When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, who had been elected vice-president, became in turn the President of the United States. This man had been brought up in the South, and when Reconstruction came, all his Southern sympathies floated up to the surface. He entered into a direct quarrel with the houses of Congress, and vetoed almost every bill that ever came before him. But in all such cases, Congress passed his vetoes over his head, and they were of no effect. At last he was impeached and tried for his cross-grained, contrary measures, but escaped conviction by the smallest majority. But all the same he was one of the most destructive rebels that we had. In the meantime Reconstruction went on in the late rebellious States in the best way that Congress knew how to do it, which was not much at the best. A race of men swept down from the North with their carpet-bags in their hands in search of fortune, who were nick-named carpet-baggers; then there were the middle class whites of the South, who were nick-named the scalawags, who assisted the carpet-baggers in ruling the South, all of whom, however, were under the eyes of the military generals, each of whom was placed in command of one of the States, and these generals in turn worked hand in hand along with an assistant commissioner of the Freedman’s Bureau, Major-General O. O. Howard, at Washington, being the chief commissioner, and one of the best men that ever lived. Immediately after the close of the war, many of the more pronounced rebels retired abroad, where they found employment in foreign armies, or more peaceful occupations. They had no heart for any further rule under the flag of Uncle Sam, which now, indeed, floated freely over all races of people from the Lakes to the Gulf. For such arch-rebels the Sunny South was a home no more. But many of the late rebel leaders preferred to stay at home and take their chance, hoping for mercy and pardon from the Northern government, which they had so terribly outraged. As a general thing they were cross-vexed and sullen, and had no heart whatever for the reconstruction of the Southern states, which was entirely conducted by legislatures, composed of loyal Southerners and colored men, all of whom were duly elected. These colored men were in all the lower houses of legislature, while in some of the States they were also in the Senate, and in a few of the States they filled the office of deputy-governor. The heads and leaders of the late rebellion showed no disposition to lend a hand; they allowed the military and civil administrators to take their own way, assisted as the latter were by the colored senators and representatives in the State legislature, carpet-baggers and scalawags.