he did not, to my mind, have in his moral make-up sufficient "backbone" to fit him for the chief magistracy of the nation at such a time as was then upon the country. In this place, a clear head, quick decision and firm purpose are required. The conditions demanded stalwart qualities and he was not a stalwart. The country had not quite survived the effects and influence of its great war for existence. The serpent had been wounded but not killed. Under the disguise of meekly accepting the results and decisions of the war, the rebels had come back to Congress more with the pride of conquerors than with the repentant humility of defeated traitors. Their heads were high in the air. It was not they but the loyal men who were at fault. Under the fair-seeming name of local self-government, they were shooting to death just as many of the newly made citizens of the South as was necessary to put the individual States of the Union entirely into their power. The object which through violence and bloodshed they had accomplished in the several States, they were already aiming to accomplish in the United States by address and political strategy. They had captured the individual States and meant now to capture the United States. The moral difference between those who fought for the Union and liberty, and those who had fought for slavery and the dismemberment of the Union, was fast fading away. The language of a sickly conciliation, inherited from the administration of President Hayes, was abroad. Insolency born of slave mastery had begun to exhibit itself in the House and Senate of the nation. The recent amendments of the Constitution, adopted to secure the results of the war for the Union, were beginning to be despised and scouted, and the ship of state seemed fast returning to her ancient moorings. It was therefore no blind partiality that led me to prefer Gen-
