great States of the American Union. To each negro in the
South was allotted forty acres from the estate of his former master, and
the remaining millions of acres were to be divided among the "loyal who
had suffered by reason of the Rebellion."

The execution of this, the most stupendous crime ever conceived by an
English lawmaker, involving the exile and ruin of millions of innocent
men, women, and children, could not be intrusted to Andrew Johnson.

No such measure could be enforced so long as any man was President and
Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy who claimed his title under the
Constitution. Hence the absolute necessity of his removal.

The conditions of society were ripe for this daring enterprise.

Not only was the Ship of State in the hands of revolutionists who had
boarded her in the storm stress of a civic convulsion, but among them
swarmed the pirate captains of the boldest criminals who ever figured in
the story of a nation.

The first great Railroad Lobby, with continental empires at stake,
thronged the Capitol with its lawyers, agents, barkers, and hired
courtesans.

The Cotton Thieves, who operated through a ring of Treasury agents, had
confiscated unlawfully three million bales of cotton hidden in the South
during the war and at its close, the last resource of a ruined people. The
Treasury had received a paltry twenty thousand bales for the use of its
name with which to seize alleged "property of the Confederate Government."
The value of this cotton, stolen from the widows and orphans, the maimed
and crippled, of the South was over $700,000,000 in gold--a capital
sufficient to have started an impoverished people again on the road to
prosperity. The agents of this ring surrounded the halls of legislation,
guarding their booty from envious eyes, and demanding the enactment of
vaster schemes of legal confiscation.

The Whiskey Ring had just been formed, and began its system of gigantic
frauds by which it scuttled the Treasury.

Above them all towered the figure of Oakes Ames, whose master mind had
organized the _Credit Mobilier_ steal. This vast infamy had already eaten
its way into the heart of Congress and dug the graves of many illustrious
men.

So open had become the shame that Stoneman was compelled to increase his
committees in the morning, when a corrupt majority had been bought the
night before.

He arose one day, and looking at the distinguished Speaker, who was
himself the secr