RECONSTRUCTION UNDER JOHNSON.

The following considerations induced me to make a pilgrimage to Washington, where, by accident of fortune, I had a larger acquaintance with influential politicians than other Southern commanders.  When the Whig party dissolved, most of its Northern members joined the Republicans, and now belonged to the reigning faction; and I had consorted with many of them while my father was President and afterward.

Mention has been made of the imprisonment of Governors Clarke and Watts for adopting my advice, and it was but right for me to make an effort to have them released.  Moreover, Jefferson Davis was a prisoner in irons, and it was known that his health was feeble.  Lee, Johnston, and I, with our officers and men, were at large, protected by the terms of our surrenders terms which General Grant had honorably prevented the civil authorities from violating.  If Mr. Davis had sinned, we all were guilty, and I could not rest without making an attempt for his relief.

At the time, it was understood that prisoners on parole should not change their residence without military permission, and leave to go to New York was asked and obtained of General Canby.  By steamer I reached that place in a week, and found that General Dix had just been relieved by General Hooker, to whom I at once reported.  He uttered a shout of welcome (we were old acquaintances), declared that he was more pleased to see me than to see a church (which was doubtless true), made hospitable suggestions of luncheon, champagne, etc., and gave me a permit to go to Washington, regretting that he could not keep me with him.  A warm-hearted fellow is “fighting Joe,” who carried on war like a soldier.

In Washington, at Willard’s a huge inn, filled from garret to cellar with a motley crowd an acquaintance, whom I chanced to meet, informed me that a recent disturbance had induced the belief of the existence of a new plot for assassination, and an order had been published forbidding rebels to approach the capital without the permission of the War Secretary.  Having been at sea for a week, I knew nothing of this, and Hooker had not mentioned it when he gave me the permit to come to Washington.  My informant apprehended my arrest, and kindly undertook to protect me.  Through his intervention I received from the President, Andrew Johnson, permission to stay or go where I chose, with an invitation to visit him at a stated time.

Presenting myself at the “White House,” I was ushered in to the President a saturnine man, who made no return to my bow, but, after looking at me, asked me to take a seat.  Upon succeeding to power Mr. Johnson breathed fire and hemp against the South, proclaimed that he would make treason odious by hanging traitors, and ordered the arrest of General Lee and others, when he was estopped by the action of General Grant.  He had now somewhat abated his wolfish desire for vengeance, and asked many questions about the condition of the South, temper of the people, etc.  I explained the conduct of Governors Clarke and Watts, how they were imprisoned for following my advice, submitted to and approved by General Canby, who would hardly have abetted a new rebellion; and he made memoranda of their cases, as well as of those of many other prisoners, confined in different forts from Boston to Savannah, all of whom were released within a short period.  Fearing to trespass on his time, I left with a request that he would permit me to call again, as I had a matter of much interest to lay before him, and was told the hours at which I would be received.

Thence to the Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, who in former Whig times, as Senator from New York, had been a warm supporter of my father’s administration.  He greeted me cordially, and asked me to dine.  A loin of veal was the piece de resistance of his dinner, and he called attention to it as evidence that he had killed the fatted calf to welcome the returned prodigal.  Though not entirely recovered from the injuries received in a fall from his carriage and the wounds inflicted by the knife of Payne, he was cheerful, and appeared to sympathize with the objects of my mission at least, so far as I could gather his meaning under the cloud of words with which he was accustomed to cover the slightest thought.  One or two other members of the Cabinet, to whom Mr. Seward presented me, were also favorably inclined.  One, the War Secretary, I did not meet.  A spy under Buchanan, a tyrant under Lincoln, and a traitor to Johnson, this man was as cruel and crafty as Domitian.  I never saw him.  In the end conscience, long dormant, came as Alecto, and he was not; and the temple of Justice, on whose threshold he stood, escaped profanation.

In a second interview, President Johnson heard the wish I had so much at heart, permission to visit Jefferson Davis.  He pondered for some time, then replied that I must wait and call again.

