reaching the fee
of rebel land owners, and I confidently anticipated the endorsement
of such a measure by the Republican National Convention, which was
to meet in Baltimore, on the seventh of June. I was much gratified
when the National Union League approved it, in its Convention in
that city the day before; and a resolution embodying it was also
reported favorably by the sub-committee on resolutions of the
National Republican Convention the next day. But the General
Committee, on the motion of McKee Dunn of Indiana, always an
incorrigible conservative, struck it out, much to the disappointment
of the Republican masses. To me it was particularly vexatious, as
the measure was a pet one of mine, having labored for it with much
zeal, and in the confidence that the National Convention would
approve it. Mr. Dunn was a Kentuckian of the Border State School,
and although a friend of mine, and an upright and very gentlemanly
man, he had a genius for being on the wrong side of vital questions
during the war. Speaker Colfax used to say, laughingly, that in
determining his own course he first made it a point to find out
where McKee Dunn stood; and then, having ascertained Julian's
position, he always took a middle ground, feeling perfectly sure
he was right.

But to me the nomination of Andrew Johnson for Vice President was
a still greater disappointment. I knew he did not believe in the
principles embodied in the platform. I had become intimately
acquainted with him while we were fellow-members of the Committee
on the Conduct of the War, and he always scouted the idea that
slavery was the cause of our trouble, or that emancipation could
ever be tolerated without immediate colonization. In my early
acquaintance with him I had formed a different opinion; but he was,
at heart, as decided a hater of the negro and of everything savoring
of abolitionism, as the rebels from whom he had separated. His
nomination, however, like that of Mr. Lincoln, seemed to have been
preordained by the people, while the intelligent, sober men, in
Congress and out of Congress, who lamented the fact, were not
prepared to oppose the popular will. Mr. Lincoln's nomination was
nearly unanimous, only the State of Missouri opposing him; but of
the more earnest and through-going Republicans in both Houses of
Congress, probably not one in ten really favored it. It was not
only very distasteful to a large majority of Congress but to many
of the most