Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[746] speeches in the Senate, he quoted “the Lays of Ancient Rome” as “translated by Macaulay;” and he was constantly making those mistakes in historical and literary allusions which never fail to characterize and betray self-educated men. Before his elevation to the Presidency, Mr. Johnson was considered a demagogue, who seldom ventured out of common-places, or attempted anything above the coarse sense of the multitude, successful, industrious, a clod-head, a “man of the people,” that peculiar product of American politics. But there are familiar instances in history where characters apparently the most common-place and trifling, have been suddenly awakened and elevated as great responsibilities have been thrust upon them, and have risen to the demands of the new occasion. An example of such change was afforded by plain Andrew Johnson, when he stepped to the dignity of President of a restored Union, with all its great historical trusts for him to administer in sight of the world. From that hour the man changed. The eminence did not confound him; he saw before him a part in American history second only to that of George Washington; he left behind him the ambitions and resentments of mere party; he rose as the man who has been secretly, almost unconsciously, great — a commonplace among his neighbour, the familiar fellow of the company-suddenly, completely to the full height and dignity of the new destiny that called him. The man who had been twitted as a tailor and condemned as a demagogue, proved a statesman, measuring his actions for the future, insensible to clamour and patient for results.

President Johnson belonged to an intermediate school of politics, standing between the doctrines of Mr. Calhoun and those of Alexander Hamilton. He was never an extreme State-Rights man; he had never recognized the right of nullification, or that of secession; but he was always disposed to recognize, in a liberal degree, the rights of the States, and to combat the theory that the Federal Government absorbed powers and privileges, which, from the foundation of the republic, had been conceded to the States.

It was fortunate that the Chief Magistrate of the country, who was to administer its affairs and determine its course on the close of the war, occupied this medium ground in politics — the one that suggested the practicability of compromise, and assured a conservative disposition in a time of violent and critical dispute. It was natural that on the close of hostilities the tide of public opinion should have set strongly in favour of Consolidation; and that men should apply the precedent of powers used in the war, to the condition of peace. The great question which the war had left, was as to the form and spirit of the Government that ensued upon it — in short, the determination of the question whether the experience of the past four years had been a Constitutional Revolution, or the mere decision of certain special and limited questions. This was the great historical issue. The