Be this as it may, Mr.Lincoln's assassination was particularly unfortunate for the entire nation.
Mr.Johnson's course towards the South did engender bitterness of feeling.

His denunciations of treason and his ever-ready remark, "Treason is a crime and must be made odious," was repeated to all those men of the South who came to him to get some assurances of safety so that they might go to work at something with the feeling that what they obtained would be secure to them.

He uttered his denunciations with great vehemence, and as they were accompanied with no assurances of safety, many Southerners were driven to a point almost beyond endurance.
The President of the United States is, in a large degree, or ought to be, a representative of the feeling, wishes and judgment of those over whom he presides; and the Southerners who read the denunciations of themselves and their people must have come to the conclusion that he uttered the sentiments of the Northern people; whereas, as a matter of fact, but for the assassination of Mr.Lincoln, I believe the great majority of the Northern people, and the soldiers unanimously, would have been in favor of a speedy reconstruction on terms that would be the least humiliating to the people who had rebelled against their government.

They believed, I have no doubt, as I did, that besides being the mildest, it was also the wisest, policy.
The people who had been in rebellion must necessarily come back into the Union, and be incorporated as an integral part of the nation.

Naturally the nearer they were placed to an equality with the people who had not rebelled, the more reconciled they would feel with their old antagonists, and the better citizens they would be from the beginning.
They surely would not make good citizens if they felt that they had a yoke around their necks.
I do not believe that the majority of the Northern people at that time were in favor of negro suffrage.