his desertion of the party which had elevated
him to power. At least twice before, in the history of the Federal
Government, it had been demonstrated that a President who for any
cause runs counter to the views and wishes of the party that elected
him is doomed to disappointment, and is fortunate if he escape
disgrace. Mr. Johnson had drunk the cup of humiliation to its dregs,
and the remaining energies of his life seemed now devoted to the
punishment, or least the denunciation, of those who had obstructed and
defeated his policies while President. Revenge is always an ignoble
motive, pardonable, if at all, when inspired by the hot blood of youth,
but to be regarded as not only lamentable but pitiable in men who
approach threescore and ten. The extra session closed on the 24th of
March. Mr. Johnson did not live to resume his seat. On the last day
of the ensuing July (1875) he died peacefully at his home in East
Tennessee among friends who had watched his progress from poverty and
illiteracy to the highest position in the Republic. He was in the
sixty-seventh year of his age.

The annual message of the President contained no reference to the
condition of the South. The stringent and persistent prosecution in
the United States courts of members of the organized bands of Ku-Klux
had tended to dissolve that organization and to restrain its members
from the commission of such outrages as had distinguished the earlier
period of their existence. There was hope in the minds of sanguine
people of the North that an era of peace and harmony had begun in the
South, which would be characterized by a fair recognition of the rights
of all the population, that free suffrage would be protected, that the
hand of violence would be stayed, and that the Centennial year would
find every State of the Republic in the enjoyment of material
prosperity, of the fair administration of the law, of the enforcement
of equal rights.

No body of men rejoiced over this prospect more heartily than
Republican senators and representatives, for if it should prove true
they would have cause of gratulation both as patriots and partisans.
The complete pacification of the country on the basis of equal and
exact justice was the leading desire of all right-minded men, and the
free suffrage which this implied would give to the Republicans the
opportunity for a fair trial of strength in the advocacy of their
principles before the Southern people. The pi