Pursuant to a call signed by nearly a hundred representative persons of the South, the Southern History Association was organized at the Columbian University, Washington, D. C., on the evening of April 24, 1896, for the purpose of studying the history of the Southern States. In carrying out this aim an annual meeting is held, and a Bi-monthly Publication issued. The Association also desires contributions of journals, letters, manuscripts and other material towards the beginning of a collection of historical sources. It will gladly accept papers based on research and documents on all subjects touching the South. All persons, as well as libraries, interested in the work are eligible for membership, without initiation fee; annual dues $3.00, life dues $30.00. There is no other expense to members, who receive all current publications of the Association free of charge. The publications alone can be had, postpaid, at $3.00 per volume, unbound, or $1.00 per number. All communications should be addressed to P. O. Box 65. COLYER MERIWETHER, Secretary. On Saturday, the fourth day of March, 1865, as the hour of noon drew nigh, the Senate chamber at Washington was crowded with a most distinguished assemblage. In the lower semi-circles of seats and in the space in front of the secretary's desk where a single empty chair in the centre signified that the expected President was to be his own successor, were gathered cabinet officers, judges of the Supreme Court, ministers plenipotentiary, officers of the army and navy; while in the upper semi-circles on one side were massed the senators themselves, and on the other the representatives who, by reason of their number, overflowed into all the unoccupied spaces in the rear and even into the corridors outside. In the chair of the presiding officer, placed as high above the secretary as that officer was above the floor, sat Vice-President Hamlin; on his left Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the out-going House, and on his right Andrew Johnson, the Vice-President-elect. The galleries were crammed to their utmost capacity-the ladies' quarter, resembling a vast bank of flowers jeweled with the morning dew, shedding sweet influence upon the scene below. The situation of the country at the moment added an unwonted impressiveness to the occasion and clothed the customary ceremonies with a peculiar solemnity. The fires of civil war, after nearly four years of raging, still blazed all around the southern horizon; but the supineness with which Grant was met as he stubbornly drew the toils tighter and tighter about Petersburg and Richmond, and the consecutive fall of stronghold after stronghold as Sherman, after having ploughed his way through the heart of the Confederacy, swept northward along the coast, gave increasing assurance that the end of the fratricidal strife was nigh. Abraham Lincoln, the leader of the Union for the last tremendous four years, was now to enter upon another term, and in the second office of the government a resident of the rebellious South was to take the place of a resident of the loyal North to mitigate, as was imagined, the too sectional aspect of the administration. As the hands of the Senate clock creep towards the hour of twelve, the Vice-President, whose official hours are just about to be numbered, gives one tap with his gavel, rises, and, after the usual farewell remarks, inquires whether the Vice-President, whose official hours are about to begin, is ready to take the oath of office. To this inquiry, the figure on the right makes affirmative response, steps forward away from his predecessor who is about to offer him the book, and breaks out into an address to the audience. For an incoming Vice-President to preface his oath with a speech, there was nothing unusual. Since the day when John Adams condescended to accept what he designated as "a respectable office" however "dangerous to my reputation or disproportional to my abilities," this had indeed been the practice. But the remarks of the second officer in the government, far from being classed with the inaugurals of the first, were regarded as but perfunctory performances; and no time was allotted before the entrance of the President elect for anything more than the delivery of the commonplaces appropriate to the case of an officer taking his seat in the body over which he was in the future to preside. Such, however, was not to be the character of the present address. The Vice-President-elect seems to have predetermined that his own inauguration should be something more than an empty form, and himself something more than a lay figure. In contrast with his first predecessor, so far from belittling he felt bound to magnify his office. Two ideas seem to have preoccupied his mind-one, the nullity of all social distinctions before the omnipotence of the sovereign people as exemplified in his own career; the other, the rescue of his own State from the embrace of the rebellion brought about so largely by his own efforts, as typifying the policy and method by which all her insurrectionary sisters should be restored to the communion of States. Than an address of this tenor, nothing could have been more appropriate to the situation at that moment; but its effectiveness was fearfully marred by the manner of its delivery. As Andrew Johnson stood the focus of that brilliant assemblage, every eye could discern that he was not himself. His rugged countenance was deeply flushed, his voice husky, his bearing strange, his speech incoherent and disfigured by familiar colloquialisms. In stubborn pursuit of the first of the two ideas we have indicated, he rang the changes on the autobiographic reminiscence that he himself was a "plebian boy"; (he wanted "to talk just about two minutes about that"); and on the democratic axiom that senators, heads of departments, judges of the Supreme Court, nay even the President they were waiting for, were mere creatures of the people's will, as well as himself; (he wanted "to talk just two minutes about that.") And, in illustration of this doctrine, pointing with his finger at the cabinet officers before him, he called them one after the other by name: "You, Mr. Secretary Seward," and "You, Mr. Secretary Stanton," and "You"-coming to the Secretary of the Navy— “and you, Secretary —"who is the Secretary of the Navy?" failing for the moment to recall the name of Gideon Welles who was to stand by him so staunchly in the tough conflicts ahead. "Who is the Secretary of the Navy?"-appealing in bewilderment to the officials immediately around him. In d word his demeanor was that of a man overcome by strong drink or suddenly seized by some hidden trouble of the brain. But, nevertheless, whatever the cause of his mental disturbance, Andrew Johnson seemed bound to have his word out. He saw not the horrified astonishment depicted on the high-bred faces before him. He heard not the impatient murmurs in the background of the assembly: "Why does not some one stop him?" "Has he no friends?" He heeded not the timorous nudging from behind of his distracted predecessor. Lost to all the proprieties of place, as well as to the flight of the precious moments, with lowered head buffeting from side to side the encircling mists, he lunged forward to the goal he had set before him. And when he escaped from allusions to his own self and to his wonderful elevation-allusions which seemed to arouse in his bosom a very tumult of emotions- and struck on the track of his second idea-the freeing of Tennessee from Confederate thraldom-his thoughts grew clearer, his sentences more coherent, his manner calmer; so that in the latter half of what might otherwise have been contemned as mere egotistic and repetitious chatter, he was actually able to announce with no uncertain sound the key-note of what was to be, in the impending future, his Policy of Recon struction. "Before I conclude this brief inaugural address, in the presence of this audience-and I, though a plebian boy, am authorized by the principle of the government under which I live to feel proudly conscious that I am a man, and grave dignitaries are but men-before the Supreme Court, the representatives of foreign Governments, |