No man has been more honored or praised in his sphere than Andrew Johnson; and none has been more thoroughly detested, despised, and cast out. It was not the man they worshipped; it was the principle of which he was the representative. No man in all the country has a personal influence which can save him from obloquy when he deserts his colors or fails in his duty. Glory and honor to the people who faithfully cling to their heroes and statesmen while they are true to their principles! Glory and honor, also, to the people who sternly pull down and cast out their heroes and statesmen, whatever high eminence they may have gained, when they are recreant to the trust imposed in them! Thus do our republican institutions operate, that no amount of personal popularity can save the great man from his doom when he is guilty of treachery or unjustifiable failure. They do not worship the man; if they did, they would cling to him through his shame and infidelity. Neither the soldiers nor the people blindly worship Grant. It always has been, and still is, possible for him to fall. If he should prove false to the principles of which an overwhelming majority of the people hold him up as the representative, both soldiers and citizens would remorselessly trample him under their feet, and forget that he had ever been their idol. I say, then, that his remarkable popularity, its steady blaze in the past, and its constant brightening, are the best evidences of his solid abilities, of his unflinching devotion to principle, of the purity of his patriotism. I know what the people would do with him if he should fail them; but in the light of his glorious record through a period of seven of the most eventful years in the history of the country, I feel that it is as impossible for him to be recreant in thought or in deed as it is for the sun to cease shining. I dwell fondly on the early days of his military career in the Rebellion, for then, before Fame had twined his laurel, or success had inspired him, we find that every act he performed, every order he issued, every movement he made, is fit to be recorded in the temple of his fame. Those who are looking up to him, on the dazzling height to which his genius and his high principle have borne him, may be instructed by a review of his relations with the Twenty-first Illinois Regiment. They may see the man there, as well as at Vicksburg and Appomattox Court House.