Such laws, for whatever purpose passed, had a powerful effect on Northern sentiment already influenced by reported cruelties, while the Southern people's aversion to Union soldiers settling in their midst intensified the feeling.

If States can be reconstructed in a summer and congressmen admitted in a winter, it was said, the South, helped by the Democracy of the North, might again be in control of the Government within two years.

These considerations were bound to affect the judgment of Republicans, and when Stevens began to talk and the real conditions in the South came to be known, it aroused party indignation to a high pitch in the House.

It proved the unpopularity of Johnson's policy and indicated increasing estrangement between the President and his party.

The division in the party spread with the rapidity of a rising thunder cloud.

The President had developed several undesirable characteristics, being essentially obstinate and conceited, the possessor of a bad temper, and of a coarse and vulgar personality.

Besides, it meant a complete and final separation between the President and his party.

Dix became temporary chairman, and the resolutions, reciting the issue between the President and the Republicans, laid great emphasis upon the right of every State, without condition, to representation in Congress as soon as the war had…

Besides, he lacked the most important qualification for a legislative leader--the rare political sagacity to know the thoughts of people and to catch the tiniest shadow of a coming event.

But Seward's principles which rarely harmonised with those of the Radicals, now became more conspicuous and sharply defined because of the tactlessness and uncompromising spirit of Lincoln's successor.

To a convention filled with crutches, scarred faces, armless sleeves, and representatives of Andersonville and Libby Prisons, such an attitude seemed like a betrayal of his trust, and the resentment of the delegates, perhaps, was not…

The Northern people themselves were not yet ready for negro suffrage, and had the South promptly accepted the Fourteenth Amendment and the congressional plan of reconstruction, it is doubtful if the Fifteenth Amendment would have been…

The country, it was argued, required peace; the people have made up their minds to have peace; and to insure peace the Southern States must enjoy their constitutional right to seats in Congress.

The obscuration of State policies and partisan prejudices made this broad and patriotic overture, devoted exclusively to a more perfect peace, sound as soft and winning as the spider's invitation to the fly.

But Hoffman represented neither the principles nor the purposes of the Philadelphia convention.

The success of that movement depended largely upon the pre-eminent fitness of the men who led it.

The question was, would the State be safer in the hands of a well-known Democratic statesman like Dix than in the control of Fenton and the Radicals?

In vigour of intellect, in terseness of expression, and in grasp of questions presented for consideration, Richmond was recognised as the first unofficial man in America, and he had long thought it time for the Democratic party to get into…

Few men could have avoided the temptation to assume the tone of the wronged one who endures much and will not complain.

If, under a keen sense of injustice, he has since erred in judgment or temper, none will deny the sufficiency of the provocation.

One cause of distrust was the latter's replacement of Republican office-holders with men noted for disloyalty during the war.

The great divine had suffered severe criticism for casting his large influence on the side of Johnson, and he now saw success melting away because of the President's vicious course.

On the other hand, Democrats traced Southern conditions to opposition to the President's policy, charging Congress with a base betrayal of the Constitution in requiring the late Confederate States to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment as a…

They felt themselves in the presence of one whom they could trust as well as admire.

Davis had been on the Supreme bench since 1857, and although he had had little opportunity to develop statesmanship, his enthusiastic devotion to the Union had discovered resources of argument and a fearless independence which were…