Twenty Years of Congress Volume Ii Part 3

Lincoln's death had never entered into the public mind, and therefore no provision was made with any view of its remotest possibility.

Mr. Johnson, however, is scarcely to be blamed for not calling an extra session of Congress. Aside from his confidence in his own power to deal with the problems before him, he shared, no doubt, in the general dislike which Presidents in recent years have shown for extra sessions.

Indeed, to the Executive Department of the Government, Congress, even in its regular sessions, is a guest whose coming is not welcomed with half the heartiness with which its departure is speeded. But an extra session, especially at the beginning of an Administration, is looked upon with almost superst.i.tious aversion, and is always to be avoided if possible. It was remembered that all the woes of the elder Adams' Administration, all the intrigues which the choleric President fancied that Hamilton was carrying on against him in connection with our French difficulties, had their origin in the extra session of May, 1797. It was remembered also that the unpopularity which attached to the Presidency of Mr. Madison was connected with the two extra sessions which his timid Administration was perhaps too ready to a.s.semble. So deeply was the hostility to extra sessions implanted in the minds of political leaders by the misfortunes of Adams and Madison that another was not called for a quarter of a century. In September, 1837, Mr. Van Buren inaugurated the ill-fortune of his Administration by a.s.sembling Congress three months in advance of its regular session. John Tyler in turn never recovered from the dissensions and disasters of the extra session of May, 1841,--though it was precipitated upon him by a call issued by President Harrison. All those extra sessions except the one in Mr. Van Buren's Administration had been held in May, and even in his case the proclamation summoning Congress was issued in May. No wonder, therefore, that ill-luck came to be a.s.sociated with that month. When the necessity of a.s.sembling Congress was forced upon Mr. Lincoln by the firing on Sumter, Mr.

Seward warned him that in any event he must not have the session begin in May. It must be confessed therefore that the precedents were sufficiently alarming to influence Mr. Johnson against an extra session. Nor was there any popular demand for it because the President's policy had not as yet portended trouble or strife in the ranks of the Republican party.

CHAPTER IV.

Declining to seek the advice of Congress in the embarra.s.sments of his position, President Johnson necessarily subjected himself to the counsel and influence of his Cabinet. He had inherited from Mr.

Lincoln an organization of the Executive Department which, with the possible exception of Mr. Seward, was personally agreeable to him and politically trusted by him. He dreaded the effect of changing it, and declined upon his accession to make room for some eminent men who by long personal a.s.sociation and by ident.i.ty of views on public questions would naturally be selected as his advisers. He had not forgotten the experience and the fate of the chief magistrates who like himself had been promoted from the Vice-Presidency. He instinctively wished to avoid their mistakes and to leave behind him an administration which should not in after years be remembered for its faults, its blunders, its misfortunes.

The Federal Government had existed fifty-two years before it encountered the calamity of a President's death. The effect which such an event would produce upon the _personnel_ of the Government and upon the partisan aspects of the Administration was not therefore known prior to 1841. The Vice-President in previous years had not always been on good terms with the President. In proportion to his rank there was no officer of the Government who exercised so little influence.

His most honorable function--that of presiding over the Senate--was purely ceremonial, and carried with it no attribute of power except in those rare cases when the vote of the Senate was tied--a contingency more apt to embarra.s.s than to promote his political interests. He was, of course, neither sought nor feared by the crowds who besieged the President. He was therefore not unnaturally thrown into a sort of antagonism with the Administration--an antagonism sure to be stimulated by the _coterie_ who, disappointed in efforts to secure favor with the President, were disposed to take refuge in the Cave of Adullam, where from chagrin and sheer vexation the Vice-President had too frequently been found. The cla.s.s of disappointed men who gathered around the Vice-President held a political relation not unlike that of the cla.s.s who in England have on several occasions formed the Prince of Wales'

party--composed of malcontents of the opposition, who were on the worst possible terms with the Ministry.

