n his part, than there would have
been in continuing his connection with the men who had elected him. His
nomination for the Vice-Presidency was an enthusiastic tribute to his
Union sentiments; beyond a knowledge of these, the Convention neither
had nor desired to have any information. Mr. Johnson was and is a Union
man; but he was not an anti-slavery man upon principle. He was a
Southern State-Rights man. He looked upon the national government as a
necessity, and the exercise of any powers on its part as a danger. His
political training was peculiar. He had carried on a long war with
slaveholders, but he had never made war upon slavery. He belonged to the
poor white class. In his own language he was a plebeian. The
slaveholders were the patricians. He desired that all the white men of
Tennessee, especially, and of the whole South, should be of one
class,--all slaveholders,--all patricians, if that were possible; and he
himself, for a time became one. Failing in this, he was satisfied when
all became non-slaveholders, and the patrician class ceased to exist.
Hence, as far as Mr. Johnson's opinions and purposes are concerned, the
war has accomplished everything for which it was undertaken. The Union
has been preserved, and the patrician class has been broken down.

Naturally, Mr. Johnson is satisfied. On the one hand he has no sympathy
with the opinion that the negro is a man and ought to be a citizen, and
that he should be endowed with the rights of a man and a citizen; and,
on the other hand, he shares not in the desire of the North to limit the
representation of the South so that there shall be equality among the
white men of the country. He is anxious rather to increase the political
strength of the South. He fears the growing power of the North. The same
apprehension which drove Calhoun into nullification, and Davis,
Stephens, and others into rebellion and civil war, now impels Mr.
Johnson to urge the country to adopt his policy, which secures to the
old slaveholding States an eighth of the political power of the nation,
to which they have no just title whatever. To the North this is a more
flagrant political injustice than was even the institution of slavery.
He once expressed equal hostility towards Massachusetts and South
Carolina, and desired that they should be cut off from the main land and
lashed together in the wide ocean. The President appears to be
reconciled to South Carolina; but if the hostility he once