Meantime, an opportunity to look upon the amazing spectacle presented by the dwellers at the capital was afforded.  The things seen by the Pilgrims in a dream were at this Vanity Fair visible in the flesh:  “all such merchandise sold as houses, lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, states, lusts, pleasures; and delights of all sorts, as bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, greenbacks, pearls, precious stones, and what not.”  The eye of the inspired tinker had pierced the darkness of two hundred years, and seen what was to come.  The martial tread of hundreds of volunteer generals, just disbanded, resounded in the streets.  Gorged with loot, they spent it as lavishly as Morgan’s buccaneers after the sack of Panama.  Their women sat at meat or walked the highways, resplendent in jewels, spoil of Southern matrons.  The camp-followers of the army were here in high carnival, and in character and numbers rivaled the attendants of Xerxes.  Courtesans swarmed everywhere, about the inns, around the Capitol, in the antechambers of the “White House,” and were brokers for the transaction of all business.  Of a tolerant disposition and with a wide experience of earthly wickedness, I did not feel called upon to cry aloud against these enormities, remembering the fate of Faithful; but I had some doubts concerning divine justice; for why were the “cities of the Plain” overthrown and this place suffered to exist?

The officers of the army on duty at Washington were very civil to me, especially General Grant, whom I had known prior to and during the Mexican war, as a modest, amiable, but by no means promising lieutenant in a marching regiment.  He came frequently to see me, was full of kindness, and anxious to promote my wishes.  His action in preventing violation of the terms of surrender, and a subsequent report that he made of the condition of the South a report not at all pleasing to the radicals endeared him to all Southern men.  Indeed, he was in a position to play a rôle second only to that of Washington, who founded the republic; for he had the power to restore it.  His bearing and conduct at this time were admirable, modest and generous; and I talked much with him of the noble and beneficent work before him.  While his heart seemed to respond, he declared his ignorance of and distaste for politics and politicians, with which and whom he intended to have nothing to do, but confine himself to his duties of commander-in-chief of the army.  Yet he expressed a desire for the speedy restoration of good feeling between the sections, and an intention to advance it in all proper ways.  We shall see when and under what influences he adopted other views.

The President put me off from day to day, receiving me to talk about Southern affairs, but declining to give an answer to my requests.  I found that he always postponed action, and was of an obstinate, suspicious temper.  Like a badger, one had to dig him out of his hole; and he was ever in one except when on the hustings, addressing the crowd.  Of humble birth, a tailor by trade, nature gave him a strong intellect, and he had learned to read after his marriage.  He had acquired much knowledge of the principles of government, and made himself a fluent speaker, but could not rise above the level of the class in which he was born and to which he always appealed.  He well understood the few subjects laboriously studied, and affected to despise other knowledge, while suspicious that those possessing such would take advantage of him.  Self-educated men, as they are called, deprived of the side light thrown on a particular subject by instruction in cognate matters, are narrow and dogmatic, and, with an uneasy consciousness of ignorance, soothe their own vanity by underrating the studies of others.  To the vanity of this class he added that of the demagogue (I use the term in its better sense), and called the wise policy left him by his predecessor “my policy.”  Compelled to fight his way up from obscurity, he had contracted a dislike of those more favored of fortune, whom he was in the habit of calling “the slave-aristocracy,” and became incapable of giving his confidence to any one, even to those on whose assistance he relied in a contest, just now beginning, with the Congress.

President Johnson never made a dollar by public office, abstained from quartering a horde of connections on the Treasury, refused to uphold rogues in high places, and had too just a conception of the dignity of a chief magistrate to accept presents.  It may be said that these are humble qualities for a citizen to boast the possession of by a President of the United States.  As well claim respect for a woman of one’s family on the ground that she has preserved her virtue.  Yet all whose eyes were not blinded by partisanship, whose manhood was not emasculated by servility, would in these last years have welcomed the least of them as manna in the desert.

The President, between whom and the Congressional leaders the seeds of discord were already sown, dallied with me from day to day, and at length said that it would spare him embarrassment if I could induce Stevens, Davis, and others of the House, and Sumner of the Senate, to recommend the permission to visit Jefferson Davis; and I immediately addressed myself to this unpleasant task.

