"SECT. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate
legislation, the provisions of this article."]

CHAPTER X.

The hostility of the President to all measures which the Republican
party deemed necessary for the proper reconstruction of the Southern
States, had made a deep impression upon certain members of his Cabinet,
and before midsummer it was known that a crisis was impeding. On the
11th of July Mr. William Dennison, the Postmaster-general, tendered his
resignation, alleging as the chief cause the difference of opinion
between himself and the President in regard to the proposed Fourteenth
Amendment to the Constitution. He had for some months felt that it
would be impossible for him to co-operate with the President, and the
relations between them were no longer cordial, if they were not indeed
positively hostile. Alexander W. Randall of Wisconsin, the first
assistant Postmaster-general, was an outspoken supporter of the
measures of the Administration, and was using every effort to prejudice
Mr. Johnson's mind against Mr. Dennison, whom he was ambitious to
succeed. Mr. Dennison felt that he was seriously compromising his
position at home by remaining in the Cabinet, though he had been urged
to that course by some zealous opponents of the Administration, who
desired, as long as possible, to restrain the President from using the
patronage of the Government in aid of his policy. Mr. Randall was
promptly nominated as Mr. Dennison's successor and proved, in all
respects, a faithful follower of his chief.

A week later Mr. James Speed resigned his post as Attorney-general. He
had been regarded as very conservative on all pending issues relating
to Reconstruction, but he now saw plainly that the President was
inevitably drifting, not only to extreme views on the issue presented,
but to an evident alliance with the Democratic party and perhaps a
return to its ranks. Against this course Mr. Speed revolted. His
inheritance of Whig principles, his anti-slavery convictions, his
personal associations, all forbade his following the President in his
desertion of the Republican party. He saw his duty, and promptly
retired from a position which he felt that he could not hold with
personal consistency and honor. His successor was Henry Stanbery of
Ohio, a lawyer of high reputation and a gentleman of unsullied
character. He belonged to that association of old Whigs who, in
their extreme conservatism o