e the mortification of standing
before the world in the attitude of a swindled democracy. Their
collective will is crossed by the will of one individual, whose only
title to such autocracy is in the fact that he has cheated and betrayed
those who elected him. There might be some little compensation for this
outrage, if the man himself possessed any of those commanding qualities
of mind and disposition which ordinarily distinguish usurpers; but it is
the peculiarity of Mr. Johnson that the indignation excited by his
claims is only equalled by the contempt excited by his character. He is
despised even by those he benefits, and his nominal supporters feel
ashamed of the trickster and apostate, while condescending to reap the
advantages of his faithlessness. No party in the South or in the North
thinks of selecting him as its candidate, for the vices and weaknesses
which make an excellent accomplice and tool are not those which any
party would consider desirable in a leader. Whatever office-seekers,
partisans, traitors, and public enemies may find in Mr. Johnson, it is
certain that they find in him nothing to respect. He is cursed with that
form of moral disease which sometimes renders a man ridiculous,
sometimes infamous, but which never renders him respectable,--namely,
vanity of will. Other men may be vain of their talents and
accomplishments, but he is vain of the personal pronoun itself, utterly
regardless of what it covers and includes. Reason, conscience,
understanding, have no impersonality to him. When he uses the words, he
uses them as synonymes of his determinations, or as decorative terms
into which it pleases him to translate the rough vernacular of his
wilfulness and caprices. The "Constitution," also, a word constantly
profaned by his lips, is not so much, as he uses it, the Constitution of
the United States as the moral and mental constitution of Andrew
Johnson, which, in his view, is the one primary fact to which all other
facts must be subordinate. His gross inconsistencies of opinion and
policy, his shameless betrayal of his party, his incapacity to hold
himself to his word, his hatred of a cause the moment its defenders
cease to flatter him, his habit of administering laws he has vetoed, on
the principle that they do not mean what he vetoed them for meaning, his
delight in little tricks of low cunning,--in short, all the immoral and
unreasonable acts of his administration have their central source in a
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