r influence consolidated almost _en masse_ the soldier vote of the
country in support of the Republican party as represented by Congress.
Their enthusiasm was greater, their feeling more intense, their
activity more marked than could be found among the civilians of the
country who were supporting the same principles. They declared the
political contest to be _their own fight_, as they expressed it, and
considered themselves bearing the banner of loyalty as they had borne
it in the actual conflict of arms. Their convention, their
expressions, their determination were felt throughout the entire Union
as an aggressive, irresistible force. From their ranks came many of
the most attractive and most eloquent speakers, who discussed the
merits of the Constitutional amendment before popular audiences as ably
as they had upheld the flag of the Union through four years of bloody
strife. Their convention did more to popularize the Fourteenth
Amendment as a political issue than any other instrumentality of the
year. Not even the members of Congress, who repaired to their
districts with the amendment as the leading question, could commend it
to the mass of voters with the strength and with the good results which
attended the soldier orators who were inspired to enter the field.

Other events powerfully contributed to the political overthrow of the
President. After the change in his policy in the summer and autumn of
1865, which has already been noted, the Southern rebels, who had at
first been cast down and discouraged, saw before them the prospect of
regaining complete ascendency in their respective States. As the
division between the President and Congress widened, their confidence
increased; and as their confidence increased, a reign of lawlessness
and outrage against the rights of the defenseless was inaugurated. The
negroes, who had begun to learn their freedom, were not only subjected
to laws of practical re-enslavement, but to a treatment whose brutality
could not have been foreseen. It was estimated that before the
adjournment of Congress more than a thousand negroes and many white
Unionists had been murdered in the South, without even the slightest
attempt at prosecuting the murderers. Though the aggregate number of
victims was so great, they were scattered over so vast a territory that
it was difficult to impress the public mind of the North with the real
magnitude of the slaughter. But this incredulity vanished