to. Johnson was
hailed as a traitor by Republicans, and the campaign against him
culminated in his impeachment by Congress early in 1868. The trial
which followed was the most bitter in the history of the Senate, but
Andrew Johnson was acquitted by the failure of the prosecution to secure
the two-thirds vote necessary for conviction by a single vote,
thirty-five senators voting for conviction and nineteen for acquittal.

Johnson's friends were jubilant, but his power had vanished. The seceded
states one by one came back into the Union in accordance with the
Reconstruction act which Johnson had vetoed. He failed of the nomination
on the Democratic ticket, and after the inauguration of his successor,
at once returned to his old home in Tennessee. There he attempted to
secure the nomination for United States senator, but his influence was
gone and he was defeated. So ended his public life.

It has been rather the fashion to picture Johnson, as an intemperate and
bull-headed ignoramus, but such a characterization is far from fair. But
for Lincoln's assassination, some such policy of reconstruction as
Johnson advocated would probably have been carried out, instead of the
policy of fanatics like Thaddeus Stevens, which left the South a prey to
the carpet-bagger and the ignorant negro for over a decade. Johnson
himself might have accomplished more if he had been of a less violent
disposition; but he was ignorant of diplomacy, incapable of compromise,
and so was worsted in the fight. However we may disagree with his policy
and dislike his character, let us at least not forget that picture of
the "poor white" boy teaching himself to read; and that other of the
girl-wife patiently instructing him in the rudiments of writing.

* * * * *

A successful war inevitably gives to its commanders a tremendous popular
prestige. We have seen how the battle of New Orleans made Andrew Jackson
a national hero, how William Henry Harrison loomed large after the
battle of Tippecanoe, and how Zachary Taylor was chosen President as a
result of his victories in Mexico. The country was now to undergo
another period of military domination, longer lived than those others,
as the Civil War was greater than them--a period from which it has even
yet not fully recovered.

In 1868, the Republican party nominated unanimously for President the
general who had pushed the war to a successful finish, and who had
received Lee's