John Tyler, as President Johnson well knew from personal observation, began his Executive career with an apparent intention of following in the footsteps of the lamented Harrison, to which course he had been indeed been enjoined by the dying President in words of the most solemn import. Tyler gave a.s.surances to his Cabinet that he desired them to retain their places. But the suggestion--which he was too ready to adopt--was soon made, that he would earn no personal fame by submissively continuing in the pathway marked out by another. With this uneasiness implanted in his mind, it was impossible that he should retain a Cabinet in whose original selection he had no part, and whose presence was the symbol of a political subordination which constantly fretted him. A cause of difference was soon found; difference led to irritation, irritation to open quarrel, and quarrel ended in a dissolution of the Cabinet five months after Mr. Tyler's accession to the Executive chair. The dispute was then transferred to his party, and grew more angry day by day until Tyler was driven for political shelter and support to the Democratic Party, which had opposed his election.

Mr. Fillmore had not been on good terms with General Taylor's Administration, and when he succeeded to the Presidency he made haste to part with the ill.u.s.trious Cabinet he found in power. He accepted their resignations at once, and selected heads of departments personally agreeable to himself and in political harmony with his views. He did not desert his party, but he pa.s.sed over from the anti-slavery to the pro-slavery wing, defeated the policy of his predecessor, secured the enactment of the Fugitive-slave Law, and neutralized all efforts to prohibit the introduction of slavery in the Territories. In this course Mr. Fillmore had the support of the great leaders of the party, Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster, but he disregarded the young Whigs who under the lead of Mr. Seward were proclaiming a new political dispensation in harmony with the advancing public opinion of the world. Mr. Fillmore did not leave his party, but he failed to retain the respect and confidence of the great ma.s.s of Northern Whigs; and his administration came to an end in coldness and gloom for himself, and with the defeat, and practically the destruction, of the party which had chosen him to his high place four years before. His faithlessness to General Scott gave to the Democratic candidate an almost unparalleled victory. Scott encountered defeat. Fillmore barely escaped dishonor.

With the ill-fortune of these predecessors fresh in his memory, Mr.

Johnson evidently set out with the full intention not merely of retaining the Cabinet of his predecessor, not merely of co-operating with the party which elected him, but of espousing the principles of its radical, progressive, energetic section. A Southern man, he undoubtedly aspired to lead and control Northern opinion--the opinion which had displayed the moral courage necessary to the prolonged anti-slavery struggle in Congress, and had exhibited the physical courage to accept the gage of battle and prosecute a gigantic war in support of deep-rooted convictions. The speeches of the President had defined his position, and the Nation awaited the series of measures with which he would inaugurate his policy. Public interest in the subject would indeed have caused greater impatience if public attention had not in every Northern State been intently occupied in welcoming to their homes the troops, who in thinned ranks and with battered standards were about to close their military career and resume the duties of peaceful citizens.

The personal character and political bias of the members of the Cabinet, and especially their opinions respecting the policy which the President had indicated, became therefore a matter of controlling importance. The Cabinet had undergone many changes since its original organization in March, 1861. The subst.i.tution of Mr. Stanton for Mr.

Cameron and of Mr. Fessenden for Mr. Chase has already been noticed; but on the day of Mr. Lincoln's second inauguration Mr. Fessenden returned to the Senate, resuming the seat which he had left the July previous, and which had in the interim been filled by Nathan A.

Farwell, an experienced s.h.i.+p-builder and s.h.i.+p-master of Maine, who possessed an extraordinarily accurate knowledge of the commercial history of the country. Mr. Farwell is still living, vigorous in health and in intellect.

When Mr. Fessenden left the Treasury, he was succeeded by Hugh McCulloch, whose valuable service as Comptroller of the Currency had secured for him the promotion with which Mr. Lincoln now honored him.

