But his indiscretions did not end with speeches before his sympathizers. Two weeks later he started on a trip, nominally to assist in the ceremony of laying the cornerstone of the Douglas monument in Chicago.[135] As a matter of fact, however, he was merely taking advantage of an opportunity to defend his policy publicly. Johnson was of too impassioned a nature to be able to judge as to how far the President of the United States could afford to adopt the methods of the stump speaker. All constraint was thrown away, and he acted at many times the part most natural to him, that of a popular orator addressing the masses. His speeches at no time lacked clearness. All could see where he stood, and nothing was left for speculation. His first important effort while on his journey was at New York on August 29, where he responded to a toast proposed by the mayor of the city. In this speech he defined the issue as follows: "The rebellion has been suppressed, and in the suppression of the rebellion it [the government] has * * * established the great fact that these States have not the power, and it denied their right, by forcible or peaceable means, to separate themselves from the Union. (Cheers, 'Good!') That having been determined and settled by the Government of the United States in the field and in one of the departments of the government--the executive department of the government--there is an open issue; there is another department of your government which has declared by its official acts, and by the position of the Government, notwithstanding the rebellion was suppressed for the purpose of preserving the Union of the States and establishing the doctrine that the States could not secede, yet they have practically assumed and declared and carried up to the present point, that the Government was dissolved and the States were out of the Union. (Cheers.) We who contended for the opposite doctrine years ago contended that even the States had not the right to peaceably secede; and one of the means and modes of possible secession was that the States of the Union might withdraw their representatives from the Congress of the United States, and that would be practical dissolution. We denied that they had any such right. (Cheers.) And now, when the doctrine is established that they have no right to withdraw, and the rebellion is at an end * * * we find that in violation of the Constitution, in express terms as well as in spirit, that these States of the Union have been and still are denied their representation in the Senate and in the House of Representatives."[136] Then, speaking of the people of the South: "* * Do we want to humiliate them and degrade them and drag them in the dust? ('No, no!' Cheers.) I say this, and I repeat it here to-night, I do not want them to come back to this Union a degraded and debased people. (Loud cheers.) They are not fit to be a part of this great American family if they are degraded and treated with ignominy and contempt.