ernments therein, as if they alone were to be considered. The
freedmen, who had been of so great service to our armies, whom by every
requirement of honor and gratitude we were bound to protect, were left
to the hardly restricted guardianship of their former masters, who,
having no faith in their manhood or their development, devised for them
a condition with few rights or hopes, and little removed from the
slavery out of which they had been delivered.

This policy found little favor with those in the North who had borne the
heat and burden of the war. In the elections of 1866 the people
repudiated President Johnson's policy by emphatic majorities. When the
hostile Congress met, the governments Johnson had instituted were
declared to be provisional only, and it set about the work of
reconstruction in its own way, imbedding the changed conditions, the
fruits of the war, in proposed amendments of the Constitution of the
United States, which were ultimately ratified by a sufficient number of
States to make them part of the organic frame of government of the
Republic.

In these days of storm and stress, General Grant took neither side as a
partisan. He stuck to his professional work until he was forced to be a
participator in a political war, strange to his knowledge and his
habits. Congress directed the Southern States to be divided into five
military districts, with a military commander of each, and all
subordinate to the general of the army, who was charged with keeping the
peace, until civil governments in the States should be established by
the legislative department of national authority.

Congress, before adjourning in 1866, passed a tenure-of-office
act,--overriding in this, as in other legislation, the President's veto.
The motive was to prevent the President from using the patronage to
strengthen his policy. This act required the President to make report to
the Senate of all removals during the recess, with his reasons therefor.
All appointments to vacancies so created were to be _ad interim_
appointments. If the Senate disapproved of the removals, the officer
suspended at once became again the incumbent. Severe penalties were
provided for infraction of the law. During the recess the President
removed Stanton, and appointed General Grant to be Secretary of War.
Grant did not desire the office, but under advice accepted it, lest a
worse thing for the country might happen.

Johnson hoped to win Grant to his side