, addressing the
crowd. Of humble birth, a tailor by trade, nature gave him a strong
intellect, and he had learned to read after his marriage. He had
acquired much knowledge of the principles of government, and made
himself a fluent speaker, but could not rise above the level of the
class in which he was born and to which he always appealed. He well
understood the few subjects laboriously studied, and affected to despise
other knowledge, while suspicious that those possessing such would take
advantage of him. Self-educated men, as they are called, deprived of the
side light thrown on a particular subject by instruction in cognate
matters, are narrow and dogmatic, and, with an uneasy consciousness of
ignorance, soothe their own vanity by underrating the studies of others.
To the vanity of this class he added that of the demagogue (I use the
term in its better sense), and called the wise policy left him by his
predecessor "my policy." Compelled to fight his way up from obscurity,
he had contracted a dislike of those more favored of fortune, whom he
was in the habit of calling "the slave-aristocracy," and became
incapable of giving his confidence to any one, even to those on whose
assistance he relied in a contest, just now beginning, with the
Congress.

President Johnson never made a dollar by public office, abstained from
quartering a horde of connections on the Treasury, refused to uphold
rogues in high places, and had too just a conception of the dignity of a
chief magistrate to accept presents. It may be said that these are
humble qualities for a citizen to boast the possession of by a President
of the United States. As well claim respect for a woman of one's family
on the ground that she has preserved her virtue. Yet all whose eyes were
not blinded by partisanship, whose manhood was not emasculated by
servility, would in these last years have welcomed the least of them as
manna in the desert.

The President, between whom and the Congressional leaders the seeds of
discord were already sown, dallied with me from day to day, and at
length said that it would spare him embarrassment if I could induce
Stevens, Davis, and others of the House, and Sumner of the Senate, to
recommend the permission to visit Jefferson Davis; and I immediately
addressed myself to this unpleasant task.

Thaddeus Stevens received me with as much civility as he was capable of.
Deformed in body and temper like Caliban, this was the Lord Hategood