what, at least in the manner of preferring them, the demands and
requirements which the Government in its hour of victory was justified
in making, Johnson committed the grievous fault of espousing the
Southern cause and quarreling with the party which had confided to him
the power he was abusing.

Under the patronage and protection of the President, Southern men
would have been more or less than human if they had not grown arrogant
and defiant towards the men of the North. The chivalric sympathy which
always moves the magnanimous in their treatment of a fallen foe, was
therefore drowned in the indignation to which Northern men were
naturally moved by provocations as unexpected as they were
extraordinary. Stimulated by the protection of the President and
encouraged by his contumacious quarrel with Congress, the South was
driven from one unwise step to another, until the entire situation
became hopelessly entangled, and every movement affected by anger
and passion;--the North resolving more and more to insist on the fruits
of victory, the South resolving more and more to act as though they
had conquered in the contest. It was not unnatural, under the
anxieties and discouragements of the crisis, that the South should
have clung to Mr. Johnson for protection; but in the calm review
which the lapse of twenty years affords, the most ardent Southern
partisan must see that the President's policy was at enmity with the
interest and happiness of his section.

It is not to be forgotten, however, that Mr. Johnson's course was
marked by the inherent qualities of his mind. He had two signal
defects, either of which would impair his fitness for Executive duty;
united they rendered him incapable of efficient administration:--he
was conceited and he was obstinate. Conceit without obstinacy may be
overcome by the advice of judicious counselors; united with obstinacy
it carries its possessor beyond the bounds of prudence, almost beyond
the control of reason. Obstinacy united with good judgment is softened
into the virtue of firmness. It has often been said that self-made
men, as they are termed, are necessarily conceited. Like all
aphorisms, this must be taken with numberless exceptions, but it was
singularly applicable to Johnson, who was in all respects a self-made
man. His great career was never absent from his thoughts, and he was
always looking at himself as he fancied he would appear in history. He
came to regard himself