. The act to degrade his office
by forcing him to keep a cabinet officer who daily insulted him, the Civil
Rights Bill, and the Freedman's Bureau Bill followed in rapid succession.

Stoneman's crowning Reconstruction Act was passed, two years after the war
had closed, shattering the Union again into fragments, blotting the names
of ten great Southern States from its roll, and dividing their territory
into five Military Districts under the control of belted satraps.

When this measure was vetoed by the President, it came accompanied by a
message whose words will be forever etched in fire on the darkest page of
the Nation's life.

Amid hisses, curses, jeers, and cat-calls, the Clerk of the House read its
burning words:

"_The power thus given to the commanding officer over the people of each
district is that of an absolute monarch. His mere will is to take the
place of law. He may make a criminal code of his own; he can make it as
bloody as any recorded in history, or he can reserve the privilege of
acting on the impulse of his private passions in each case that arises._

"_Here is a bill of attainer against nine millions of people at once. It
is based upon an accusation so vague as to be scarcely intelligible, and
found to be true upon no credible evidence. Not one of the nine millions
was heard in his own defence. The representatives even of the doomed
parties were excluded from all participation in the trial. The conviction
is to be followed by the most ignominious punishment ever inflicted on
large masses of men. It disfranchises them by hundreds of thousands and
degrades them all--even those who are admitted to be guiltless--from the
rank of freemen to the condition of slaves._

"_Such power has not been wielded by any monarch in England for more than
five hundred years, and in all that time no people who speak the English
tongue have borne such servitude._"

When the last jeering cat-call which greeted this message of the Chief
Magistrate had died away on the floor and in the galleries, old Stoneman
rose, with a smile playing about his grim mouth, and introduced his bill
to impeach the President of the United States and remove him from office.

CHAPTER VIII

A DREAM

Elsie spent weeks of happiness in an abandonment of joy to the spell of
her lover. His charm was resistless. His gift of delicate intimacy, the
eloquence with which he expressed his love, and yet the manly dignity with
which he did it