he struggle going on between President
Johnson and the Republican majority in Congress, which was then
approaching its final crisis. He said that he looked upon that
struggle as a test of the strength of the conservative element in our
political fabric. Would the impeachment of the President, and, if he
were found guilty, his deposition from office, lead to any further
conflicts dangerous to the public peace and order? I replied that I
was convinced it would not; the executive power would simply pass from
the hands of one man to the hands of another, according to the
constitution and laws of the country, without any resistance on the
part of anybody; and on the other hand, if President Johnson were
acquitted, there would be general submission to the verdict as a
matter of course, although popular excitement stirred up by the matter
would run very high throughout the country.

The Chancellor was too polite to tell me point-blank that he had grave
doubts as to all this, but he would at least not let me believe that
he thought as I did. He smilingly asked me whether I was still as
firmly convinced a republican as I had been before I went to America
and studied republicanism from the inside; and when I assured him that
I was, and that, although I had in personal experience found the
republic not as lovely as my youthful enthusiasm had pictured it to my
imagination, but much more practical in its general beneficence to the
great masses of the people, and much more conservative in its
tendencies than I had imagined, he said that he supposed our
impressions or views with regard to such things were largely owing to
temperament, or education, or traditional ways of thinking.

"I am not a democrat," he went on, "and cannot be. I was born an
aristocrat and brought up an aristocrat. To tell you the truth, there
was something in me that made me instinctively sympathize with the
slaveholders, as the aristocratic party, in your Civil War. But," he
added with earnest emphasis, "this vague sympathy did not in the least
affect my views as to the policy to be followed by our government with
regard to the United States. Prussia, notwithstanding her monarchical
and aristocratic sympathies, is, and will steadily be by tradition, as
well as by thoroughly understood interest, the firm friend of your
republic. You may always count upon that."

He asked me a great many questions concerning the political and social
conditions in the United Sta