Thaddeus Stevens received me with as much civility as he was capable of.  Deformed in body and temper like Caliban, this was the Lord Hategood of the fair; but he was frankness itself.  He wanted no restoration of the Union under the Constitution, which he called a worthless bit of old parchment.  The white people of the South ought never again to be trusted with power, for they would inevitably unite with the Northern “Copperheads” and control the Government.  The only sound policy was to confiscate the lands and divide them among the negroes, to whom, sooner or later, suffrage must be given.  Touching the matter in hand, Johnson was a fool to have captured Davis, whom it would have been wiser to assist in escaping.  Nothing would be done with him, as the executive had only pluck enough to hang two poor devils such as Wirtz and Mrs. Surratt.  Had the leading traitors been promptly strung up, well; but the time for that had passed. (Here, I thought, he looked lovingly at my neck, as Petit Andre was wont to do at those of his merry-go-rounds.) He concluded by saying that it was silly to refuse me permission to visit Jefferson Davis, but he would not say so publicly, as he had no desire to relieve Johnson of responsibility.

There was no excuse for longer sporting with this radical Amaryllis either in shade or in sunshine; so I sought Henry Winter Davis.  Like the fallen angel, Davis preferred to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven or on earth.  With the head of Medusa and the eye of the Basilisk, he might have represented Siva in a Hindoo temple, and was even more inaccessible to sentiment than Thaddeus Stevens.  Others, too numerous and too insignificant to particularize, were seen.  These were the cuttle-fish of the party, whose appointed duty it was to obscure popular vision by clouds of loyal declamation.  As Sicilian banditti prepare for robberies and murders by pious offerings on shrines of favorite saints, these brought out the altar of the “nation,” and devoted themselves afresh, whenever “Credits Mobiliers” and kindred enormities were afoot, and sharpened every question of administration, finance, law, taxation, on the grindstone of sectional hate.  So sputtering tugs tow from her moorings the stately ship, to send her forth to winds and waves of ocean, caring naught for the cargo with which she is freighted, but, grimy in zeal to earn fees, return to seek another.

Hopeless of obtaining assistance from such statesmen, I visited Mr. Charles Sumner, Senator from Massachusetts, who received me pleasantly.  A rebel, a slave-driver, and, without the culture of Boston, ignorant, I was an admirable vessel into which he could pour the inexhaustible stream of his acquired eloquence.  I was delighted to listen to beautiful passages from the classic as well as modern poets, dramatists, philosophers, and orators, and recalled the anecdote of the man sitting under a fluent divine, who could not refrain from muttering, “That is Jeremy Taylor; that, South; that, Barrow,” etc.  It was difficult to suppress the thought, while Mr. Sumner was talking, “That is Burke, or Howard, Wilberforce, Brougham, Macaulay, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Exeter Hall,” etc.; but I failed to get down to the particular subject that interested me.  The nearest approach to the practical was his disquisition on negro suffrage, which he thought should be accompanied by education.  I ventured to suggest that negro education should precede suffrage, observing that some held the opinion that the capacity of the white race for government was limited, although accumulated and transmitted through many centuries.  He replied that “the ignorance of the negro was due to the tyranny of the whites,” which appeared in his view to dispose of the question of the former’s incapacity.  He seemed over-educated had retained, not digested his learning; and beautiful flowers of literature were attached to him by filaments of memory, as lovely orchids to sapless sticks.  Hence he failed to understand the force of language, and became the victim of his own metaphors, mistaking them for facts.  He had the irritable vanity and weak nerves of a woman, and was bold to rashness in speculation, destitute as he was of the ordinary masculine sense of responsibility.  Yet I hold him to have been the purest and most sincere man of his party.  A lover, nay, a devotee of liberty, he thoroughly understood that it could only be preserved by upholding the supremacy of civil law, and would not sanction the garrison methods of President Grant.  Without vindictiveness, he forgave his enemies as soon as they were overthrown, and one of the last efforts of his life was to remove from the flag of a common country all records of victories that perpetuated the memory of civil strife.

