CHAPTER IV. PRESIDENT JOHNSON AND THE CABINET. -EFFECT OF VICE-PRESIDENT'S ACCESSION.EXAMPLE OF TYLER IN 1841 AND FILLMORE IN 1850.-A VICE-PRESIDENT'S DIFFICULT POSITION. - PERSONNEL OF CABINET IN 1865. ITS NEARLY EVEN DIVISION ON RECONSTRUCTION ISSUES. - PRESUMED POSITION OF EACH MEMBER. - STANTON, HARLAN, AND DENNISON RADICAL.—WELLES, MCCULLOCH, AND SPEED CONSERVATIVE. MR. SEWARD'S RELATION TO THE PRESIDENT. HIS POSITION EXPLAINED. — MR. SEWARD REGAINS HIS HEALTH.-DISPLAY OF HIS PERSONAL POWER.-CHARACTERISTICS OF MR. SEWARD. - SUPERIORITY OF HIS MIND. TENDENCY OF THE PRESIDENT'S MIND.-SOCIAL INFLUENCES AT WORK UPON HIM.-HIS RADICAL CHANGE OF POSITION. - PRESIDENT'S PROCLAMATION MAY 29.- AMNESTY AND PARDON TO REBELS.-THIRTEEN EXCEPTED CLASSES. -THE "TWENTY-THOUSANDDOLLAR DISABILITY. - WARMLY OPPOSED BY MR. SEWARD. - CLEMENCY PROMISED TO EXCEPTED CLASSES. PARDONS APPLIED FOR. - FOURTEEN THOUSAND GRANTED IN NINE MONTHS. ANOTHER PROCLAMATION OF SAME DATE. - PROVISIONAL GOVERNORS APPOINTED. - FIRST FOR NORTH CAROLINA. -EXISTING GovERNMENTS IN VIRGINIA, LOUISIANA, ARKANSAS, AND TENNESSEE RECOGNIZED. — PRESIDENT'S RECONSTRUCTION POLICY. - Now FULLY DISCLOSED. OATH OF ALLEGIANCE PRESCRIBED. - PROVISIONAL GOVERNORS TO ASSEMBLE CONVENTIONS. THE CONVENTIONS TO FORM CONSTITUTIONS. LEGISLATURES THEN TO ASSEMBLE. - WHOLE MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT IN MOTION.-REBELS IN POSSESSION OF STATE GOVERNMENTS.-COLORED MEN EXCLUDED FROM ALL PARTICIPATION. SUFFRAGE LEFT TO THE STATES. - PRESIDENT'S PERSONAL POSITION ON SUffrage. -RECONSTRUCTION SCHEME COMPLETE IN JULY. -THE PRESIDENT AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. - HIS BELIEF THAT THE PARTY WOULD FOLLOW HIM. HIS HOSTILITY TO RADICALS. - PRESIDENT DEPENDS ON CONDUCT OF THE SOUTH.PUBLIC INTEREST TRANSFERRED TO THAT SECTION. - DE -- ECLINING to seek the advice of Congress in the embarrassments 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 Departments 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 association and by identity of views on public questions would naturally be selected as his advisers. He had not forgotten the experience and the fate of the two 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 only 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 embarrass 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-Presidents had too frequently been found. The class of disappointed men who gathered around the Vice-President held a political relation not unlike that of the class 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 fol lowing in the footsteps of the lamented Harrison, to which course he had indeed been enjoined by the dying President in words of the most solemn import. Tyler gave assurances 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 illustrious 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 passed 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 two 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 mass 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—that 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 gauge 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 tattered 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 substitution 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 ship-builder and ship-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 acces sion 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 Staterights. 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 accumulated 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 God 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 assured, 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 intellect, but manifested little warmth of feeling or personal attachment for 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 |