Precisely the causes which led Andrew Johnson so quickly back into close fellowship with the men whom he had regarded as his inveterate enemies will never be known. It is probable that originally they were slight, but his temperament rapidly widened disagreement into irreconcilable hostility. His maudlin speech on Inauguration-day so incensed many of his supporters that the Republican senators, at a formal gathering, actually considered a proposition (urged by Mr. Sumner) to request him to resign the office he had disgraced. The conference decided against such a step, but Mr. Johnson heard of the movement, and regarded those who approved it with much bitterness; his hatred of them undoubtedly fed his growing dislike for the party of which they were influential leaders. Again, he was a thorough representative of the "poor whites" of the South. He felt their jealousy of the planting aristocracy which monopolized political power in his section, and this made him such a vigorous opponent of the secession conspiracy which that oligarchy organized and led. But he also shared in the prejudice of his own class against the negroes, and, when he saw the disposition of the Republicans to accord to the freedmen equal rights and privileges before the law, he refused to join in that movement and set doggedly about defeating such plans. Precisely how great Mr. Seward's influence over him was at this time is not clear, but it is certain that the change in his attitude toward Republicanism was simultaneous with the slow recovery of his Secretary of State from the blows of Payne's dagger. His combative obstinacy also made him fiercely resent the vigorous criticisms which his "policy" of reconstruction invited when first announced; Congress did not meet for months after his accession to the presidency, and its leaders were not in position to check his course, either by organized remonstrance or by legislative interposition; the rebels who had been denouncing him savagely were prompt to flatter his vanity and to offer promises of support; and, as a result, when the Thirty-ninth Congress met on December 4, 1865, the break between the President and the Republican party had passed beyond mending. Mr. Johnson entered at once upon that shameful course, which included the betrayal of those who had trusted him and the disgrace of his high office by lamentable public exhibitions of passion and boorishness, and which led to great and durable public injury by trebling the difficulties surrounding the delicate and important work of reconstructing the "Confederacy." Mr. Chandler's distrust of the President commenced with his change of tone in regard to the punishment of treason and with the first manifestation of his intention to assume full control of reconstruction and to practically restore the rebels to power in the subdued States. They had one stormy interview at the White House, in which Mr. Chandler, after touching upon the implicit character of his confidence in the