Foiled in this direction, I worried the President, as old Mustard would a stot, until he wrote the permission so long solicited.  By steamer from Baltimore I went down Chesapeake Bay, and arrived at Fortress Monroe in the early morning.  General Burton, the commander, whose civility was marked, and who bore himself like a gentleman and soldier, received me on the dock and took me to his quarters to breakfast, and to await the time to see Mr. Davis.

It was with some emotion that I reached the casemate in which Mr. Davis was confined.  There were two rooms, in the outer of which, near the entrance, stood a sentinel, and in the inner was Jefferson Davis.  We met in silence, with grasp of hands.  After an interval he said, “This is kind, but no more than I expected of you.”  Pallid, worn, gray, bent, feeble, suffering from inflammation of the eyes, he was a painful sight to a friend.  He uttered no plaint, and made no allusion to the irons (which had been removed); said the light kept all night in his room hurt his eyes a little, and, added to the noise made every two hours by relieving the sentry, prevented much sleep; but matters had changed for the better since the arrival of General Burton, who was all kindness, and strained his orders to the utmost in his behalf.  I told him of my reception at Washington by the President, Mr. Seward, and others, of the attentions of Generals Grant and Humphreys, who promoted my wish to see him, and that with such aid I was confident of obtaining permission for his wife to stay with him.  I could solicit favors for him, having declined any for myself.  Indeed, the very accident of position, that enabled me to get access to the governing authorities, made indecent even the supposition of my acceptance of anything personal while a single man remained under the ban for serving the Southern cause; and therefore I had no fear of misconstruction.  Hope of meeting his family cheered him much, and he asked questions about the condition and prospects of the South, which I answered as favorably as possible, passing over things that would have grieved him.  In some way he had learned of attacks on his character and conduct, made by some Southern curs, thinking to ingratiate themselves with the ruling powers.  I could not deny this, but remarked that the curse of unexpected defeat and suffering was to develop the basest passions of the human heart.  Had he escaped out of the country, it was possible he might have been made a scapegoat by the Southern people, and, great as were the sufferings that he had endured, they were as nothing to coward stabs from beloved hands.  The attacks mentioned were few, and too contemptible for notice; for now his calamities had served to endear him to all.  I think that he derived consolation from this view.

The day passed with much talk of a less disturbing character, and in the evening I returned to Baltimore and Washington.  After some delay Mr. Davis’s family was permitted to join him, and he speedily recovered strength.  Later I made a journey or two to Richmond, Virginia, on business connected with his trial, then supposed to be impending.

The slight service, if simple discharge of duty can be so called, I was enabled to render Mr. Davis, was repaid ten thousand fold.  In the month of March, 1875, my devoted wife was released from suffering, long and patiently endured, originating in grief for the loss of her children and exposure during the war.  Smitten by this calamity, to which all that had gone before seemed as blessings, I stood by her coffin, ere it was closed, to look for the last time upon features that death had respected and restored to their girlish beauty.  Mr. Davis came to my side, and stooped reverently to touch the fair brow, when the tenderness of his heart overcame him and he burst into tears.  His example completely unnerved me for the time, but was of service in the end.  For many succeeding days he came to me, and was as gentle as a young mother with her suffering infant.  Memory will ever recall Jefferson Davis as he stood with me by the coffin.

Duty to imprisoned friends and associates discharged, I returned to New Orleans, and remained for some weeks, when an untoward event occurred, productive of grave consequences.  The saints and martyrs who have attained worldly success have rarely declined to employ the temporal means of sinners.  While calling on Hercules, they put their own shoulders to the wheel, and, in the midst of prayer, keep their powder dry.  To prepare for the reelection of President Lincoln in 1864, pretended State governments had been set up by the Federal military in several Southern States, where fragments of territory were occupied.  In the event of a close election in the North, the electoral votes in these manufactured States would be under the control of the executive authority, and serve to determine the result.  For some years the Southern States were used as thimble-riggers use peas:  now they were under the cup of the Union, and now they were out.  During his reign in New Orleans the Federal General Banks had prepared a Louisiana pea for the above purpose.

