President during their senatorial service, denounced his new course as a violation of his sacred pledges and a base surrender to traitors, and left him indignantly and forever. From that time he regarded Andrew Johnson as a public enemy, whose opportunities for evil were to be lessened by every possible lawful restriction. He did not oppose the efforts made by his more hopeful associates in December, 1865, to re-establish harmony between the Capitol and the White House, but he predicted their failure. All the legislation which diminished Johnson's power for harm he ardently supported. The bills to admit Nebraska and Colorado (the Colorado bill failed at this time) he was especially active in pushing, from a belief that it was important to increase the Republican ascendency in the Senate while there was an uncertainty as to how much strength the "Johnson men" proper (Senators Doolittle, Dixon, Norton, and Cowan) might develop. It was largely through Mr. Chandler's untiring exertions, also, that the Fortieth Senate elected Benjamin F. Wade as its President, and thus made him the acting Vice-President of the United States, a position of the very highest responsibility in the then critical state of national affairs. Mr. Chandler aided in shaping and passing the reconstruction measures of 1866-'67-'68, not for the reason that they precisely embodied his ideas of the true method to be pursued, but because they presented a plan upon which the Republicans could be united, which was practicable, and which promised to reorganize the Southern States on the basis of the supremacy of the loyal elements in their population. When Andrew Johnson took the first step in unfolding his "policy" (by his general amnesty proclamation and by the appointment of a provisional governor for North Carolina, both acts bearing the date of May 29, 1865) the "Confederacy" had ceased to exist, its chieftain was a captive, its armies were prisoners of war on parole, its capacity for resistance had been consumed in the furnace of battle, but its bitterness still glowed and the prejudices and ambitions which gave it being were undestroyed. The amnesty proclamation relieved, with a few exceptions, those who bore arms against the government and the most virulent supporters of rebellion who remained at home from all pains and penalties on the sole condition that they should subscribe to an oath of future loyalty. The provisional government proclamations permitted all persons thus amnestied, who were voters according to laws of the States previous to the rebellion, to elect delegates to conventions to amend the local constitutions and restore the States to their "constitutional relations with the federal government." By this process the loyal colored men of the South were denied the right to participate in the work of reconstruction and the entire machinery of reorganization was placed in the control of men whose hands were yet red with Union blood.