Mr. McCulloch was a native of Maine, who had gone to the West in his early manhood, and had earned a strong position as a business man in his Indiana home. He was a descendant of that small but prolific colony of Scotch and Scotch-Irish who had settled in northern New England, and whose blood has enriched all who have had the good fortune to inherit it. Mr. McCulloch was a devoted Whig, and was so loyal to the Union that during the war he could do nothing else than give his influence to the Republican party. But he was hostile to the creed of the Abolitionist, was conservative in all his modes of thought, and wished the Union restored quite regardless of the fate of the negro.

He believed that unwise discussion of the slavery question had brought our troubles upon us, and that it would be inexcusable to continue an agitation which portended trouble in another form. The policy which he desired to see adopted was that which should restore the Rebel States to their old relations with the Union upon the freest possible conditions and within the shortest possible time.

Mr. Stanton, though originally a pro-slavery Democrat, had by the progress of the war been converted to the creed of the most radical wing of the Republican party. The aggressive movement, the denunciatory declarations made by Mr. Johnson against the "rebels" and "traitors" of the South, immediately after his accession to the Presidency, were heartily re-echoed by Mr. Stanton, who looked forward with entire satisfaction to the vigorous policy so vigorously proclaimed. Mr. Stanton's tendency in this direction had been strengthened by the intolerance and hatred of his old Democratic friends,--of whom Judge Black was a type,--who lost no opportunity to denounce him as a renegade to his party, as one who had been induced by place to forswear his old creed of State rights. Such hostility should, however, be accounted a crown of honor to Mr. Stanton. He certainly came to the public service with patriotic and not with sordid motives, surrendering a most brilliant position at the bar, and with it the emolument of which in the absence of acc.u.mulated wealth his family was in daily need.

Mr. Stanton's observation and wide experience through the years of the war had taught him to distrust the Southern leaders. Now that they had been subdued by force, yielding at the point of the bayonet when they could no longer resist, he did not believe that they should be regarded as returning prodigals to be embraced and wept over, for whom fatted calves should be killed, and who should be welcomed at once to the best in their father's house. He thought rather that works meet for repentance should be shown by these offenders against the law both of G.o.d and man, that they should be held to account in some form for the peril with which they had menaced the Nation, and for the agony they had inflicted upon her loyal sons. Mr. Stanton was therefore, by every impulse of his heart and by every conviction of his mind, favorable to the policy which the President had indicated, if not indeed a.s.sured, to the people.

Gideon Welles of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy, was a member of the original Cabinet of Mr. Lincoln. He belonged by habit of thought and former affiliation to the Democratic party: he had united with the Republicans solely upon the slavery issue. With the destruction of slavery his sympathies with the party were lessened. The industrial policy which the Republicans had adopted during the war was distasteful to Mr. Welles in time of peace. He had been a bureau-officer in the Navy Department during Mr. Polk's administration, and believed in the wisdom of the tariff of 1846, to which he gave the support of his pen.

He possessed a strong instinct, but manifested little warmth of feeling or personal attachment to any one. He was a man of high character, but full of prejudices and a good hater. He wrote well, but was disposed to dip his pen in gall. He was careful as to matters of fact, fortified his memory by an accurate diary, and had an innate love of controversy. With slavery abolished, the tendency of his mind was towards a lenient policy in Southern matters and for the promptest mode of reconstruction.

James Harlan of Iowa was Secretary of the Interior. Caleb B. Smith, who was a member of Mr. Lincoln's original Cabinet, had resigned in order to accept a Federal judges.h.i.+p in Indiana, and his able a.s.sistant-secretary, John P. Usher, had been promoted to the head of the department, fulfilling his trust to Mr. Lincoln's satisfaction.

