cter of these appointments may be seen in a
sentiment uttered by Governor Perry soon after his elevation to
office: "There is not now in the Southern States," said he, "any one
who feels more bitterly the humiliation and degradation of going back
into the Union than I do." Governor Perry saved himself from dismissal
by assuring the people that the death of Mr. Lincoln was no loss to
the South, while he had every hope that Mr. Johnson, an old
slaveholding Democrat, would be an advantage.

In Alabama, under the provisional government established by Mr.
Johnson, the convention prohibited negroes from testifying in the
courts. Rebels throughout the South at once began to make their
arrangements for taking part in the government. In November, Governor
Perry made a public demand that when Congress met the Clerk of the
House should place on the roll the names of Representatives from the
rebel States.

When South Carolina hesitated to adopt the Constitutional Amendment
abolishing slavery, President Johnson assured the Governor that the
clause giving Congress the power to enforce it by appropriate
legislation really limited congressional control over the negro
question. After this assurance, South Carolina accepted the
Constitutional Amendment.

In August and September, 1865, Democratic conventions indorsed the
President's policy, and Democratic papers began to praise him.
Republicans were unwilling to believe that they had been deserted, and
hoped that after the assembling of Congress all differences would
disappear.

The message of the President, read at the opening of the Thirty-ninth
Congress, placed him in direct opposition to the leaders of the
Republican party, and at variance with his own policy. "A concession
of the elective franchise," said he, "to the freedmen, by act of the
President of the United States, must have been extended to all colored
men, wherever found, and must have established a change of suffrage in
the Northern, Middle, and Western States, not less than in the
Southern and Southwestern."

Every one could see that the President possessed as much power to
admit the black man to the right of suffrage in the rebel States as to
appoint provisional governors over them.

While Congress was in session, and actually employed in legislating
for the restoration of the rebel States, Mr. Johnson substantially
declared that Congress had no control over the subject, by removing
the provisional governor of Al