person; completed the railroad from Nashville to the Tennessee River; raised twenty-five regiments for service in the State; December 8, 1862, issued a proclamation ordering Congressional elections, and on the 15th levied an assessment upon the richer Southern sympathizers "in behalf of the many helpless widows, wives, and children in the city of Nashville who have been reduced to poverty and wretchedness in consequence of their husbands, sons, and fathers having been forced into the armies of this unholy and nefarious rebellion." Was nominated for Vice-President of the United States at the national Republican convention at Baltimore June 8, 1864, and was elected on November 8. In his letter of acceptance of the nomination Mr. Johnson virtually disclaimed any departure from his principles as a Democrat, but placed his acceptance upon the ground of "the higher duty of first preserving the Government." On the night of the 14th of April, 1865, President Lincoln was shot by an assassin and died the next morning. At 11 o'clock a.m. April 15 Mr. Johnson was sworn in as President, at his rooms in the Kirkwood House, Washington, by Chief Justice Chase, in the presence of nearly all the Cabinet officers and others. April 29, 1865, issued a proclamation for the removal of trade restrictions in most of the insurrectionary States, which, being in contravention of an act of Congress, was subsequently modified. May 9 issued an Executive order restoring Virginia to the Union. May 22 proclaimed all ports, except four in Texas, opened to foreign commerce on July 1, 1865. May 29 issued a general amnesty proclamation, after which the fundamental and irreconcilable differences between President Johnson and the party that had elevated him to power became more apparent. He exercised the veto power to a very great extent, but it was generally nullified by the two-thirds votes of both Houses. From May 29 to July 13, 1865, proclaimed provisional governors for North Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida, whose duties were to reorganize the State governments. The State governments were reorganized, but the Republicans claimed that the laws passed were so stringent in reference to the negroes that it was a worse form of slavery than the old. The thirteenth amendment to the Constitution became a law December 18, 1865, with Mr. Johnson's concurrence. The first breach between the President and the party in power was the veto of the Freedmen's Bureau bill, in February, 1866, which was designed to protect the negroes. March 27 vetoed the civil-rights bill, but it was passed over his veto. In a message of June 22, 1866, opposed the joint resolution proposing the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution. In June, 1866, the Republicans in Congress brought forward their plan of reconstruction, called the "Congressional plan," in contradistinction to that of the President. The chief features of the Congressional plan