of the Congressmen-elect in these States had been, it was said, active workers against the Government. These facts greatly disturbed the loyal people. They had witnessed with great anxiety the evident usurpations of power by the President, the exercise of which, as he had done, belonged exclusively to the functions of the representatives of the people in Congress assembled. The prescriptions of the Constitution are clear on that point. Yet the people waited patiently for the meeting of Congress in December, with the quieting knowledge that a majority of loyal men would be there, and that each House had the right to judge of the qualifications of its own members. It was a settled belief that disloyal men would not be allowed to enter either House over the bar of a test-oath prescribed by law, passed on the 22d of July, 1862. That law required every member to make oath that he had not "voluntarily borne arms against the United States since he had been a citizen thereof," or "voluntarily given aid, countenance, counsel or encouragement to persons engaged in hostilities thereto," and had never "yielded voluntary support to any pretended government, authority, power, or constitution within the United States, hostile or inimical thereto."

The subject of reorganization was among the first business of the Thirtyninth Congress which assembled on the 4th of December, 1865. On the first day of the session, by a vote of 133 against 36, Congress agreed to a joint resolution to appoint a joint committee to be composed of nine members of the House and six of the Senate, to "inquire into the condition of the States which formed the so-called Confederate States of America, and report whether they, or any of them, are entitled to be represented in either House of Congress, with leave to report at any time, by bill or otherwise; and until such report shall have been made and finally acted upon by Congress, no member shall be received in either House from any of the so-called Confederate States; and all papers relating to the representatives of the said States, shall be referred to the said committee." This body was known by the misnamed "Reconstruction Committee." It should have been "Reorganization Committee."

This action of Congress was a virtual condemnation of the President's usurpations. It was a legitimate interference of the representatives of the people with his chosen policy of reorganization, and he was highly offended. He soon manifested open and violent hostility to the legislative branch of the Government, and maintained that position during the whole of his administration. In a speech to the populace of the capital on the 22d of February, 1866—a speech which every good American would gladly blot from memory and from the records of our country, if possible—the Presi dent, evidently under the malign influence of an unfortunate habit, for

CHAP. XXVI.

THE PRESIDENT'S POLITICAL TOUR.

1707

getting the dignity of his station, and insensible to the gravity of the question at issue, actually denounced by name leading members of Congress. and the Republican party which had given him their generous confidence. In that speech he used slang phrases in speaking of public men, such as "dead duck," and exhibited a recklessness of assertion which no sober statesman would have uttered. The American people felt humiliated by this exhibition of the weakness of their Chief Magistrate.

But this exhibition was a small matter compared with what occurred later in the year (August and September, 1866) when the President and a part of his cabinet, with the pretext of honoring the memory of Senator Douglas by being present at the dedication of a monument to his memory erected at Chicago, on the 6th of September, made a political tour by a circuitous way through several States, to that city and beyond. He harangued the people by the way, in language utterly unbecoming the Chief Magistrate of a nation, and attempted to sow the dangerous seeds of sedition, by denouncing Congress as an illegal body because some of the disorganized States were not represented in it; declaring that it deserved no respect from the people, and that a majority of the members were traitors, "trying to break up the Government." That journey of the President, so disgraceful in all

ANDREW JOHNSON.

its features-its low partisan object, its immoral performances, and its pitiful results-forms a dismal paragraph in the history of the Republic.

That tour was suggested and its performances were inspired by the gathering in convention, at Philadelphia, on the 14th of August (1866), chiefly of men who had been engaged in the insurrection, and their sympathizers at the North. Their object was to form a new party, with President Johnson as their standard-bearer; but so discordant were the elements gathered there, that no one was allowed to debate questions of public

interest, for fear of producing a disruption and the consequent failure of the scheme. It did utterly fail. Soon afterward a convention of loyal men from the South was held at Philadelphia, in which representative Republicans in the North participated. The President's journey being wholly for a partisan purpose, members of the latter convention followed in his track, making speeches in many places in support of the measures of Congress for effecting reorganization. They applied the antidote where the President had administered poison, and neutralized its effects.

So disgraceful was the conduct of the President when at Cleveland and St. Louis, in the attitude of a mere demagogue making a tour for a partisan purpose, under a false pretense, that the Common Council of Cincinnati, on his return journey, refused to accord him a public reception. The Common Council of Pittsburg, in Pennsylvania, did the same; and when, on the 15th of September, Mr. Johnson and his party returned to the Capital, the country felt a relief from a sense of deep mortification.

Having, soon after the meeting of Congress, laid aside the mask of assumed friendship for those who had labored most earnestly for the suppression of the insurrection and for the good of the freedmen, the President used the veto power-his most efficient weapon-in trying to thwart the representatives of the people in their efforts to reorganize the disorganized States, and to quickly secure a full and permanent restoration of the Union on the basis of equal and exact justice. In February, 1866, he vetoed an act for enlarging the operations of the Freedmen's Bureau, which had been established for the relief of freedmen, refugees, and for the cultivation of abandoned lands. In March he vetoed an act known as the Civil Rights Law, which was intended to secure to all citizens, without regard to color or previous condition of slavery, equal civil rights in the Republic. These acts became laws in spite of his veto, by the Constitutional vote of two-thirds of each House in their favor. The President's uncompromising warfare upon the legislative branch of the Republic, disgusted his ministers, who could not agree with him, and they resigned with the exception of Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War. The friends of the Republic urged him to remain, believing his retention of the bureau at that critical period in the life of the nation would be conducive to the public benefit. He did so, and became the object of the mad President's bitter hatred.

