ever,  with  great  pertinency  by  the  friends  of  the  President,  that
Congress  was  enabled  to  do  this  only  by  the  exclusion  of  eleven
States  of  the  Union  from  representation  ;  and  from  this  fact  came  the
Democratic  denunciation  of  the  Republican  party  for  administering
the  affairs  of  the  Government  in  a  revolutionary  spirit.
The  narrow  escape  of  the  measure  again  created  great  uneasiness,
not  only  among  the  Republicans  in  Congress  but  throughout  the
country.  One  or  two  more  defections  would  imperil  Republican  con
trol  of  the  Senate.  The  loyalty  of  every  member  to  his  party  was
therefore  scanned  with  closest  observation.  Rumors,  gossip,  inven
tions  of  all  kinds  were  set  afloat  in  the  public  press,  —  hinting  first
at  one  man  and  then  at  another  among  the  Republican  senators  as
likely  to  weaken,  as  about  going  over  to  the  Administration,  as
having  just  had  a  confidential  interview  with  Mr.  Seward,  as  dining
the  evening  before  with  the  President,  or  as  being  concerned  in  some
matter  of  even  less  consequence.  When  public  interest  is  height
ened  the  imagination  of  the  people  is  stimulated,  until  trifles  light
as  air  have  fatal  significance  in  one  direction  or  the  other.  Through
out  the  spring  and  early  summer  of  180(3  (the  tentative  period,  as
it  may  be  called,  in  fixing  the  relations  of  the  President  and  Con
gress)  this  suggestion  of  doubt,  this  latent  apprehension,  continued,
and  was  not  indeed  wholly  removed  until  the  political  lines  were
definitely  drawn  by  the  elections  for  representatives  to  Congress  in
the  ensuing  autumn.
