of September. Senator
Zachariah Chandler and myself attended it as delegates sent there by the
Republicans of Michigan. It was a large gathering, the roll of which
bore many distinguished names from all parts of the country. Southern
members having been permitted to say but very little in the Johnson
convention a fortnight before, it was a clever stroke of policy on the
part of our managers to give the floor to the Southern loyalists
altogether. They availed themselves of the opportunity to lay before the
people of the country an account of their experiences and sufferings,
since the promulgation of the Johnson policy, which could not fail to
stir the popular heart. Their recitals of the atrocities committed in
the South were indeed horrible. Over a thousand Union citizens had been
murdered there since the surrender of Lee and in no case had the
assassins been brought to judgment. But after Mr. Johnson's "swing
around the circle" no further exertions could have saved his cause, and
no further exertion could have very much augmented the majority against
him. I am convinced he would have been beaten without his disgraceful
escapade. But his self-exhibitions made his defeat overwhelming. The
Republicans won in one hundred and forty-three Congressional districts,
the Democrats in only forty-nine. President Johnson was more at the
mercy of Congress than ever.

During the canvass I was somewhat in demand as a speaker and addressed
large meetings at various places. One of my speeches, delivered at
Philadelphia on the 8th of September, was printed in pamphlet form and
widely circulated as a campaign document. I have read it
again--thirty-nine years after its delivery--and I may say that after
the additional light and the experience which this lapse of time has
given us, I would now draw the diagnosis of the situation then existing
substantially as I did in that speech--barring some, not
many--extravagances of oratorical coloring, and the treatment of the
disqualification clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

_The Movement Toward Negro Suffrage_

It was in this campaign that the matter of negro suffrage was first
discussed on the hustings with a certain frankness. Efforts have since
been made, and are now being made, to make the Southern people
believe--and, I deeply regret to say, many of them actually do
believe--that the introduction of negro suffrage was a device of some
particularly malignant and vi