Deep silence fell upon every one around the bed. The Secretary of
War was the first to break it.
"Now he belongs to the ages," he said.
So the great President passed on his way. And the people mourned as they had mourned for no other man. As to the negroes they wept and cried aloud, and would not be comforted, for "Massa Linkum was dead," and they were left fatherless.
__________
Chapter 92 - Johnson - How The President Was Impeached
The Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, now became President. Like Lincoln, he came of very poor people. He taught himself how to read, but could not write until after his marriage, when his wife taught him. In many ways he thought as Lincoln did, but he had none of Lincoln's wonderful tact in dealing with men, he could not win men's love as Lincoln had done.
"I tell you," said a Confederate soldier, speaking of Lincoln, "he had the most magnificient face and eyes that I have ever gazed into. If he had walked up and down the Confederate line of battle there would have been no battle. I was his, body and soul, from the time I felt the pressure of his fingers."
The Southerners would have found a friend in Lincoln, but now that friend was lost to them. Had he lived much of the bitterness of the time after the war would never have been.
President Johnson had a very hard task before him. He had "to bind up the nation's wounds" and re-unite the North and South. But he had neither the tact nor the strength needed for this great task. At first it was thought he would be too hard on the South. Then it was thought he would be too lenient, and soon he was at loggerheads with Congress.
For the South, this time was a time of bitterness. The Confederate States were divided into five districts, each district being ruled over by an officer with an army of soldiers under him. From the men who had led the rebellion, all power of voting was taken away, while at the same time it was given to negroes.