Every day the White House presented the same scene. Passing through the ante-room to the public staircase, one always encountered a throng of coarsely-dressed bronzed Southerners, carrying heavy canes, tobacco-ruminant, and full of political talk. The unfurnished desolate-looking room in which visitors gather, while waiting their turns for interviews with the President, was always crowded. One day I saw there two or three Rebel Generals, as many members of the Rebel Congress, and at least a score of less noted leaders. In a corner, occupying the only chair which the room contains, sat a former Secretary of War of the Rebel Confederacy. Not far from him stood Henry W. Hilliard, once United States Congressman from Alabama, and subsequently prominent in the plots which Andrew Johnson so sternly resisted for seducing Tennessee into rebellion. From nine o’clock until three the President sat in the room adjacent, conversing with one or another as the doorkeeper admitted them. Pardons were discussed, policies of reorganization were canvassed. The pardon-seekers were the counsellors on reorganization—there were none others there with whom to consult. Thus the weary day passed, with a steady stream of Rebel callers. At three o’clock the doorkeeper’s hands were full of cards not yet presented to the President, and the ante-room was thronged; then the door was thrown open, and the crowd rushed in as if scrambling for seats in a railroad car. The President stood by his desk; to his left, at another table, stood General Mussey and Colonel Browning, his two private secretaries. On the table in the center of the room lay a pile of pardons, a foot high, watched by a young Major in uniform. “How the newspapers slandered the President,” said a Congressman,[43] after witnessing such a scene. “Treason is a crime and must be pardoned! _That_ was the rallying cry with which he assumed his office, and the odious newspapers reported him wrong.” A few Union soldiers had been waiting all day to see the President about pardons for desertion, restoration of bounties, and the like. One after another approached, presented his case, received a prompt and generally a kindly answer and retired. A stooped, prematurely old person, wearing several foreign decorations, thin, with nervous face and weary expression, wanted back pay for services as a hospital steward. He gave his name as Geo. Gordon Di Luna Byron, and claimed to be a son of the poet. Hospital-steward Byron was persuaded to seek in the Quartermaster’s Department for an investigation and decision of his claims. Sundry gentlemen would be greatly obliged if they could be handed their pardons now. The President was not quite ready; they were made out and lying on the table, but he wasn’t just prepared to deliver them yet. “Were not the cases decided?” “Oh, yes; it was all right; they would get their pardons in due time.” “They’re not quite enough humiliated yet,” whispered an official on-looker.