He in turn resigned, and was succeeded by Mr. Harlan who was nominated by Mr. Lincoln, and unanimously confirmed by the Senate on the 9th of March--the confirmation to take effect on the 15th of May. It was an exceptional form of appointment; but when the date was reached, President Johnson insisted that the new Secretary should a.s.sume the duties of the office. Mr. Harlan was a well-educated man with strong natural parts. He had shown admirable capacity for public affairs in various positions in Iowa, and had served that State efficiently in the Senate of the United States, which he entered March 4, 1855, at thirty-five years of age. He was a p.r.o.nounced and unflinching Republican, ready from personal attachment to Mr. Lincoln to follow him in any public policy, and while somewhat distrustful of Johnson was undoubtedly gratified and re-a.s.sured by the tone of his speeches. Mr.

Harlan was not hasty in judgment but thoughtful and reflective, and aimed always to be just in his conclusions.

William Dennison of Ohio was Postmaster-General. He had succeeded Montgomery Blair during the Presidential campaign of 1864, when that officer's resignation was asked by the President as a means of appeasing the unreasonable and unreasoning body of men who had attempted to divide the Republican party at the height of the war by the nomination of General Fremont as a candidate for the Presidency.

Mr. Dennison was an amiable man of high principles and just intentions, but he was not endowed with executive force or the qualities of a leader. He had secured the warm friends.h.i.+p of Mr. Lincoln during his service as war governor of Ohio. His selection of president of the convention that nominated Mr. Lincoln a second time was due to the zeal and the warmth with which he had supported the National Administration. His sympathies and a.s.sociations were all with the strong Republican element of the country, and he was sure to be firm and exacting in his views of a reconstruction policy.

James Speed was Attorney-General. He had succeeded Edward Bates in December, 1864, and was selected for reasons which were partly personal, partly public. He was a Kentuckian and a Clay Whig, two points in his history which strongly attracted the favor of Mr.

Lincoln. But more than all, he was the brother of Joshua Speed, with whom in young manhood, if not indeed in boyhood, Mr. Lincoln had been closely a.s.sociated in Illinois. Of most kindly and generous nature, Mr. Lincoln was slow to acquire intimacies, and had few close friends.h.i.+ps. But those who knew him well cannot fail to remember the kindling eye, the warmth of expression, the depth of personal interest and attachment with which he always spoke of "Josh Speed," and the almost boyish fervor with which he related incidents and anecdotes of their early a.s.sociation. James Speed, to whom Mr. Lincoln had been thus drawn, was a highly respectable lawyer, and was altogether a fit man to succeed Mr. Bates as the Border-State member of the Cabinet. As a Southern man, he was expected to favor a lenient policy towards his offending brethren, and was supposed to look coldly upon much that was implied in the President's declarations.

Of the six Cabinet ministers thus enumerated, it will be seen that three--Mr. McCulloch, Mr. Welles, and Mr. Speed--might be regarded as favoring a conservative plan of reconstruction, and three--Mr. Stanton, Mr. Harlan, and Mr. Dennison--a radical plan. These positions were thus a.s.signed from circ.u.mstantial evidence rather than from direct declarations of the gentlemen themselves. At a time so critical, responsible officials were naturally reserved and cautious in the expression of opinions. But it was instinctively perceived by close observers of public events, that in correctly estimating the influence of the Cabinet upon the policy of President Johnson, great consideration must be given to the att.i.tude which Mr. Seward might a.s.sume. If his strength should go with Mr. Stanton and the radical wing of the Cabinet, the President would be readily and completely confirmed in the line of policy frequently forecast in his speeches.

If on the other hand, Mr. Seward should follow the generally antic.i.p.ated course, and take ground against the harsh and vengeful spirit indicated by the President, a struggle would ensue, of which the issue would be doubtful.

During the period in which Mr. Johnson had been copiously ill.u.s.trating the guilt of treason, and avowing his intention to punish traitors with the severest penalty known to the law, Mr. Seward lay wounded and helpless. His injuries, received at the hands of the a.s.sa.s.sin, Payne, at almost the same moment in which Booth fired his fatal shot at the President, were at first considered mortal. The murderous a.s.sault came only a short time after a severe injury Mr. Seward had received in consequence of being violently thrown from his carriage. The shock to his nervous system from the attack of the a.s.sa.s.sin was so great that his physicians did not for some days permit him to learn the fate of the President, or even to know that his own son, Mr. Frederick Seward, who had been his faithful and able a.s.sistant at the State Department, was also one of the victims of the plot of a.s.sa.s.sination, and was lying, as it was feared, and indeed generally believed, at the point of death.

