streets, stole his slaves, which he called property, and turned his house into a receptacle for secession soldiery. But all this only made him more resolute for the Union, and he took the high ground that secession was treason. He said in the Senate, March 2, 1861: "Were I the president of the United States, I would do as Thomas Jefferson did in 1806 with Aaron Burr: I would have them arrested and try them for treason, and if convicted, by the eternal God, they should suffer the penalty of the law at the hands of the executioner! Sir, treason must be punished. Its enormity and the extent and depth of the offense must be made known." In a speech at Cincinnati he said: "I repeat, this odious doctrine of secession should be crushed out, destroyed and totally annihilated. No government can stand, no religious, or moral, or social organization can stand, where this doctrine is tolerated. It is disintegration; it is universal dissolution."

MILITARY GOVERNOR.

In February, 1862, the Union forces got possession of the middle and western portion of Tennessee, and President Lincoln appointed Mr. Johnson military governor of the state. He had twice before been civil governor of the state, now he was governor by a northern appointment, the most offensive that could be, to the secession portion of the south. A great deal was said about a "solid south," but probably there never was a solid south. Many were always Union people, and were taken out against their wills. No doubt many loyal Tennesseeans welcomed their old governor, as a representative of the Union. He held a difficult post of duty with great resolution, often terribly tried by halting, and half Union men and fierce rebels. His headquarters were at Nashville, which was for a considerable time under seige and doubtful of the result. He had difficulties with the civil authorities, some of whom he had to displace and put in others; difficulties with Union generals, who seemed to him half-hearted in their work; difficulties with the rebel and half Union citizens: but they all tended to carry him in sympathy and opinion nearer to Mr. Lincoln, and separate him more and

more from his old opinions and life. Slavery began to look like an abominable thing.

In the Autumn of 1863, Mr. Johnson visited Washington to consult with the president about re-establishing a civil government in Tennessee. The visit brought him nearer to Mr. Lincoln and his views. It soon became apparent to him that the active Union and the republican party were identical, and so far as the broken Union was to be restored it must be done by the party in power.

His prompt and decisive treatment of the difficulties in his state won him the admiration of the loyal north, and before Mr. Lincoln's first term closed he felt himself in close sympathy with the adminstration.

MR. JOHNSON VICE-PRESIDENT.

The republican convention of 1864, met in Baltimore, June 6, to nominate a president and vice-president. Mr. Lincoln was renominated without a thought of another, with Andrew Johnson for his vice-president. The sympathy which the loyal north felt for southern Unionists had much to do with this. The brave stand Mr. Johnson took for the Union and for the return of his state was regarded with great favor. His speeches, electric with patriotism, and stalwart with solid argument, were read all over the north with enthusiasm. His orders as military governor, his reorganization of a government in Tennessee, had prepared the way for his nomination. His past democracy was forgotten. By this time the Union cause was nobly sustained by multitudes of northern democrats who welcomed this nomination.

Mr. Johnson welcomed at once the inevitable result of the war, the death of slavery. He foresaw it, and all the terrible consequences of the war to the south and tried to stay it, but could not. When he found that slavery was ended he was glad, though he sorrowed over the great cost of its death.

When the news of Mr. Johnson's nomination reached Nashville, a great mass meeting was called to ratify the nomination, and Mr. Johnson was invited to address it. The speech he then

made was one of the great speeches of that great period. It was a powerful presentation of the underlying principles of our government, the history of the government, the history of the rebellion, beginning in the early days of the republic, and its failure, and the permanent prospect for our institutions with slavery, their great antagonistic principle, out of the way. The enthusiasm among the people, white and black, was unbounded. Probably nothing surpassed it anywhere in the country. It was much like Patrick Henry's great speeches in the early days of the republic, in its effects. The poor colored people, when he said, "I, Andrew Johnson, do hereby proclaim freedom, full, broad and unconditional, to every man in Tennessee," gathered around him in a wild frenzy of joy, and called him their Moses. The reports of this great speech went through the country like an electric shock, and thrilled the loyal people. It gave a great impetus to the election and great expectations of him. It was the transcendent moment of his life. He was governor of the state which he had just restored to the Union; had just been nominated to the vice-presidency; three thousand people had gathered to do him honor and were electrified by his magnificent utterances, and now the grateful slaves of the state looked up to him as their deliverer.

