Republic who would be benefited by President Lincoln's death;
and, as he was found "asleep" at the "unusual hour" of nine o'clock
P.M., of the 14th of April, and had made haste to take the oath of
office as President of the United States as soon as the breath had left
the body of his predecessor, insinuated that he (Johnson) might with
more reason be suspected of "complicity" in "the foul work" than the
"Rebels and Traitors" charged with it, in his Proclamation; so charged,
for the very purpose--Thompson insinuated--of shielding himself from
discovery, and conviction!

But while, for a moment, perhaps, there flitted across the public mind a
half suspicion of the possibility of what this Rebel intimated as true,
yet another moment saw it dissipated. For the People remembered that
between "Andrew Johnson," one of the "poor white trash" of Tennessee,
and the "aristocratic Slave-owners" of the South, who headed the
Rebellion, there could be neither sympathy nor cooperation--nothing, but
hatred; and that this same Andrew Johnson, who, by power of an
indomitable will, self-education, and natural ability, had, despite the
efforts of that "aristocracy," forced himself upward, step by step, from
the tailor's bench, to the successful honors of alderman and Mayor, and
then still upward through both branches of his State Legislature, into
the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States--and,
in the latter Body, had so gallantly met, and worsted in debate, the
chosen representatives of that class upon whose treasonable heads he
poured forth in invective, the gathered hatred of a life-time--would
probably be the very last man whom these same "aristocratic"
Conspirators, "Rebels, and Traitors," would prefer as arbiter of their
fate.

The popular feeling responded heartily, at this time, to the
denunciations which, in his righteous indignation, he had, in the
Senate, and since, heaped upon Rebellion, and especially his declaration
that "Treason must be made odious!"--utterances now substantially
reiterated by him more vehemently than ever, and multiplied in posters
and transparencies and newspapers all over the Land. Thus the public
mind rapidly grew to believe it impossible that the Rebel leaders could
gain, by the substitution, in the Executive chair, of this harsh,
determined, despotic nature, for the mild, kindly, merciful,
even-tempered, Abraham Lincoln. With Andrew Johnson for President, the
People felt tha