It was something of this same defect that held back the slave-masters from the condescension, as they esteemed it, of establishing any relation whatever with the negro in his new condition of freedom.

Such action was frowned upon by the public opinion of this class throughout the South, and for lack of bold leadership at the critical period, for lack of that consideration which in many subsequent instances has been lavished upon the colored man, the current of fatal prejudice was set strongly against the old master in the mind of his former slave.

Events, as they developed in the stirring and sorrowful years that followed, were but a continual proof of that form of original blunder on the part of the Southern whites, which in affairs of civil administration is worse than a crime.
In excuse, or at least in explanation, of this unfortunate blunder on the part of Southern men, the obstinacy and wrong-headed course of President Johnson must be pleaded.

It was his causeless, voluntary, unpardonable quarrel with his party which misled Southern men at the time when they most needed lessons of wisdom and moderation.

The different result which we may well conceive might have followed in the South under the considerate and kindly spirit which Mr.Lincoln would have brought to the problem, gives us by contrast some faint appreciation of the enormity of Johnson's conduct and of the evil effects flowing from it.