lists and with
the Disunionists of South Carolina. But those who had studied the
character of Johnson knew that aside from the possession of personal
integrity, he had few qualities in common with those which
distinguished Jackson. Johnson was bold and fluent in public speech,
irresolute and procrastinating in action: Jackson wasted no words, but
always acted with promptness and courage. Johnson was vain,
loquacious, and offensively egotistic: Jackson, on the other hand, was
proud, reserved, and with such abounding self-respect as excluded
egotism. The two men, instead of being alike, were in fact signal
contrasts in all that appertains to the talent for administration, to
the quick discernment of the time for action, and to the prompt
execution of whatever policy might be announced.

The Republicans had found an easier victory over Johnson than they had
anticipated. They were well led in the great contest of 1866. In New
England the President really secured no Republican support whatever.
Soon after his accession to the Presidency he had induced Hannibal
Hamlin, with whom he had been on terms of personal intimacy in
Congress, to accept the Collectorship of Customs at Boston, but as soon
as Mr. Hamlin discovered the tendency of Johnson's policy he made
haste, with that strict adherence to principle which has always marked
his political career, to separate himself from the Administration by
resigning the office. It was urged upon him that he could maintain his
official position without in any degree compromising his principles,
but his steady reply to earnest friends who presented this view, was
that he was an old-fashioned man in his conception of public duty, and
he would not consent to hold a political office under a President from
whose policy he instinctively and radically dissented. Mr. Hamlin's
course was highly applauded by the mass of Republicans throughout the
country, and especially by his old constituents in Maine. His action
took from Mr. Johnson the last semblance of a prominent Republican
friend in New England and gave an almost unprecedented solidity to the
public opinion of that section.

The adherence of Mr. Seward to the Administration, the loss of Thurlow
Weed as an organizer, and the desertion of the _New-York Times_, had
created great fear as to the result in New York, but the popularity of
Governor Fenton, supplemented by the support of Senator Morgan and of
the younger class of men then