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accepting the burden of cares and responsibilities so suddenly thrown upon him, he put his whole heart in the work before him, and not even the disasters of 1862, that gloomiest year of the war, could for a moment shake his confiding spirit. People were not wanting who found fault with the buoyant temper he displayed at that period; but his apparent cheeriness was of as much avail as our armies in bringing about the triumph which at last came.

Of the struggle which resulted in this triumph we shall give no details, only referring briefly to some of the more important actions of the President. The most momentous of these, without doubt, was the Emancipation Proclamation, issued on the 22d of September, 1862, and to take effect on the 1st of January, 1863, by which slavery was at once and forever done away with in the United States. In his message to Congress, the President thus explains this act: "In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth. * * * The way is plain, peaceful, glorious, just-a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless."

In 1864, by a respectable majority in the popular vote and a large one in the electoral college, Mr Lincoln was re-elected to the Presidency.

At the period of his second inauguration, the complete triumph of the Federal authority over the seceded States was assured. The last battles of the war had been fought. War had substantially ceased. The President was looking forward to the more congenial work of pacification. How he designed to carry out this work we may judge from the following passage in his second inaugural: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all that may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Unfortunately, the kind-hearted Lincoln was not to carry out the work of pacification to which he looked forward with such bright anticipations. But a little more than a month after his second inauguration on the night of the 14th of April, 1865-John Wilkes Booth, one of a small band of desperate conspirators, as insanely foolish as they were wicked, fired a pistol-ball into the brain of the President as he sat in his box at the theatre. The wound proved fatal in a few hours, Mr. Lin coln never recovering his consciousness.

The excitement which the assassination of the President occasioned was most intense. The whole country was in tears. Nor was this grief

confined to our own people. England, France, all Europe, and even the far-off countries of China and Japan, joined in the lamentation. Never was man more universally mourned, or more deserving of such widespread sorrow.

The funeral honors were grand and imposing. His body, having been embalmed, was taken to his home at Springfield, Illinois, passing through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, and other large towns and cities. The entire road seemed to be lined with mourners, while in the chief cities the funeral ceremonies were equally solemn and magnificent.

ANDREW JOHNSON,

HE constitutional successor to President

Lincoln, was born in Raleigh, N. C., December 29th, 1808. Prevented by the poverty of his parents from receiving any schooling, he was apprenticed, at the age of ten, to a tailor. On the expiration of his apprenticeship, he went to Greenville, Tenn., where he married. By his wife he was taught to write and to cipher, having already learned to read. Taking considerable interest in local politics, he formed a workingman's party in the town, by which he was elected alderman, and afterward Mayor. In 1835, he was elected to a seat in the Legislature.

Failing of re-election in 1837, he was again suc cessful in 1839; and in 1841, was elected to the State Senate. His ability was now recognized and, in 1843, he was sent to Congress as a Representative of the Democratic party. Having served five successive terms in Congress, he was, in 1853, elected Governor of Tennessee, and again in 1855. Two years later, he was called upon to represent Tennessee in the United States Senate, where he speedily rose to distinction as a man of great native energy. The free homestead bill, giving one hundred and sixty acres of the public land to every citizen who would settle upon it and cultivate it a certain number of years, owes its passage to his persistent advocacy. On the slavery question he generally went with the Democratic party, accepting slavery as an existing institution, protected by the Constitution.

In the Presidential canvass of 1860, Mr. Johnson was a supporter of Breckinridge, but took strong grounds against secession when that subject came up. His own State having voted itself out of the Union, it was at the peril of his life that he returned home in 1861. Attacked by a mob on a railroad car, he boldly faced his assailants, pistol in hand, and they slunk away. On the 4th of March, 1862, he was appointed Military Governor of Tennessee. He entered upon the duties of his office with a courage and vigor that soon entirely reversed the condition of affairs in

the State. By March, 1864, he had so far restored order that elections were held for State and County officers, and the usual machinery of civil government was once more set in motion.

On the 4th of March, 1865, Mr. Johnson was inaugurated as Vice-President of the United States. The assassination of President Lincoln, a little more than a month afterward, placed him in the vacant chief executive chair. Though Mr. Johnson made no distinct pledges, it was thought by the tone of his inaugural that he would pursue a severe course toward the seceded States. Yet the broad policy of restoration he finally adopted, met the earnest disapproval of the great party by which he had been elected. The main point at issue was," whether the seceded States should be at once admitted to representation in Congress, and resume all the rights they had enjoyed before the Civil War, without further guarantees than the surrender of their armies, and with no provision for protecting the emancipated blacks."

Johnson, opposed to making any restrictive conditions, therefore persistently vetoed the various reconstructive measures adopted by Congress. Though these measures were finally passed over the President's vetoes by two-thirds of the votes of each house, yet his determined opposition to their policy, on the ground that it was unconstitutional, gave Congress great offense. This feeling finally became so intense, that the House of Repre