At this time negro suffrage, as yet an unaccomplished purpose, was in the air, and the objective point of radical effort.  To aid the movement, surviving accomplices of the Banks fraud were instigated to call a “State Convention” in Louisiana, though with no more authority so to do than they had to call the British Parliament.  The people of New Orleans regarded the enterprise as those of London did the proposed meeting of tailors in Tooley street; and just before this debating society was to assemble, the Federal commander, General Sheridan, selected especially to restrain the alleged turbulent population of the city, started on an excursion to Texas, proving that he attached no importance to the matter and anticipated no disturbance.

Living in close retirement, I had forgotten all about the “Convention.”  Happening to go to the center of the town, from my residence in the upper suburb, the day on which it met, on descending from the carriage of the tramway I heard pistol shots and saw a crowd of roughs, Arabs, and negroes running across Canal Street.  I walked in the direction of the noise to inquire the cause of excitement, as there was nothing visible to justify it.  The crowd seemed largely composed of boys of from twelve to fifteen, and negroes.  I met no acquaintance, and could obtain no information, when a negro came flying past, pursued by a white boy, certainly not above fifteen years of age, with a pistol in hand.  I stopped the boy without difficulty, and made him tell what he was up to.  He said the niggers were having a meeting at Mechanics’ Institute to take away his vote.  When asked how long he had enjoyed that inestimable right of a freeman, the boy gave it up, pocketed his “Derringer,” and walked off.

By this time the row appeared to be over, so I went on my way without seeing the building called Mechanics’ Institute, as it was around the corner near which the boy was stopped.  Speedily the town was filled with excitement, and Baird, the Federal commander in the absence of Sheridan, occupied the streets with troops and arrested the movements of citizens.  Many poor negroes had been killed most wantonly, indignation ran high among decent people, and the perpetrators of the bloody deeds deserved and would have received swift, stern punishment had civil law been permitted to act.  But this did not suit the purposes of the radicals, who rejoiced as Torquemada might have done when the discovery of a score of heretics furnished him an excuse to torment and destroy a province.  Applying the theory of the detective police, that among the beneficiaries of crime must be sought the perpetrators, one would conclude that the radical leaders prompted the assassination of Lincoln and the murder of negroes; for they alone derived profit from these acts.

From this time forth the entire white race of the South devoted itself to the killing of negroes.  It appeared to be an inherent tendency in a slave-driver to murder a negro.  It was a law of his being, as of the monkey’s to steal nuts, and could not be resisted.  Thousands upon thousands were slain.  Favorite generals kept lists in their pockets, proving time, place, and numbers, even to the smallest piccaninny.  Nay, such was the ferocity of the slave-drivers, that unborn infants were ripped from their mothers’ wombs.  Probably these sable Macduffs were invented to avenge the wrongs of their race on tyrants protected by Satanic devices from injury at the hands of Africans of natural birth.  Individual effort could not suffice the rage for slaughter, and the ancient order of “assassins” was revived, with an “Old Man” of the swamps at its head.  Thus “Ku-Klux” originated, and covered the land with a network of crime.  Earnest, credulous women in New England had their feelings lacerated by these stories, in which they as fondly believed as their foremothers in Salem witches.

As crocodiles conceal their prey until it becomes savory and tender and ripe for eating, so the Radicals kept these dark corpses to serve up to the public when important elections approached, or some especial villainy was to be enacted by the Congress.  People who had never been south of the Potomac and Ohio Rivers knew all about this “Ku-Klux”; but I failed, after many inquiries, to find a single man in the South who ever heard of it, saving in newspapers.  Doubtless there were many acts of violence.  When ignorant negroes, instigated by pestilent emissaries, went beyond endurance, the whites killed them; and this was to be expected.  The breed to which these whites belong has for eight centuries been the master of the earth wherever it has planted its foot.  A handful conquered and holds in subjection the crowded millions of India.  Another and smaller bridles the fierce Caffre tribes of South Africa.  Place but a score of them on the middle course of the Congo, and they will rule unless exterminated; and all the armies and all the humanitarians can not change this, until the appointed time arrives for Ham to dominate Japhet.