To the joy no less than to the surprise of the entire country Mr.

Seward rallied and regained his strength very rapidly. He was wounded on the night of the 14th of April. By the first of May he had so far recovered as to be informed somewhat minutely of the sorrowful situation. By the tenth of the month he received visits from the President and his fellow-members of the Cabinet, and conferred with them on the engrossing questions that pressed upon the Administration.

On the 20th he repaired to the Department of State--which then occupied the present site of the north front of the Treasury building--and held conference with foreign ministers, especially with the minister of France, touching the complication in Mexico. From that time onward, though still weak, and bowed down with grief by the death of Mr.

Lincoln and the possibly impeding death of one still nearer to him, Mr.

Seward gave close attention to public affairs. The need of action and of energy so pressed upon him that he found no time to utter lamentation, none to indulge even in the most sacred personal grief.

The heroic element of the man was displayed at its best. His moral strength, his mental fibre, his wiry const.i.tution were all tested to their utmost, and no doubt to the serious shortening of his days.

Mr. Seward feared that the country was in danger of suffering very seriously from a possible, if not indeed probable, mistake of the Administration. In the creed of his own statesmans.h.i.+p, there was no article that comprehended revenge as a just motive for action. No man had suffered more of personal obloquy from the South than he, no one living had received deeper personal injury from the demoniac spirit, the wicked inspiration of the rebellion. But he did not for one moment permit those causes which would have powerfully influenced lower natures to control his action, or even to extort a single word of pa.s.sionate resentment.

It had been Mr. Seward's fortune at different epochs in the country's history and in different phases of his own career to incur the harshest censure from political a.s.sociates. He had been accused at one time of urging the anti-slavery cause so far as to endanger the Union; and, when the Union was endangered, he was accused of being willing to sacrifice the anti-slavery cause to save it. "The American people,"

said he in February, 1861, "have in our day two great interests,--one the ascendency of freedom, the other the integrity of the Union. The slavery interest has derived its whole political power from bringing the latter object into antagonism with the former. Twelve years ago Freedom was in danger, and the Union was not. . . . To-day practically Freedom is not in danger, and the Union is. With the loss of the Union, all would be lost." Mr. Seward, influenced by this belief, went farther in the direction of conciliation for the avoidance of war than his a.s.sociates were willing to follow. His words gave offense to some who had long been his most earnest supporters,--a fact thus pointedly recognized by him: "I speak now singly for Union, striving if possible to save it peaceably; if not possible, then to cast the responsibility upon the party of slavery. For this singleness of speech, I am suspected of infidelity to freedom." But Mr. Seward held his course firmly, and waited for vindication as men of rect.i.tude and true greatness can afford to wait. "I refer myself not to the men of my time, but to the judgment of history."

A similar dedication of himself to the judgment of history was in Mr.

Seward's opinion again demanded of him. He was firmly persuaded that the wisest plan of reconstruction was the one which would be speediest; that for the sake of impressing the world with the strength and the marvelous power of self-government, with its Law, its Order, its Peace, we should at the earliest possible moment have every State restored to its normal relations with the Union. He did not believe that guarantee of any kind beyond an oath of renewed loyalty was needful.

He was willing to place implicit faith in the coercive power of self-interest operating upon the men lately in rebellion. He agreed neither with the President's proclaimed policy of blood, nor with that held by the vast majority of his own political a.s.sociates, which, avoiding the rigor of personal punishment, sought by exclusion from political honor and emolument to administer wholesome discipline to the men who had brought peril to the Government and suffering to the people.

