THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
throwing out a dark hint that before the admission of the late rebel States to representation, this Congress might be considered constitutionally unable to make any valid laws at all. Senator Trumbull in an uncommonly able, statesmanlike and calm speech combated the President's arguments and moved that the bill pass, the President's veto notwithstanding. But the “Administration Republicans,” although they had voted for the bill, now voted to sustain the veto, and, there being no two-thirds majority to overcome it, the veto prevailed. Thus President Johnson had won a victory over the Republican majority in Congress. This victory may have made him believe that he would be able to kill with his veto all legislation unpalatable to him, and that, therefore, he was actually master of the situation. At any rate, it seemed to have turned his head. He made the grave mistake of underestimating the opposition.
On the 22nd of February, 1866, a public meeting was held in Washington for the purpose of expressing popular approval of the President's reconstruction policy. The crowd marched from the meeting place to the White House to congratulate the President upon his successful veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill. The President, called upon to make a speech in response, could not resist the temptation. He then dealt a blow to himself from which he never recovered. He spoke in the egotistic strain usual with him of the righteousness of his own course and then began to inveigh against those who opposed him in the most violent terms. He denounced the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, the committee headed by Fessenden, as “an irresponsible central directory” that had assumed the powers of Congress, described how he had fought the leaders of the rebellion and added that there were men on the other side of the line who also worked for the dissolution of the Union. By this time some of the uproarious crowd felt that he
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