great thoroughness and in a temperate spirit, and the
necessity of the measure for the protection of the freedmen and the
introduction of free labor in the South was so generally acknowledged
that the recognized Republican friends of the President in the Senate as
well as in the House supported it. It passed by overwhelming majorities
in both Houses, and everybody, even those most intimate with the
President, confidently expected that he would willingly accept and sign
it. But on the 19th of February he returned it with his veto, mainly on
the assumed ground that it was unnecessary and unconstitutional, and
also because it was passed by a Congress from which eleven States, those
lately in rebellion, were excluded--thus throwing out a dark hint that
before the admission of the late rebel States to representation this
Congress might be considered constitutionally unable to make any valid
laws at all. Senator Trumbull, in an uncommonly able, statesmanlike, and
calm speech, combated the President's arguments and moved that the bill
pass, the President's veto notwithstanding. But the "Administration
Republicans," although they had voted for the bill, now voted to sustain
the veto, and, there being no two-thirds majority to overcome it, the
veto prevailed. Thus President Johnson had won a victory over the
Republican majority in Congress. This victory may have made him believe
that he would be able to kill with his veto all legislation unpalatable
to him, and that, therefore, he was actually master of the situation. He
made the grave mistake of underestimating the opposition.

_A Humiliating Spectacle_

On February 22, 1866, a public meeting was held in Washington for the
purpose of expressing popular approval of the President's reconstruction
policy. The crowd marched from the meeting-place to the White House to
congratulate the President upon his successful veto of the Freedmen's
Bureau Bill. The President, called upon to make a speech in response,
could not resist the temptation. He then dealt a blow to himself from
which he never recovered. He spoke, in the egotistic strain usual with
him, of the righteousness of his own course, and then began to inveigh
in the most violent terms against those who opposed him. He denounced
the joint Committee on Reconstruction, the committee headed by
Fessenden, as "an irresponsible central directory" that had assumed the
powers of Congress, described how he had fought the leaders of th