Mr. Seward was undoubtedly influenced in no small degree in these conclusions by the habit of mind he had acquired in conducting the foreign affairs of the Government during the period of the war. He had keenly felt the reproach, the taunt, and the open or ill-disguised satisfaction reflected by a large number of the public men of Europe that we were no longer and could never again be "the _United_ States of America." He felt that the experiment of Imperial Government in Mexico, then in progress under Maximilian, was a disturbing element, and tended by possible conflicts on this continent to embroil us with at least two great European powers. The defense against that unwelcome alternative, and the defense against its evil result, if it should come, would in his judgment be found in a completely restored Union--with the National Government supreme, and all its parts working in harmony and in strength. He believed moreover that the legislation which should affect the South, now that peace had returned, should be shared by representatives of that section, and that as such partic.i.p.ation must at last come if we were to have a restored Republic, the wisest policy was to concede it at once, and not nurture by delay a new form of discontent, and induce by withholding confidence a new phase of distrust and disobedience among the Southern people.

Entertaining these views, and deeply impressed with the importance of incorporating them in the plan of reconstruction, Mr. Seward rose from his sick-bed, pale, emaciated, and sorrowful, to persuade his a.s.sociates in the Government, of the wisdom and necessity of adopting them. He had undoubtedly a hard task with the President. The two men were naturally antagonistic on so many points that agreement and cordiality seemed impossible upon a question in regard to which they held views diametrically opposite. Mr. Johnson inherited all his political principles from the Democratic party. He had been filled with an intense hatred of the Whigs and with an almost superst.i.tious dread of the Federalists. Mr. Seward and he were therefore political antipodes. The one was the eulogist and follower of John Quincy Adams, the other was a sincere believer in the creed and the measures of Andrew Jackson. As Adams and Jackson had agreed only in devotion to the Union, so now Seward and Johnson seemed to have no other principle of Government in common, and that principle was equally strong in each.

Not only was this obstacle of inherent difference of political view in Mr. Seward's way, but he also encountered an intense personal prejudice which even while he was disabled by wounds had been insinuated into the President's mind. Nor had Mr. Seward any force of popularity at the time with the Republican party of the country. It had fallen to his lot during the four eventful years of the war to a.s.sume unpleasant responsibilities and to perform ungracious acts. He was not at the head of a department where popular applause awaited his ablest work, or where popular attention was attracted by the most brilliant triumphs of his diplomatic correspondence.

The successful placing of a vast loan among the people redounded everywhere to the praise of Mr. Chase. The gaining of a victory in the field reflected credit upon Mr. Stanton. But a series of diplomatic papers far outreaching in scope and grasp those of any statesman or publicist with whom he was in correspondence, recalling in skill the best efforts of Talleyrand, and in spirit the loftiest ideals of Jefferson, did not advance the popularity of Mr. Seward because the field of his achievements and triumphs was not one in which the ma.s.ses of the people took an active interest. The most difficult and in many cases the most successful of diplomatic work is necessarily confidential for long periods. In legislative halls, discussion on questions of interest enlists public attention and holds the popular mind in suspense before the fate of the measure is decided. But the dispatches and arguments of a minister of Foreign Affairs, which may lead to results of great consequence to his country, are not gazetted till long after they have borne their fruit; and the public rejoicing in the conclusion, seldom turns to examine the toilsome process by which it was attained. It was from the comparative isolation of the Department of State, four years removed from active contact with the people, that Mr. Seward now a.s.sumed the task of controlling the new President and directing his policy on the weightiest question of his Administration.

Those who thoroughly knew Mr. Seward through all the stages of his political career were aware that, great as he was in public speech, in the Senate, at the Bar, before popular a.s.semblies, cogent and powerful as he had so often proved with his pen, his one peculiar gift, greater perhaps than any other with which he was endowed, was his faculty, in personal intercourse with one man or with a small number of men, of enforcing his own views and taking captive his hearers. With the President alone, or with a body no larger than a Cabinet, where the conferences and discussion are informal and conversational, Mr. Seward shone with remarkable brilliancy and with power unsurpa.s.sed. He possessed a characteristic rare among men who have been long accustomed to lead,--he was a good listener. He gave deferential attention to remarks addressed to him, paid the graceful and insinuating compliment of seeming much impressed, and offered the delicate flattery, when he came to reply, of repeating the argument of his opponent in phrase far more affluent and eloquent than that in which it was originally stated.