Two facts may here be stated.  Just in proportion as the whites recovered control of their local governments, in that proportion negroes ceased to be killed; and when it was necessary to Radical success to multiply negro votes, though no census was taken, formal statistics were published to prove large immigration of negroes into the very districts of slaughter.  Certainty of death could not restrain the colored lambs, impelled by an uncontrollable ardor to vote the radical ticket, from traveling to the wolves.  Such devotion deserved the tenderest consideration of Christian men and women, and all means of protection and loving care were due to this innocent, credulous race.  A great bureau, the Freedmen’s, was established, and in connection with it, at the seat of government, a bank.  It was of importance to teach the freedmen, unused to responsibility, industry and economy; and the bank was to encourage these virtues by affording a safe place of deposit for their small savings.  To make assurance doubly sure, the “Christian soldier of the United States army” was especially selected to keep the money, and he did so securely, in point of fact, that it is to be apprehended the unfortunate depositors will never see it more.  After so brilliant an experience in banking, prudence might have suggested to this officer the wisdom of retiring from public view.  Fortune is sometimes jealous of great reputations and fresh laurels.  The success of his first speech prevented “Single-speech Hamilton” from rising again in the House of Commons; Frederick failed to repeat Rossbach, and Napoleon, Austerlitz; but the “Christian soldier” rushed on his fate, and met it at the hands of the Nez Perces.  The profound strategy, the skillful tactics, the ready valor that had extinguished bank balances, all failed against this wily foe.

While the excitement growing out of the untoward event mentioned was at its height, President Johnson summoned me to Washington, where I explained all the circumstances, as far as I knew them, of the recent murders, and urged him to send General Hancock to command in New Orleans.  He was sent, and immediately restored order and confidence.  A gentleman, one of the most distinguished and dashing officers of the United States army, General Hancock recognizes both the great duties of a soldier of the Republic to defend its flag and obey its laws, discharging the last with a fidelity equal to his devotion to the first in front of battle.

The contest between the Congress and the President now waxed fierce, and Thaddeus Stevens, from his place in the House, denounced “the man at the other end of the avenue.”  The President had gone back to wise, lawful methods, and desired to restore the Union under the Constitution; and in this he was but following the policy declared in his last public utterance by President Lincoln.  Mr. Johnson could establish this fact by members of his predecessor’s Cabinet whom he had retained, and thus strengthen his position; but his vanity forbade him, so he called it “my policy,” as if it were something new.

At his instance, I had many interviews with him, and consulted influential men from different parts of the country.  His Secretary of War was in close alliance with his enemies in the Congress, and constantly betraying him.  This was susceptible of proof, and I so informed the President, and pointed out that, so far from assisting the people of the South, he was injuring them by inaction; for the Congress persecuted them to worry him.  He was President and powerful; they were weak and helpless.  In truth, President Johnson, slave to his own temper and appetites, was unfit to control others.

General Grant yet appeared to agree with me about “reconstruction,” as it was called; and I was anxious to preserve good feeling on his part toward the President.  In the light of subsequent events, it is curious to recall the fact that he complained of Stanton’s retention in the Cabinet, because the latter’s greed of power prevented the Commander-in-Chief of the army from controlling the most minute details without interference.  I urged this on the President as an additional motive for dismissing his War Secretary and replacing him by some one agreeable to General Grant; but all in vain.  This official “old man of the sea” kept his seat on the Presidential neck, never closing crafty eye nor traitorous mouth, and holding on with the tenacity of an octopus.

