e to pronounce judgment between the President and Congress.
The great quarrel had created excitement so intense as to affect men's
balance of mind. About the time of the assembling of Congress Mr.
Preston King of New York (the same rotund gentleman with whom, in the
National Convention of 1860, I conducted Mr. Ashmun to the chair), who
had been a Senator of the United States and had been appointed Collector
of Customs by President Johnson, committed suicide by jumping into the
North River from a ferry-boat. He had been a Republican of the radical
type, and when he took the office he supposed the President to be of the
same mind; but Mr. Johnson's course distressed him so much that he
became melancholy; his brain gave way, and he sought relief in death.
Another suicide which greatly startled the country a few months later,
that of Senator Lane of Kansas, was attributed to a similar cause. "Jim"
Lane had been one of the most famous free-State fighters in Kansas
Territory. Since then he was ranked among the extreme anti-slavery men
and as a Senator he was counted upon as a firm opponent of President
Johnson's policy. To the astonishment of everybody he voted against the
Civil Rights bill. This somewhat mysterious change of front, which
nobody seemed able satisfactorily to explain, cost him his confidential
intercourse with his former associates in the Senate, and brought upon
him stinging manifestations of disapproval from his constituents. He was
reported to have expressed profound repentance of what he had done and
finally made away with himself as one lost to hope. He was still in the
full vigor of manhood--only fifty-one years old--when he sought the
grave.

[Illustration: JOHN POTTER STOCKTON

THE DEMOCRATIC SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY WHO WAS UNSEATED IN THE SENATE OF
1866 TO MAKE ROOM FOR A REPUBLICAN SUCCESSOR. HE WAS LATER REELECTED TO
THE SENATE]

The campaign of 1866 was remarkable for its heat and bitterness. In
canvasses carried on for the purpose of electing a President, I had seen
more enthusiasm, but in none so much animosity and bad blood as in this,
an incidental object of which was politically to destroy a president.
Andrew Johnson had not only manifested a disposition to lean upon the
Democratic party in the pursuit of his policy, but he had also begun to
dismiss public officers who refused to cooperate with him politically
and to put in their places men who adhered to him. This touched partisan
spirit i