In his final summing up of the case, when those with whom he was conferring were, in Dr. Johnson's phrase, "talked out," Mr. Seward carried all before him. His logic was clear and true, his ill.u.s.tration both copious and felicitous, his rapid citation of historical precedents surprising even to those who thought they had themselves exhausted the subject. His temper was too amiable and serene for stinging wit or biting sarcasm, but he had a playful humor which kept the minds of his hearers in that receptive and compliant state which disposed them the more readily to give full and generous consideration to all the strong parts of his argument. It might well indeed be said of Mr. Seward as Mr. Webster said of Samuel Dexter, "The earnestness of his convictions wrought conviction in others. One was convinced and believed and a.s.sented because it was gratifying and delightful to think and feel and believe in unison with an intellect of such evident superiority."

Equipped with these rare endowments, it is not strange that Mr. Seward made a deep impression upon the mind of the President. In conflicts of opinion the superior mind, the subtle address, the fixed purpose, the gentle yet strong will, must in the end prevail. Mr. Seward gave to the President the most luminous exposition of his own views, warm, generous, patriotic in tone. He set before him the glory of an Administration which should completely re-establish the union of the States, and re-unite the hearts of the people, now estranged by civil conflict. He impressed him with the danger of delay to the Republic and with the discredit which would attach to himself if he should leave to another President the grateful task of reconciliation. He pictured to him the National Constellation no longer obscured but with every star in its...o...b..t, all revolving in harmony, and once more s.h.i.+ning with a brilliancy undimmed by the smallest cloud in the political heavens.

By his arguments and his eloquence Mr. Seward completely captivated the President. He effectually persuaded him that a policy of anger and hate and vengeance could lead only to evil results; that the one supreme demand of the country was confidence and repose; that the ends of justice could be reached by methods and measures altogether consistent with mercy. The President was gradually influenced by Mr.

Seward's arguments, though their whole tenor was against his strongest predilections and against his p.r.o.nounced and public committals to a policy directly the reverse of that to which he was now, almost imperceptibly to himself, yielding a.s.sent. The man who had in April avowed himself in favor of "the halter for intelligent, influential traitors," who pa.s.sionately declared during the interval between the fall of Richmond and the death of Mr. Lincoln that "traitors should be arrested, tried, convicted, and hanged," was now about to proclaim a policy of reconstruction without attempting the indictment of even one traitor, or issuing a warrant for the arrest of a single partic.i.p.ant in the Rebellion aside from those suspected of personal crime in connection with the noted conspiracy of a.s.sa.s.sination.

In this serious struggle with the President, Mr. Seward's influence was supplemented and enhanced by the timely and artful interposition of clever men from the South. A large cla.s.s in that section quickly perceived the amelioration of the President's feelings, and they used every judicious effort to forward and develop it. They were ready to forget all the hard words of Johnson, and to forgive all his harsh acts, for the great end to be gained to their States and their people by turning him aside from his proclaimed policy of punis.h.i.+ng a great number of rebels with the utmost severity of the law. Johnson's wrath was evidently appeased by the complaisance shown by leading men of the South. He was not especially open to flattery, but it was noticed that words of commendation from his native section seemed peculiarly pleasing to him.