The canvass proceeded; he was triumphantly elected, with his great leader-the savior of his country, and was inaugurated the fourth of March, 1865. The rebellion was rapidly going to pieces. General Sherman had made his great march to the sea; the Mississippi valley had been redeemed; General Grant was soon in Richmond; Petersburg was in his hands; and his army was in hot pursuit of General Lee. April 3, there was a great meeting in Washington to rejoice over the fall of Richmond and Petersburg; April 9, General Lee surrendered to General Grant; April 14, President Lincoln was shot, and died the next morning.

MR. JOHNSON PRESIDENT.

Immediately after the death of the president, the attorneygeneral, Honorable James Speed, addressed a note to Vice

President Johnson, informing him of the president's death and that the presidency now devolved upon him, signed by the members of the cabinet, except Mr. Seward, whose life had been attempted. At ten o'clock, two hours and a half after the death of the president, Chief Justice Chase administered to Mr. Johnson the oath of office.

Soon after, he was publicly inaugurated in the Senate. chamber under circumstances which cast a still deeper sorrow over the afflicted country. He was just recovering from a fit of sickness, and it was feared he would be unable to go through the ceremonies of inauguration. To brace himself for the occasion he took intoxicating stimulants, and was so visibly under their influence as to shock all who were present, and bring a deeper grief to the country.

On the seventeenth he made a speech so resolute against rebellion, so loyal and promising, as to lead the people to hope for a continuance of a sound administration. But in a few days his actions were so different from what the people had been led to expect as to awaken distrust of his judgment or his loyalty. Almost the entire party which elected him soon lost confidence in him.

On May 1, he appointed a military commission for the trial of those concerned in the assassination of the president, and offered a hundred thousand dollars for the arrest of Jefferson Davis, and smaller sums for the arrest of others on the ground of complicity with the crime. May 9, he promulgated a set of rules for trade with the south, and on the twenty-fourth he removed all restrictions. On the ninth of May an order was issued for the restoration of federal relations with Virginia. On the twenty-ninth of May two proclamations were made, one establishing a provisional government in South Carolina, and the other offering a general amnesty to all persons who had been in rebellion, on condition of taking an oath of allegiance, excepting fourteen specified classes who might obtain pardon on personal application to the president. The president appointed provisional governments for the other returning states in rapid succession.

When Congress assembled in December there was soon found to be a determined opposition in that body to the president's reconstruction measures. In the judgment of Congress the returning rebels should make some proper guarantees of good faith to the government and provisions for the rights of the colored people now made free. A joint committee of fifteen was appointed, to which were referred all questions concerning the recognition of returning states. Congress passed the "civil rights bill" and one for the extension of the freedman's bureau, both of which were vetoed by the president and passed over his head. Early in 1866 the president publicly denounced Congress as in another rebellion. In June, a call for a convention to meet in Philadelphia, was issued, as it turned out, to try to organize a president's party; but nothing came of it. The members of the president's cabinet, one by one, resigned, except Edwin M. Stanton, whom the president sought to remove, but failed. The president, with several friends, went to Chigago in August to assist in laying the foundation of a monument to Stephen A. Douglas. He made speeches on the way of a strange and almost maudlin character, which many regarded as coming from an intoxicated brain. This trip he called "swinging round the circle." It was a great humiliation to a country so sensitive to the honor of its president.

In June, Congress resolved that no state should return without ratifying the fourteenth amendment. In succeeding sessions it required the elective franchise to be granted to persons in the territories without respect to color, and in the District of Columbia. All these and similar measures met the resolute opposition of President Johnson. They were passed over his vetos. He sought steadily to defeat the plans of Congress, and Congress sought to repress the influence and action of the president, regarding them as in sympathy with the pro-slavery south. Congress had passed a "tenure of office act," which required the approval of the Senate to dismiss or appoint federal officers. The president dismissed Mr. Stanton and appointed General Grant in his place as secretary of war, in the face of this Congressional requirement. Congress refused to approve