As the question of reconstruction became more and more engrossing, the signs of a breach between the President and Congress revealed themselves. He had disappointed the hopes of his radical friends, and begun to show his partiality for conservative and Democratic ideas. His estrangement from his party probably had its genesis in the unfortunate exhibition of himself at the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, and the condemnation of it by leading Republicans, which he could not forget. Instead of keeping his promise to be the "Moses" of the colored people he turned his back upon them in a very offensive public speech. His veto of the Freedmen's Bureau bill finally stripped him of all disguises, and placed him squarely against Congress and the people, while the House met his defiance by a concurrent resolution emphatically condemning his reconstruction policy, and thus opening the way for the coming struggle between Executive usurpation and the power of Congress. His maudlin speech on the 22d of February to the political mob which called on him, branding as traitors the leaders of the party which had elected him, completely dishonored him in the opinion of all Republicans, and awakened general alarm. Everybody could now see the mistake of his nomination at Baltimore, and that he was simply a narrow- minded dogmatist and a bull-dog in disposition, who would do anything in his power to thwart the wishes of his former friends. During the month of March of this year, at the request of intelligent working men in the employ of the Government, I introduced a bill making eight hours a day's work in the navy yards of the United States. This was the beginning of the eight hour agitation in Congress. I had not given much thought to the necessity for such legislation in this country, but the proposed measure seemed to me an augury of good to the working classes, as the Ten Hour movement had proved itself to be twenty years before. It could plead the time laws of England as a precedent, enacted to protect humanity against the "Lords of the Loom." These laws recognized labor as capital endowed with human needs, and entitled to the special guardianship of the State, and not as merchandise merely, to be governed solely by the law of supply and demand. While I was a believer in Free Trade, I was not willing to follow its logic in all cases of conflict between capital and labor. My warfare against chattel slavery and the monopoly of the soil had assumed the duty of the Government to secure fair play and equal opportunities to the laboring masses, and I was willing to embody that idea in a specific legislative proposition, and thus invite its discussion and the settlement of it upon its merits.