ent proceedings
will lose in the long run. Johnson is not a man of action but of
theory, and so long as your party is in doubt as to the true mode
of procedure, it would be at great risk that an attempt be made to
displease the President by a simple law of Congress. This is as
much as I have ever said to anybody. I have never, by word or
inference, given anybody the right to class me in opposition to,
or in support of, Congress. On the contrary, I told Mr. Johnson
that from the nature of things he could not dispense with a Congress
to make laws and appropriate money, and suggested to him to receive
and make overtures to such men as Fessenden, Trumbull, Sherman,
Morgan, and Morton, who, though differing with him in abstract
views of constitutional law and practice, were not destructive.
That if the congressional plan of reconstruction succeeded, he
could do nothing, and if it failed or led to confusion, the future
developed results in his favor, etc.; and that is pretty much all
I have ever said or done. At the meeting of the society of the
army of the Tennessee on the 13th inst., I will be forced to speak,
if here, and though I can confine myself purely to the military
events of the past, I can make the opportunity of stating that in
no event will I be drawn into the complications of the civil politics
of this country.

"If Congress could meet and confine itself to current and committee
business, I feel certain that everything will work along quietly
till the nominations are made, and a new presidential election will
likely settle the principle if negroes are to be voters in the
states without the consent of the whites. This is more a question
of prejudice than principle, but a voter has as much right to his
prejudices as to his vote. . . ."

I answered:

"Mansfield, Ohio, November 1, 1867.
"Dear Brother:-- . . . I see no real occasion for trouble with
Johnson. The great error of his life was in not acquiescing in
and supporting the 14th amendment of the constitution in the 39th
Congress. This he could easily have carried. It referred the
suffrage question to each state, and if adopted long ago the whole
controversy would have culminated; or, if further opposed by the
extreme radicals, they would have been easily beaten. Now I see
nothing short of universal suffrage and universal amnesty as the
basis. When you come on, I suggest that you give out that you go
on to make your annual report and settle In