In the negative with Thaddeus Stevens were Ashley, Bingham, the two Conklings, Kelley, McPherson, and a few others. But when reconstruction or exclusion actually took place after the termination of the war, great changes occurred among the members of Congress, and Stevens, the "Great Commoner," who in 1863 had a following of less than one-third of the representatives, rallied, four years later, more than two-thirds to his standard against restoration and for subjugation and exclusion.

Mr. Stevens was no ordinary man. At the bar he was astute and eloquent rather than profound, but in the Legislature of Pennsylvania and in the management of the affairs of that State, where for a period he actively participated and was a ruling mind, he was often rash and turbulent, and had, not without cause, the reputation of being a not over scrupulous politician. Personally my relations with him, though not intimate, were pleasant and friendly. I was first introduced to him at Harrisburg in 1836, when he was a member of the convention that revised the Constitution of Pennsylvania. We occasionally met in after years. He expressed himself pleased with my appointment in Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet, and, notwithstanding we disagreed on fundamental principles, he complimented my administration of the Navy Department, and openly and always sustained my positions, and particularly so on the subject of the blockade, on which there were differences in the Administration. In the Pennsylvania convention of 1836 he was probably the most eloquent speaker, but his ideas were often visionary and radical. He ultimately refused to sign the Constitution because the colored people were denied the elective franchise. Severe as he exhibited himself toward the rebels during and subsequent to the civil war, Mr. Stevens was not by nature, as might be supposed, inhuman in his feelings and sympathies toward his fellow men. To the colored race he seemed always more attached and tender than to the whites, perhaps because they were enslaved and oppressed. He was opposed to slavery, to imprisonment for debt, and to capital punishment. There were strange contradictions in his character. In his political career he had ardent supporters, though many who voted with him had not a high regard for his principles. His course and conduct in the Legislature and government of Pennsylvania did much to debauch the political morals of that State, and in the celebrated "buck-shot war" he displayed the bold and reckless disregard of justice and popular rights that distinguished the latter years of his Congressional life, when he became the acknowledged leader of the radical reconstruction party in Congress.

In his political career and management, though strongly sustained by a local constituency, he had experienced a series of disappointments. The defeat of John Quincy Adams, whom he greatly admired, in 1828, and the election of General Jackson, against whom his prejudices were inveterate, were to him early and grievous vexations.

The attempt of Mr. Adams on his retirement to establish a national anti-Masonic party was warmly seconded by Stevens, and with greater success in Pennsylvania than attended his distinguished leader in Massachusetts. The failure of the attempt was more severely felt by the disciple than by the master. After the annihilation of the anti-Masonic organization and the discomfiture of the buck-shot war, Stevens was less conspicuous, though prominent for a few months in 1840, when he came forward as an earnest advocate of the nomination of General Harrison in that singular campaign which resulted in the General's election. His efficiency and zeal in behalf of both the nomination and election of the "hero of Tippecanoe" were acknowledged, and he and his friends anticipated they would be recognized and he rewarded by a seat in the Cabinet. But he had given offence to the great Whig leader of that day by his preference of Harrison for President, and had moreover an unsavory reputation, which, with the declared opposition of Clay and Webster, caused his exclusion. It was a sore disappointment, from which he never fully recovered. Eight years later, with the advent of General Taylor and the defeated aspirations of the Whig leaders, who had caused his exclusion from Harrison's Cabinet, he sought and obtained an election to the thirty-first Congress from the Lancaster district. In 1856 he strove with all his power to secure the Presidential nomination for John McLane of the Supreme Court, who had or professed to have had anti-Masonic tendencies. His ill success was another disappointment; but in 1859 he was again elected to Congress, and thereafter until his death he represented the Lancaster district.

Disappointments had made him splenetic, but he was not, as represented by his opponents on the two extremes, either a charlatan or a miscreant, though possibly not wholly exempt from charges against him in either respect. In many of his ultra radical and it may be truly said revolutionary views—revolutionary because they changed the structure of the Government—he coincided with Senator Sumner, who was perhaps the leading spirit in the Senate on the subject of reconstruction, but he did not, like the Massachusetts Senator, make any pretence that his project to subjugate the Southern people and reduce their States to the condition of provinces was constitutional, or by authority of the Declaration of Independence. President Lincoln well understood the characteristics of both these men, and, though differing from each on the subject of restoration and reconstruction, he managed to preserve friendly personal relations with both—retained their confidence, and while he lived secured their general support of his Administration. Herein President Lincoln exhibited those peculiar qualities and attributes of mind which made him a leader and manager of men, and enabled him in a quiet and unostentatious way to exercise his executive ability in administering the Government during the most troublesome period of our national history.

Gideon Welles.

ART'S LIMITATIONS.

This rich, rank Age—does it breed giants now—
Dantes or Michaels, Raphaels, Shakespeares? Nay!
Its culture is of other sort to-day.
From the stanch stem (too ready to allow
Growths that divide the strength that should endow
The one tall trunk) who firmly lops away,
With wise reserve, such shoots as lead astray
The wasted sap to some collateral bough?

Had Dante chiselled stone, had Angelo
Intrigued with courts, had Shakespeare dulled his pen
With critic gauge of Chaucer, Drummond, Ben—
What lack there were of that life-giving shade,
Which these high-tower'd, centurial oaks have made,
Where walk the happy nations to and fro!