The tendency of his mind under such influences was perhaps not unnatural. It is a common instinct of mankind to covet in an especial degree the good will of the community among whom the years of childhood and boyhood are spent. Applause from old friends and neighbors is the most grateful that ever reaches human ears. When Was.h.i.+ngton's renown filled two continents, he was still sensitive respecting his popularity among the freeholders of Virginia. When Bonaparte had kingdoms and empires at his feet, he was jealous of his fame with the untamed spirits of Corsica, where among the veterans of Paoli he had received the fiery inspiration of war. The boundless admiration and grat.i.tude of American never compensated Lafayette for the failure of his career in France. This instinct had its full sway over Johnson. It was not in the order of nature that he should esteem his popularity among Northern men, to whom he was a stranger, as highly as he would esteem it among the men of the South, with whom he had been a.s.sociated during the whole of his career. In that section he was born. There he had acquired the fame which brought him national honors, and after his public service should end he looked forward to a peaceful close of life in the beautiful land which had always been his home.

Still another influence wrought powerfully on the President's mind. He had inherited poverty in a community where during the slave system riches were especially envied and honored. He had been reared in the lower walks of life among a people peculiarly given to arbitrary social distinction and to aristocratic pretensions as positive and tenacious as they were often ill-founded and unsubstantial. From the ranks of the rich and the aristocratic in the South, Johnson had always been excluded. Even when he was governor of his State or a senator of the United States, he found himself socially inferior to many whom he excelled in intellect and character. His sentiments were regarded as hostile to slavery, and to be hostile to slavery was to fall inevitably under the ban in any part of the South for the fifty years preceding the war. His political strength was with the non-slave-holding white population of Tennessee which was vastly larger than the slave-holding population, the proportion indeed being twenty-seven to one. With these a "good fellow" ranked all the higher for not possessing the graces or, as they would term them, the "airs" of society.

As Mr. Johnson grew in public favor and increased in reputation, as his talents were admitted and his power in debate appreciated, he became eager to compel recognition from those who had successfully proscribed him. A man who is born to social equality with the best of his community, and accustomed in his earlier years to its enjoyment, does not feel the sting of attempted exclusion, but is rather made pleasantly conscious of the _prestige_ which inspires the adverse effort and can look upon its bitterness in a spirit of lofty disdain.

Wendell Phillips, descended from a long line of distinguished ancestry, was amused rather than disconcerted by the strenuous but futile attempts to ostracize him for the maintenance of opinions which he lived to see his native city adopt and enforce. But the feeling is far different in a man who has experienced only a galling sense of inferiority. To such a one, advancing either in fortune or in fame, social prominence seems a necessity, without which other gifts const.i.tute only the aggravations of life.

It was therefore with a sense of exaltation that Johnson beheld as applicants for his consideration and suppliants for his mercy many of those in the South who had never recognized him as a social equal. A mind of true loftiness would not have been swayed by such a change of relative positions, but it was inevitable that a mind of Johnson's type, which if not ign.o.ble was certainly not n.o.ble, should yield to its flattering and seductive influence. In the present att.i.tude of the leading men of the South towards him, he saw the one triumph which sweetened his life, the one requisite which had been needed to complete his happiness. In securing the good opinion of his native South, he would attain the goal of his highest ambition, he would conquer the haughty enemy who during all the years of his public career had been able to fix upon him the bade of social inferiority.

On the 29th of May (1865), nineteen days after Mr. Seward's first interview with President Johnson, and nine days after his first visit to the State Department, two decisive steps were taken in the work of reconstruction. Both steps proceeded on the theory that every act needful for the rehabilitation of the seceded States could be accomplished by the Executive Department of the Government. This was known to be the favorite doctrine of Mr. Seward, and the President readily acquiesced in its correctness. There in nothing of which a public officer can be so easily persuaded as of the enlarged jurisdiction which pertains to his station. If the officer be of bold mind, he arrogates power for purposes of ambition; and even with timid men power is often a.s.sumed as a measure of protection and defense. Mr.

Johnson was a man of unquestioned courage, and was never afraid to a.s.sume personal and official responsibility when circ.u.mstances justified and demanded it. Mr. Seward had therefore no difficulty in persuading him that he possessed, as President, every power needful to accomplish the complete reconstruction of the rebellious States.