“Pressure is not likely to affect an honest man in a conscientious interpretation of an explicit law.” “Well, a bigger office might?” “I tell you,” continued the same speaker, “the whole question turns on what Mr. Johnson wants to do. I have reason to believe that he means to side with us. If he does, he can buy up Congress. There’s no use in you Yankees talking. Johnson can force through Congress anything he wants.” “But why do you think him on your side? How long has it been since, in the Senate, he was denouncing you all as traitors?” “We think him on our side because of what he has done, and what we know him to be. Last spring, you can form no conception of the utter, abject humiliation of the Southern people. We were all prostrate, helpless, and abased to the dust, but out of this abject condition Mr. Johnson has partly lifted us. He has made us feel that we have some standing ground, some chance still to battle for our rights; and for this, there has now sprung up throughout the whole South a warm feeling of regard and gratitude. Johnson knows this. He knows that if he continues in this way, he will be able in 1868 to count on the South as a unit for his re-election. There would be no thought of contest—he would be nominated by acclamation. Now, he is a man of strong will and boundless ambition. Of course he wants to be re-elected. He doesn’t want to quit the stage as an accidental President. And he knows perfectly well that, with the South as a unit at his back, his enormous patronage will enable him to carry New York and Pennsylvania, and defy the whole Black Republican pack. Those States will be enough to elect him. A blind man could see the game, and Andy Johnson has got plenty of nerve to play it.” Such are almost the very words in which were thus frankly revealed the hopes of the Southern politicians. Later in the evening and next morning, as my Yankee proclivities began to attract more attention, my Rebel acquaintances grew more cautious and reticent. “How do you all feel toward Sherman, who ravaged your country so mercilessly?” I asked one of them. “The truth is, sir, the Southern people have been so soundly thrashed that just now they’ve got d——d few opinions of any kind. All we want now is to get back to civil government and the making of our own laws!”