[31] Mr. Chandler explained the ground of his opposition to the ten per cent. loyal basis plan of reconstruction proposed by Mr. Lincoln for the admission of Louisiana and Arkansas. There were not more than seven or eight members of the Senate with him at the beginning of the session on that question, although there was a large majority before its close. The Democrats did not believe in this ten per cent. doctrine, and they voted with those who did not believe in admitting those States without guarantees. This admission was finally prevented by a night of filibustering. Only six Republicans remained and voted during that night. The result, however, proved that those six men were right, and that Mr. Lincoln and the others were wrong. If Louisiana and Arkansas had been admitted, then we would have been compelled to admit all the other States in the same way, and to-day we would have eleven rebel States in the Union. Those two States, Louisiana and Arkansas, had become the most intensely rebel of all the States that were in rebellion.--_Report of his speech, before the Republican caucus at Lansing on Jan. 6, 1869._ [32] Mr. Greeley's comment in the New York "Tribune" was: "Precisely why Mr. Lincoln thought this action called for at this moment, rather than at any other time in the last four months, we are not told." This chapter shows that Mr. Chandler could have "told" him. [33] If the North had been a unit the rebellion would long ago have been crushed. But the rebels found out we were not a unit at any time, so they persevered, so they invaded Pennsylvania, so they hoped to take Washington, and to raise insurrection all over the land. The only hope of the South to-day is in the traitors of the North.... They will fail in the contest. Instead of having established a slave empire they will have, by their own acts, destroyed all the securities that slavery ever possessed. They will have swept away all the compromises by which slavery has been tolerated by a forbearing people.--_Senator Chandler at Springfield, Ill., on Sept. 7, 1863._ CHAPTER XVI. THE ADMINISTRATION OF ANDREW JOHNSON--RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT. On the evening of April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's theater in the city of Washington. The universal grief was fitly described by Disraeli, who said, in the British Commons, that the character of the victim and the circumstances of his death took the event "out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy; it touched the heart of nations and appealed to the domestic sentiment of mankind." Its effect upon the American people was profound, and it deepened vastly the public appreciation of the essential barbarity of the prejudices, passions and ambitions which had plunged the republic into civil war.