Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 | Page 9

the exciting period when the Missouri
Compromise was overthrown; and though, after his return in 1857, he
co-operated generally in the measures deemed essential for Southern
interests, he steadily declared that a consistent adherence to the
Constitution was the one and the only remedy for all the alleged
grievances of the slave-holders. It was natural therefore, that when the
decisive hour came, and the rash men of the South determined to break
up the Government, Johnson should stand firmly by the Union.
Of the twenty-two senators from the eleven States that afterwards
composed the Confederacy, Johnson was the only one who honorably
maintained his oath to support the Constitution; the only one who did
not lend his aid and comfort to the enemies of the Union. He remained
in his seat in the Senate, loyal to the Government, and resigned a year
after the outbreak of the war (in March, 1862), upon Mr. Lincoln's
urgent request that he should accept the important post of Military
Governor of Tennessee. His administration of that office and his firm
discharge of every duty under circumstances of great exigency and
oftentimes of great peril, gave to him an exceptional popularity in all
the Loyal States, and led to his selection for the Vice-Presidency in
1864. The national calamity had now suddenly brought him to a larger
field of duty, and devolved upon him the weightiest responsibility.
The assassination of Mr. Lincoln naturally produced a wide-spread
depression and dread of evil. His position had been one of exceptional
strength with the people. By his four years of considerate and
successful administration, by his patient and positive trust in the
ultimate triumph of the Union--realized at last as he stood on the edge
of the grave--he had acquired so complete an ascendancy over the
public mind in the Loyal States that any policy matured and announced
by him would have been accepted by a vast majority of his countrymen.
But the same degree of faith could not attach to Mr. Johnson; although
after the first shock of the assassination had subsided, there was a
generous revival of trust, or at least of hope, that the great work which
had been so faithfully prosecuted for four years would be faithfully
carried forward in the same lofty spirit to the same noble ends. The

people of the North waited with favorable disposition and yet with
balancing judgment and in exacting mood. They had enjoyed abundant
opportunity to acquaint themselves with the principles and the opinions
of the new President, and confidence in his future policy was not
unaccompanied by a sense of uncertainty and indeed by an almost
painful suspense as to his mode of solving the great problems before
him. As has already been indicated, the more radical Republicans of the
North feared that his birth and rearing as a Southern man and his long
identification with the supporters of the slave system might blind him
to the most sacred duties of philanthropy, while the more conservative
but not less loyal or less humane feared that from the personal
antagonisms of his own stormy career he might be disposed to deal too
harshly with the leaders of the conquered rebellion. The few words
which Mr. Johnson had addressed to those present when he took the
oath of office were closely scanned and carefully analyzed by the
country, even in the stunning grief which Mr. Lincoln's death had
precipitated. It was especially noted that he refrained from declaring
that he should continue the policy of his predecessor. By those who
knew Mr. Johnson's views intimately, the omission was understood to
imply that Mr. Lincoln had intended to pursue a more liberal and more
generous policy with the rebels than his successor deemed expedient or
prudent.
It was known to a few persons that when Mr. Johnson arrived from
Fortress Monroe on the morning of April 10, and found the National
Capital in a blaze of patriotic excitement over the surrender of Lee's
army the day before at Appomattox, he hastened to the White House,
and addressed to the unwilling ears of Mr. Lincoln an earnest protest
against the indulgent terms conceded by General Grant. Mr. Johnson
believed that General Lee should not have been permitted to surrender
his sword as a solider of honor, but that General Grant should have
received the entire command as prisoners of war, and should have held
Lee in confinement until he could receive instructions from the
Administration at Washington. The spirit which these views indicated
was understood by those who knew Mr. Johnson to be contained, if not
expressed, in this declaration of his first address: "As to an indication
of any policy which may be pursued by me in the conduct of the

Government, I have to say that that must be left