power in the country, except by giving their assent to the incorpora tion of the Fourteenth Amendment in the Constitution. The bill from the Reconstruction Committee requiring this as a condition was not enacted into law, but the admission of Tennessee was a precedent stronger than law. Of all the seceding States Tennessee was held to be the least offending, and the feeling of kindliness towards her had been manifest from the first among Republicans. It was evident therefore to the least observing, that no other State which had been engaged in the Rebellion would be permitted to resume the privilege of representation on less exacting conditions than had been imposed on Tennessee. It might be that their own conduct would cause more exacting conditions to be imposed.

Congress adjourned on the 28th of July. Elections were to be held in the ensuing autumn for representatives to the Fortieth Congress, and an opportunity was thus promptly afforded to test the popular feeling on the issue raised by the President's plan of Reconstruction. The appeal was to be made to the same constituency which two years before had chosen him to the Vice-Presidency,— augmented by the vote of Tennessee, now once more authorized to take part in electing the representatives of the nation. Seldom in the history of the country has a weightier question been submitted to popular arbitrament; seldom has a popular decision been evoked which was destined to exercise so far-reaching an influence upon the progress of the nation, upon the prosperity of the people. It was not an ordinary political contest between partisans of recognized and chronic hostility. It was a deadly struggle between the Executive and Legislative Departments of the Government, both of which had been chosen by the same party. This peculiar fact imparted to the contest a degree of personal acrimony and political rancor never before exhibited in the biennial election of representatives in Congress.

CHAPTER X.

A CABINET CRISIS. RESIGNATION OF WILLIAM DENNISON, POSTMASTER-GENERAL, JAMES SPEED, Attorney-GENERAL, AND JAMES HARLAN, SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR. SUCCEEDED RESPECTIVELY BY ALEXANDER W. RANDALL, HENRY STANBURY, And Orville H. BROWNING. - POLITICAL CAMPAIGN OF 1866.- FOUR NATIONAL CONVENTIONS.-Two FAVORING THE PRESIDENT; TWO ADVERSE.PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION, AUGUST 14, favoring tTHE PRESIDENT. — IMPRESSIVE IN NUMBERS, DISTINGUISHED IN DELEGATES. PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION OF SEPTEMBER 13. — SOUTHERN LOYALISTS AND NORTHERN SYMPATHIZERS. — LIST OF PROMINENT MEN IN ATTENDANCE. — MARKED EFFECT OF ITS PROCEEDINGS. SPEECH OF HONORABLE JAMES SPEED. — ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE.-WRITTEN BY THE HONORABLE J. A. J. CRESWELL. —SOLDIERS' CONVENTION At Cleveland. – FAVORABLE TO PRESIDENT. -SPEECH OF GENERAL EWING. CONVENTION PRINCIPALLY DEMOCRATIC IN MEMBERSHIP. — ITS PROCEEDINGS ineffectivE. - SOLDIERS' CONVENTION at Pittsburg. - HOSTILE TO PRESIDENT.-GENERAL COX PRESIDES. -DISTINGUISHED OFFICERS PRESENT. - TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND SOLDIERS PRESENT. - GREAT EFFECT FOLLOWED IT IN THE COUNTRY. FOURTEenth AmendMENT THE RALLYING-POINT. - POLITICAL EVENTS OF THE SUMMER. - HOSTILE TO PRESIDENT.-NEW-ORLEANS RIOT OF JULY 30.— Great Slaughter. — Rebel OfficerS IN LOUISIANA RESPONSIBLE. — INVESTIGATED BY CONGRESS. ALSO BY MILITARY AUTHORITIES. REPORTS SUBSTANTIALLY AGREE. - CENSURE OF THE PRESIDENT. -RESULT HURTFUL TO HIS ADMINISTRATION. HIS FAMOUS TOUR. INJURIOUS TO HIS ADMINISTRATION. REPUBLICANS VICTORIOUS IN ELECTIONS THROUGHOUT THE NORTH. - DEMOCRATS VICTORIOUS THROUGHOUT THE SOUTH. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES REPUBLICAN BY THREE TO ONE. - PRESIDENT DEPRESSED. — IMPORTANCE OF THE ELECTIONS OF 1866.-NEGRO SUFFRAGE. — THE DIFFICULTY OF IMPOSING IT ON THE SOUTH. — FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT THE TEST FOR RECONSTRUCTION.

THE

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 impending. 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 talent, 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 Conventions, 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 of 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. Vallandigham 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. Vallandigham'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. Vallandigham 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