Note 45 — Chapter II

Mr. Blaine in his Twenty Years of Congress, vol. ii, pp. 63-70, ascribes the apparently great modification of Johnson’s attitude towards the South to two causes: First, the personal influence of Seward; second, the flattery of Southern leaders. He assumes Johnson to have been thoroughly determined to carry out a harsh policy of reconstruction, and points out that of the six members of the Cabinet, excluding Mr. Seward, three were radical and three conservative in their views, offsetting each other in their influence upon Johnson. He then calls attention to the fact that Mr. Seward’s most conspicuous faculty was the power to convince listeners against their will through his personal conversation with them. With this remarkable faculty he believes Mr. Seward to have deliberately settled down to the task of reversing the President’s views as to reconstruction. “Equipped with these rare endowments,” he says, “it is not strange that Mr. Seward made a deep impression upon the mind of the President. In conflicts of opinion the superior mind, the subtle address, the fixed purpose, the gentle yet strong will, must in the end prevail.” Mr. Seward’s fervent pleadings, Blaine thinks, caused a marked change in Johnson’s beliefs, and inclined him to look favorably upon the glory of a merciful, lenient administration. The leaders in the South, quickly noticing the change in Johnson’s attitude, took advantage of the opportunity, and by judicious flattery completed the work which Seward had begun, and placed Johnson before the world as the ardent champion of immediate restoration. The theory impresses one with its apparent reasonableness, but as Mr. Blaine produces no evidence beyond his own authority, one is inclined to look upon it as an ingenious explanation based upon the environment of Johnson. Doubtless Seward presented his view on the situation with his accustomed ability, and probably it influenced Johnson’s view to a certain extent. The second part of the supposition can also readily be granted—that the vanity of Johnson was played upon by those whose flattery was most pleasing to one who had sprung from the ranks of those accustomed to be dictated to and spurned by these same men. Yet to ascribe the adoption of so important a policy, affecting all the fundamental principles upon which strict and loose constructionists are divided, to these influences, appears to be a superficial judgment based upon opinions formed in the heat of the struggle, when extraneous influences are always given undue prominence by the participants. The whole career of Johnson proves the logical exactness with which he followed strict construction dogma in all points excepting the doctrine of secession.