The stirring events which preceded the Presidential campaign of 1868 brought both parties to that contest with aroused feeling and earnest purpose.

The passionate struggle of which President Johnson was the centre, had inspired the Republicans with an ardor and a resolution scarcely surpassed during the intense period of the war.

The failure, on the 16th of May, to find the President guilty as charged in the Eleventh Article of Impeachment, was received by the public as a general acquittal, without waiting for the vote of the 26th.

A large proportion of the delegates to the Republican National Convention which met at Chicago on the 20th of May, gathered under the influence of keen disappointment at the President's escape from what they believed to be merited punishment.

Though baffled in their hope of deposing the man whom they regarded with the resentment that always follows the political apostate, they were none the less animated by the high spirit which springs from conscious strength and power.