r you, fellow citizens of the
House of Representatives, to judge, each of you for yourselves, of
the elections, returns and qualifications of your own members."

On the suffrage question, he said:

"On the propriety of making freedmen electors by proclamation of
the Executive, I took for my counsel the Constitution itself, the
interpretations of that instrument by its authors, and their
contemporaries, and the recent legislation of Congress. They all
unite in inculcating the doctrine that the regulation of the suffrage
is a power exclusively for the States. So fixed was this reservation
of power in the habits of the people, and so unquestioned has been
the interpretation of the Constitution, that during the Civil War
the late President never harbored the purpose,--certainly never
avowed it,--of disregarding it; and in acts of Congress nothing
can be found to sanction any departure by the Executive from a
policy which has so uniformly obtained."

Aside from the worst radicals, the message pleased every one, the
country at large and the majority in Congress; and there was a
general disposition to give the President a reasonably free hand
in working out his plan of reconstruction. But as I stated, the
Legislatures of the Southern States and their Executives assumed
so domineering an attitude, practically wiping out the results of
the war, that the Republican majority in Congress assumed it to be
its duty to take control from the Executive.

What determined Johnson in his course, I do not know. It was
thought that he would be a radical of radicals. Being of the "poor
white" class, he may have been flattered by the attentions showered
on him by the old Southern aristocrats. Writers of this period
have frequently given that as a reason. My own belief has been
that he was far too strong a man to be governed in so vital a matter
by so trivial a cause. My conviction is that the radical Republican
leaders in the House were right; that he believed in the old
Democratic party, aside from his loyalty to the Union; and was a
Democrat determined to turn the Government over to the Democratic
party, reconstructed on a Union basis.

I cannot undertake to go into all the long details of the memorable
struggle. As I look back over the history of it now, it seems to
me to bear a close resemblance to the beginning of the French
Revolution, to the struggle between the States General of France
and Louis XVI. Might we not, if t