At Cleveland the meeting resembled occasions not unfamiliar to our people, where the speaker receives from his audience constant and discourteous demonstrations that his words are unwelcome.

The whole scene was regarded as lamentable and one which must have been deeply humiliating to the eminent men who accompanied the President.
He made the tour the occasion for defending at great length his own policy of Reconstruction, and arraigned with unsparing severity the course of Congress in interposing a policy of its own.

The most successful political humorist of the day( 1), writing in pretended support of the President, described his tour as being undertaken "to arouse the people to the danger of concentrating power in the hands of Congress instead of diffusing it through one man." Wit and sarcasm were lavished at the expense of the President, gibes and jeers and taunts marked the journey from its beginning to its end.

"My policy" was iterated and reiterated, until the very boys in the streets, without knowing its meaning, knew it was the source and subject of ridicule, and made it a jest and a by-word at Mr.Johnson's expense.
The whole journey came to be known as "swinging around the circle," and its incidents entered daily into the thoughts of the people only as subjects of disapprobation on the part of the more considerate, and of persiflage and ribaldry on the part of those who regarded it only as a matter of amusement.

With whatever strength or prestige the President left Washington, he certainly returned to the Capital personally discredited and politically ruined.