The threat was magnified by the effect that the abolition of slavery had on the South's numerical representation in Congress. Before the war, the slaves had been counted at three-fifths of their actual number, when apportioning representatives. As free men, they would be counted to their full total, and each slave state would pick up additional seats in Congress as a result. In concert with Northern Democrats, this augmented block would submerge the Republicans in the House while with twenty-two senators back, the Democrats, North and South, would regain their prewar ascendancy in the Senate.

This prospect naturally appalled the Republicans. Few members of the party cared to admit openly that retention of

party control was the basis of their policy, but not so Thaddeus Stevens. "Do

you avow the party purpose? exclaims some horror-stricken demagogue,” he challenged timid colleagues. “I do. For I believe ... that on the continued ascendancy of the (Republican) party depends the safety of this great nation.”

Fessenden took up the serenade speech and objected to Johnson's calling the Reconstruction Committee “an irresponsible central directory.” The committee, said its chairman (who was not, however, its most potent member), was “the mere servant of Congress. Can any member of it, or the whole of it, set up its will for a single day or a single hour or a single minute against the will of the body which constituted it?”

In the House, Stevens made his rebuttal with less dignity but more effect. Gaining the floor for the purpose, he explained, of delivering a speech that he had intended making several days previously, he shuffled through a mass of disorderly manuscript, looking at a loss, to the mirth of the expectant members, who knew that he was seldom at a loss. Then, as if remembering what he wanted to say, he begged the indulgence of the House for “a word that might seem egotistic.” Certain newspapers

, he said, had been “attempting to disturb the harmony which existed between the President and myself. In the most polite language and the most flattering epithets, they have denounced me as the enemy of the President, and as having waged successful war against him.

“These journals have, perhaps unintentionally, done me too and discoursed for half an hour on the history of Ch ple, and the philosophy of Confucius.

This same secretary, who was something of a wag, the President's imperviousness to jokes. Johnson open of his private office and asked what was the Christiar man to whom he was dictating a letter. The wag answer

“Mr. President, he had no Christian name; he is Jewis

Johnson stared, said nothing; but a moment later, closed door, was heard inquiring what was the “first n man in question.

In the secretaries' room there stood a tall, awkward was not used and was in the way. One of the secreta it to be removed, but the President happening to ente desk was being carried out, sharply countermanded the

“That desk was used by General Jackson,” he ir revere Andrew Jackson, and as long as I occupy the L that desk will remain in its place.”

Remain it did, and the rebuffed secretary was gr time Johnson barked his shins on it.*

After the strain of the major vetoes, the Pres seemed to return, and he displayed a cheerfulness him. A fight always invigorated him. A woman writer radical Independent was amazed by both his vit serenity when she glimpsed him strolling the White one afternoon. “His step was strong and comfortab she reported, and he did not look tired at all. “A sm the clogged lines of his face,” which actually was “n every way he typified to her “a gentleman of le caned, his iron-gray hair rolled smoothly under,” tal enade with placid composure. The picture hardly ogre she had been told she would find.

By midsummer the impeachment bugaboo seem limbo. There was a momentary Aurry of excitem Butler brought to light the hitherto concealed

been found on John Wilkes Booth’s body. Several pages had been cut or torn out, and Butler demanded to know “who spoliated that book?” Drawing sinister conclusions, he proceeded to infer that the motive for the mutilation had been to remove evidence of Andrew Johnson's connection with Lincoln's murder.

The book had not been produced at the conspirators' trial in 1865, Butler charged, because it would have shown conclusively that Mrs. Surratt knew nothing whatever about the plot to kill Lincoln, but only about a previous plot to kidnap him. The responsibility for this concealment he hurled at Representative John A. Bingham, one of Mrs. Surrate's prosecutors, after the latter had taunted Butler with having voted fifty-seven times to nominate Jefferson Davis for President of the United States in 1860.

Butler retorted that he had never made any secret of those votes, and that he could live with the memory of them more comfortably than Bingham could with the knowledge that he had shed the blood of a woman "convicted without sufficient evidence.” This he followed with a series of insinuating questions: "Who was it that could profit by assassination who could not profit by capture and abduction (of Lincoln]?” Who was it whom the conspirators “expected ... would succeed Lincoln, if the knife made a vacancy?"

But this sensation faded when even Bingham repelled "with scorn and contempt” the inference that the President was an assassin.

Johnson had immediately ordered Secretary Stanton to provide an accurate copy of the mysterious diary, about which he had known nothing until then, together with “a succinct statement of all the facts connected with its capture, and its possession by the War Department.” After looking over the documents, and showing them to the cabinet, Johnson inquired whether there could be any objection to their publication. Stanton violently opposed publication; the others saw no reason to forbid it.

The would-be impeachers had suffered a setback already in the election of Ben Wade to be president pro tempore of the Senate. By law, should Johnson be impeached and removed from office, the president of the Senate would succeed, there being no Vice

"This is a republic, where the will of the people is the la land. I beg that their voice may be heard ... General ... removal will only be regarded as an effort to defeat th Congress. It will be interpreted by the unreconciled e the South-those who did all they could to break up thi ment by arms and now wish to be the only element co to the method of restoring order—as a triumph military reasons, pecuniary reasons, and, above all, pati sons why this order should not be insisted on.”

Such a primer of politics offered by a military man proved maladroit in civilian affairs invited a retort from versialist Andrew Johnson. In a letter matching Grant’s, ident reduced the general to his place and function. First, will of the people” requiring that General Sheridan New Orleans, Johnson was “not cognizant that the qu ever been submitted to the people themselves for deter The sarcasm continued. “It certainly would be unjust to to assume that, in the opinion of the nation, he alone is commanding the states of Louisiana and Texas, and tha for any cause removed, no other general in the military the United States would be competent to fill his place.”

Next Sheridan's removal could not be regarded “as a defeat the laws of Congress,” when the whole purp facilitate their execution. This Sheridan had bungled. could not be interpreted by "the unreconciled elem South” as a "triumph,” for they must know that the “m of military commander cannot alter the law ... The fectly familiar with the antecedents of the President, that he has not obstructed the faithful execution of Congress ...

“You remark,” the President went on, “that “this is where the will of the people is the law of the land.' ar their voice may be heard.' This is, indeed, a republic, ever, upon a written Constitution. That Constitution pressed will of the people . . . While one of its provi the President commander-in-chief of the army and na requires that he shall take care that the laws are fai cuted.' Believing that a change in command ...i