Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 | Page 9

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 for development as the Administration progresses. The message or the declaration must be made by the acts as they transpire. The only assurance I can now give of the future is by reference to the past."
The effect produced upon the public by this speech, which might be regarded as an Inaugural address, was not happy. Besides its evasive character respecting public policies which every observing man noted with apprehension, an unpleasant impression was created by its evasive