interest is heightened the imagination of the
people is stimulated, until trifles light as air have fatal
significance in one direction or the other. Throughout the spring and
early summer of 1866 (the tentative period, as it may be called, in
fixing the relations of the President and Congress) this suggestion of
doubt, this latent apprehension, continued, and was not indeed wholly
removed until the political lines were definitely drawn by the
elections for representatives to Congress in the ensuing autumn.

The situation in all its bearings was one of peculiar embarrassment,
beset with extraordinary difficulties to those who directed the
proceedings of Congress. In reviewing the events of that day, whatever
may be thought respecting their wisdom and expediency, candid men of
all parties will concede that the Republican leaders exhibited great
determination of purpose, remarkable steadiness of nerve and unflagging
devotion to principle. They were absolutely without precedent to guide
them in the exigencies and emergencies of the situation. It was well
said at the time that the framers of the Constitution in 1787 were not
confronted with difficulties so grave or surrounded with problems so
complex and unproved, as were the leaders of Congress during the period
of Reconstruction. The framers of the Constitution met for one
purpose, upon which all were agreed. They had only to reconcile
differences of detail and to adjust the jealousies of local interest;
but in 1866 Congress was called upon to exclude the President
practically from all share in the law-making power, and to charge him
on his oath of duty to faithfully execute laws, against which he had
constantly entered his solemn protest, not only as inexpedient but as
unconstitutional. Perhaps a man of more desperate resolution than Mr.
Johnson might have used his Executive power more effectively against
Congress, but he must have done so at the expense of his fidelity to
sworn obligations. The practical deduction as to the working of our
Governmental machinery, from the whole experience of that troublous
era, is that two-thirds of each House, united and stimulated to one
end, can practically neutralize the Executive power of the Government
and lay down its policy in defiance of the efforts and the opposition
of the President.

The defection of Senator Lane of Kansas from the ranks of the most
radical Republicans caused great surprise to the country. He had b