Congress worked assiduously in efforts to perfect the reorganization of the Republic; and on the 29th of July, after a long and laborious session, adjourned. On the 2d of April, the President, in a proclamation, had formally declared the Civil War to be at an end; and the first fruits of the Congressional plan of reorganization was seen by the restoration of the

CHAP. XXVI.

UNFRIENDLINESS OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS.

1709 State of Tennessee to the Union, six days before the adjournment of the National Legislature. Meanwhile notable events in the foreign relations of the Government had occurred. The Emperor of the French had been informed by Secretary Seward that the continuation of French troops in Mexico was not agreeable to the United States; and on the 5th of April (1866) Napoleon's Minister for Foreign Affairs gave assurances to our Government that those troops should be withdrawn within a specified time. This was done; and the Grand Duke Maximilian, of Austria, whom Louis Napoleon had, by military power, placed on a throne in our neighboring republic, with the title of Emperor, was deserted by the perfidious ruler of France. The deceived and betrayed Maximilian, after struggling against the native republican government for awhile, was captured and shot; and his loving wife, Carlotta, overwhelmed by her misfortunes and grief, became a hopeless lunatic. Such was the sorrowful ending of one of the schemes of the Emperor of the French for the gratification of his ambition. He had itched to aid the Confederates, with a hope that the severance of our Union would give him an opportunity to successfully defy the "Monroe Doctrine," and extend the domination of the Latin race and the Latin church on the American continent, as well as monarchical institutions. As a pretext for sending soldiers to our frontiers, primarily to be ready to assist the enemies of the Republic should expediency warrant the act, the Emperor of the French picked a quarrel with Mexico, overturned its republican government, established a monarchy and supported it by French bayonets until the strength of our Union was made manifest to him.

The British ministry, too, as we have seen, itched to help the Confederates destroy our Republic, and had done so in a large degree, until they were satisfied of the enormous reserved power of our Union against the combined and cowardly attacks of European powers and of internal foes, when they abandoned the insurgents whom they had deceived with false promises, and sneeringly called their political organization the "so-called Confederate States of America." Notwithstanding this faithlessness to their traditions, and fairly implied, if not absolutely stated, treaty stipulations on the part of the rulers of Great Britain, our Government was faithful to them all. When, in the spring of 1866, a military organization of Irish residents in our country, known as the Fenian Brotherhood, associated for the avowed purpose of freeing Ireland from British domination, made a movement, in May and June, for a formidable invasion of the neighboring British Province of Canada, the United States Government, instead of investing them with "belligerent rights," was true to its pledges to Great Britain concerning neutrality laws, interfered, and suppressed the warlike movement.

But these are now things of the past, and should not be held in remembrance with any unkind feelings. At about the same time a peaceful bond of union. was formed with Great Britain, by the successful establishment of permanent telegraphic communication between England and the United States. An account of the first efforts toward this end will be given hereafter.

Notwithstanding the State elections in the autumn of 1866 indicated the decided approval by the people of the United States of the measures adopted by Congress for the restoration of the Union, the President persisted in his warfare with the National Legislature, and upon members of his cabinet who would not approve of his acts. The majority in Congress, feeling strengthened by the popular verdict upon their conduct, went steadily forward in perfecting measures for the restoration of the Union. They took steps for restraining the action of the President, who, it was manifest, had determined to carry out his own policy of reorganization, in defiance of Congress. Unmindful of his conduct, that body plainly indicated their general policy concerning suffrage, by passing a bill on the 14th of December (1866), by a large majority of both Houses, for granting the elective franchise in the District of Columbia (over whose affairs the National Legislature has direct control) to persons "without any distinction on account of color or race." The President vetoed the bill on the 7th of January, 1867, when it was immediately re-enacted by the constitutional vote of both Houses in its favor.

The course of the President in continually opposing his veto and casting obstacles in the way of the dispatch of legislative business, now appeared so essentially and purely factious, and was, withal, so mischievous, that it was resolved to make an effort to put an end to it. On the same day when Johnson vetoed the District of Columbia Suffrage bill, Mr. Ashley, a representative from Ohio, arose in his place, and charged "Andrew Johnson, Vice-President and Acting-President of the United States, with the commission of acts which, in the estimation of the Constitution, are high crimes and misdemeanors, for which he ought to be impeached." Mr. Ashley offered the following specifications, in which he charged him with usurpations and violations of law: (1) in that he has corruptly used the appointing power; (2) in that he has corruptly used the pardoning power; (3) in that he has corruptly used the veto power; (4) in that he has corruptly disposed of public property of the United States; and (5) in that he has corruptly interfered in elections, and committed acts which, in contemplation of the Constitution, are high crimes and misdemeanors. Mr. Ashley also offered a resolution, instructing the Committee on the Judiciary to make inquiries on the subject. This resolution was adopted by 137 to 38,