force, of no force in consequence of their origin; the question being wholly within the power of the conqueror, and to remain until that conqueror shall permanently supply their place with something else. That is the whole bill. It does not need much examination. One night's rest after its reading is enough to digest it."

Mr. Brandegee of Connecticut followed Mr. Stevens in a speech strongly supporting the measure. "Mr. Speaker, something must be done," said he. "The American people demand that we shall do something, and quickly. Already fifteen hundred Union men have been massacred in cold blood (more than the entire population of some of the towns in my district), whose only crime has been loyalty to your flag. . . . In all the revolted states, upon the testimony of your ablest generals, there is no safety to the property or lives of loyal men. Is this what the loyal North has been fighting for? Thousands of loyal white men, driven like partridges over the mountains, homeless, houseless, penniless, to-day throng this capital. They fill the hotels, they crowd the avenues, they gather in these marble corridors, they look down from these galleries, and with supplicating eye ask protection from the flag that hangs above the Speaker's chair—a flag which thus far has unfurled its stripes, but concealed the promise of its stars."