Many moderate and whilom influential Republicans determined to assemble in convention at Philadelphia, and invited delegates from all parts, North and South, to meet them.  The object was to promote good feeling and an early restoration of the Union, and give aid to the President in his struggle with extremists.  Averse to appearing before the public, I was reluctant to go to this Convention; but the President, who felt a deep interest in its success, insisted, and I went.  It was largely attended, and by men who had founded and long led the Freesoil party.  Ex-members of Lincoln’s first Cabinet, Senators and members of the Congress, editors of Republican newspapers (among whom was Henry J. Raymond, the ablest political editor of the day and an eminent member of Congress as well), Southern men who had fought for the Confederacy, were there.  Northern Republicans and Democrats, long estranged, buried the political hatchet and met for a common purpose, to restore the Union.  Negro-worshipers from Massachusetts and slave-drivers from South Carolina entered the vast hall arm in arm.  The great meeting rose to its feet, and walls and roof shook with applause.  General John A. Dix of New York called the Convention to order, and, in an eloquent and felicitous speech, stated the objects of the assembly to renew fraternal feeling between the sections, heal the wounds of war, obliterate bitter memories, and restore the Union of the fathers.  Senator Doolittle of Wisconsin was chosen permanent president, and patriotic resolutions were adopted by acclamation.  All this was of as little avail as the waving of a lady’s fan against a typhoon.  Radical wrath uprose and swept these Northern men out of political existence, and they were again taught the lesson that is ever forgotten, namely, that it is an easy task to inflame the passions of the multitude, an impossible one to arrest them.  From selfish ambition, from thoughtless zeal, from reckless partisanship, from the low motives governing demagogues in a country of universal suffrage, men are ever sowing the wind, thinking they can control the whirlwind; and the story of the Gironde and the Mountain has been related in vain.

The President was charmed with the Convention.  Believing the people his god to be with him, his crest rose, and he felt every inch a President.  Again I urged him to dismiss his War Secretary and replace Mr. Seward, Secretary of State, now in disfavor with his own creation, the Radical party, by General Dix, who was rewarded for his services at Philadelphia by the appointment of Naval Officer at New York.  He was an exception to the rule above mentioned.  A more cautious pilot than Palinurus, this respectable person is the “Vicar of Bray” of American politics; and like that eminent divine, his creeds sit so lightly as to permit him to take office under all circumstances.  Secretary of the Treasury in the closing weeks of President Buchanan, he aroused the North by sending his immortal dispatch to the commander of a revenue cutter:  “If any man attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot.”  This bespoke the heart of the patriot, loving his country’s banner, and the arm of the hero, ready to defend it; and, clad in this armor of proof, he has since been invulnerable.  The President took kindly to the proposition concerning General Dix, and I flattered myself that it would come off, when suddenly the General was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to France.  I imagine that Mr. Seward had got wind of the project and hurried Dix out of the way.  Thus, in a few days General Dix had the offer of the Netherlands, Naval Office, and France.  “Glamis, and thane of Cawdor”; and his old age is yet so green, mayhap “the greatest is behind.”

To air his eloquence and enlighten the minds of his dear people, the President made a tour through the North and West, in which his conduct and declarations were so extraordinary as to defeat any hopes of success for “my policy.”

A circumstance connected with the Philadelphia Convention made an impression on me at the time.  Mr. Raymond was editor of the “New York Times,” the most powerful Republican journal in the North.  Among many who had gained large wealth by speculations during the war was Mr. Leonard Jerome, a Republican in politics.  This gentleman spent his fortune so lavishly that his acquaintances and the public shared its enjoyment.  With other property, Mr. Jerome owned the controlling interest in the “Times,” then very valuable.  Dining in New York with him and Mr. Raymond, the latter told me it was useless to support the President, who was daily becoming more unpopular, and that the circulation and influence of his paper were rapidly diminishing in consequence of his adherence to “my policy.”  Whereupon Mr. Jerome replied:  “I know but little about politics; but if you think it right to stand by the President, I will pay all losses that the ‘Times’ may suffer to the other proprietors.”  This was unselfish and patriotic; and I record it with the more pleasure, because Mr. Jerome has lost much of his wealth, and I fear, like many another Timon, some friends with it.

After this period I saw little of President Johnson, who fought his fight in his own way, had his hands completely tied, and barely escaped impeachment; the Congress, meanwhile, making a whipping-post of the South, and inflicting upon it every humiliation that malignity could devise.