THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
made self-respecting Americans not merely sad, but angry. Such a lapse might have been overlooked in the conduct of a mayor—even of a governor, or of a member of Congress. But the President! The President of the United States! This was too much. The whole North rang with indignation. President Johnson's supporters hung their heads with shame and dismay. The humorists, pictorial as well as literary, pounced upon the “swinging around the circle” as a fruitful subject for caricature or satire, turning serious wrath into a bitter laugh. Andrew Johnson became the victim not only of detestation but of ridicule.
The campaign was then—about the middle of September—virtually decided. There was no longer any doubt that the election would not only preserve, but materially increase, the anti-Johnson majority in Congress. But before President Johnson started on his ill-starred journey, arrangements had been made for other National Conventions. One of them was designed to bring Southern Loyalists, that is, Southern men who had stood loyally by the National Government, together with Northern Republicans. It met at Philadelphia on the 3rd of September. Senator Zachariah Chandler and myself attended it as delegates sent there by the Republicans of Michigan. It was a large gathering, the roll of which bore many distinguished names from all parts of the country. Southern members having been permitted to say but very little in the Johnson Convention a fortnight before, it was a clever stroke of policy on the part of our managers to give the floor to the Southern loyalists altogether. They availed themselves of their opportunity to lay before the people of the country an account of their experiences and sufferings since the promulgation of the Johnson policy, which could not fail to stir the popular heart. Their recitals of the atrocities committed in the South
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