as vastly larger than the slave-holding
population, the proportion indeed being twenty-seven to one. With
these a "good fellow" ranked all the higher for not possessing the
graces or, as they would term them, the "airs" of society.

As Mr. Johnson grew in public favor and increased in reputation, as his
talents were admitted and his power in debate appreciated, he became
eager to compel recognition from those who had successfully proscribed
him. A man who is born to social equality with the best of his
community, and accustomed in his earlier years to its enjoyment, does
not feel the sting of attempted exclusion, but is rather made
pleasantly conscious of the _prestige_ which inspires the adverse
effort and can look upon its bitterness in a spirit of lofty disdain.
Wendell Phillips, descended from a long line of distinguished ancestry,
was amused rather than disconcerted by the strenuous but futile
attempts to ostracize him for the maintenance of opinions which he
lived to see his native city adopt and enforce. But the feeling is far
different in a man who has experienced only a galling sense of
inferiority. To such a one, advancing either in fortune or in fame,
social prominence seems a necessity, without which other gifts
constitute only the aggravations of life.

It was therefore with a sense of exaltation that Johnson beheld as
applicants for his consideration and suppliants for his mercy many of
those in the South who had never recognized him as a social equal. A
mind of true loftiness would not have been swayed by such a change of
relative positions, but it was inevitable that a mind of Johnson's
type, which if not ignoble was certainly not noble, should yield to
its flattering and seductive influence. In the present attitude of
the leading men of the South towards him, he saw the one triumph
which sweetened his life, the one requisite which had been needed to
complete his happiness. In securing the good opinion of his native
South, he would attain the goal of his highest ambition, he would
conquer the haughty enemy who during all the years of his public career
had been able to fix upon him the bade of social inferiority.

On the 29th of May (1865), nineteen days after Mr. Seward's first
interview with President Johnson, and nine days after his first visit
to the State Department, two decisive steps were taken in the work of
reconstruction. Both steps proceeded on the theory that every act
needful for t