Justice for the Freedmen

That tour was suggested and its performances were inspired by the gathering in convention, at Philadelphia, on the 14th of August (1866), chiefly of men who had been engaged in the insurrection, and their sympathizers at the North. Their object was to form a new party, with President Johnson as their standard-bearer; but so discordant were the elements gathered there, that no one was allowed to debate questions of public interest, for fear of producing a disruption and the consequent failure of the scheme. It did utterly fail. Soon afterward a convention of loyal men from the South was held at Philadelphia, in which representative Republicans in the North participated. The President's journey being wholly for a partisan purpose, members of the latter convention followed in his track, making speeches in many places in support of the measures of Congress for effecting reorganization. They applied the antidote where the President had administered poison, and neutralized its effects.

So disgraceful was the conduct of the President when at Cleveland and St. Louis, in the attitude of a mere demagogue making a tour for a partisan purpose, under a false pretense, that the Common Council of Cincinnati, on his return journey, refused to accord him a public reception. The Common Council of Pittsburg, in Pennsylvania, did the same; and when, on the 15th of September, Mr. Johnson and his party returned to the Capital, the country felt a relief from a sense of deep mortification.

Having, soon after the meeting of Congress, laid aside the mask of assumed friendship for those who had labored most earnestly for the suppression of the insurrection and for the good of the freedmen, the President used the veto power--his most efficient weapon--in trying to thwart the representatives of the people in their efforts to reorganize the disorganized States, and to quickly secure a full and permanent restoration of the Union on the basis of equal and exact justice. In February, 1866, he vetoed an act for enlarging the operations of the Freedmen's Bureau, which had been established for the relief of freedmen, refugees, and for the cultivation of abandoned lands. In March he vetoed an act known as the Civil Rights Law, which was intended to secure to all citizens, without regard to color or previous condition of slavery, equal civil rights in the Republic. These acts became laws in spite of his veto, by the Constitutional vote of two-thirds of each House in their favor. The President's uncompromising warfare upon the legislative branch of the Republic, disgusted his ministers, who could not agree with him, and they resigned with the exception of Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War. The friends of the Republic urged him to remain, believing his retention of the bureau at that critical period in the life of the nation would be conducive to the public benefit. He did so, and became the object of the mad President's bitter hatred.

Congress worked assiduously in efforts to perfect the reorganization of the Republic; and on the 29th of July, after a long and laborious session, adjourned. On the 2d of April, the President, in a proclamation, had formally declared the Civil War to be at an end; and the first fruits of the Congressional plan of reorganization was seen by the restoration of the State of Tennessee to the Union, six days before the adjournment of the National Legislature. Meanwhile notable events in the foreign relations of the Government had occurred. The Emperor of the French had been informed by Secretary Seward that the continuation of French troops in Mexico was not agreeable to the United States; and on the 5th of April (1866) Napoleon's Minister for Foreign Affairs gave assurances to our Government that those troops should be withdrawn within a specified time. This was done; and the Grand Duke Maximilian, of Austria, whom Louis Napoleon had, by military power, placed on a throne in our neighboring republic, with the title of Emperor, was deserted by the perfidious ruler of France. The deceived and betrayed Maximilian, after struggling against the native republican government for awhile, was captured and shot; and his loving wife, Carlotta, overwhelmed by her misfortunes and grief, became a hopeless lunatic. Such was the sorrowful ending of one of the schemes of the Emperor of the French for the gratification of his ambition. He had itched to aid the Confederates, with a hope that the severance of our Union would give him an opportunity to successfully defy the "Monroe Doctrine," and extend the domination of the Latin race and the Latin church on the American continent, as well as monarchical institutions. As a pretext for sending soldiers to our frontiers, primarily to be ready to assist the enemies of the Republic should expediency warrant the act, the Emperor of the French picked a quarrel with Mexico, overturned its republican government, established a monarchy and supported it by French bayonets until the strength of our Union was made manifest to him.