hout conversing or meeting with any of its citizens." He
spent one day in North Carolina, one in South Carolina and two in
Georgia. This was the whole extent of the observation upon which
General Grant had innocently given his views, without the remotest
suspicion that his brief report was to figure largely in the
discussions of Congress upon the important and absorbing question of
reconstruction.

The divergent conclusions which were thus made to appear between the
authors of the conflicting reports did not cease with this single
exhibition. It was soon perceived that in the President's anxiety to
parry the effect of Mr. Schurz's report he had placed General Grant in
a false position,--a position which no one realized more promptly than
the General himself. Further investigation led him to a thorough
understanding of the subject and to a fundamental change of opinion.
It led him to approve the reconstruction measures of the Republican
party, and in a subsequent and more exalted sphere to continue the
policy which these measures foreshadowed and implied. Mr. Schurz, on
the other hand, received new light and conviction in the opposite
direction, and from the point of extreme Republicanism he gradually
changed his creed and became, first a distracting element in the ranks
of the party, and afterwards one of its malignant opponents in a great
national struggle in which General Grant was the leader,--the aim of
which struggle was really to maintain the views which Mr. Schurz had,
with apparent sincerity, endeavored to enforce in his report to
President Johnson. These changes and alternations in the position of
public men are by no means unknown to political life in the United
States, but in the case under consideration the actors were
conspicuous, and for that reason their reversal of position was the
more marked.

An interesting and important case, relating to the mode of electing
United-States senators, came up for decision at this session and led to
a prolonged debate, which was accompanied with much personal feeling
and no little acrimony.--In the winter and spring of 1865 the
Legislature of New Jersey was engaged in the duty of choosing a senator
of the United States to succeed John C. Ten Eyck, whose term was about
to expire. After many efforts at election it had been found that no
candidate was able to secure "a majority of the votes of all the
members elected to both Houses of the Legislature," which was de