ested their feelings, and did not spare in their bitter
denunciations the personal character of the President or the
unspeakable guilt of his Southern supporters.

The bloody tragedy of midsummer, which had weighed down the people with
a sense of the gravest solicitude, was followed by what might well be
termed its comedy. During the early spring the President had accepted
an invitation from the citizens of Chicago to attend the ceremony of
laying a corner-stone for a monument to be erected to the memory of
Stephen A. Douglas. The date fixed for the President's visit was
September 6th, and he left Washington on the 28th of August,
accompanied by Secretary Welles, Postmaster-general Randall,
General Grant, Admiral Farragut, by a considerable number of army
officers and by a complement of private secretaries and newspaper
reporters,--apparently intending to convert the journey into a political
canvass. Mr. Seward joined the company in New York. The somewhat
ludicrous effect produced by combining a series of turbulent partisan
meetings to be addressed by the President with the solemn duty of paying
respect to the memory of a dead statesman, did not fail to have its
effect upon the appreciative mind of his countrymen, and from the
beginning to the end of the tour there was a popular alternation between
harsh criticism and contemptuous raillery of Mr. Johnson's conduct.

His journey was by way of Philadelphia and New York, to Albany; thence
westward to Chicago. At all the principal cities and towns along the
route large bodies of people assembled. Democrat and Republican,
Administration and anti-Administration, were commingled. The President
spoke everywhere in an aggressive and disputatious tone. It has been
the decorous habit of the Chief Magistrate of the country, when upon a
tour among his fellow-citizens, to refrain from all display of
partisanship, and to receive popular congratulations with brief and
cordial thanks. President Johnson, however, behaved as an ordinary
political speaker in a heated canvass, receiving interruptions from the
crowd, answering insolent remarks with undignified repartee, and
lowering at every step of his progress the dignity which properly
appertains to the great office. At Cleveland the meeting resembled
occasions not unfamiliar to our people, where the speaker receives from
his audience constant and discourteous demonstrations that his words
are unwelcome. The whole scene was reg