fairly besieged by Southern men and women of high social standing, who
had told the President that the only element of trouble in the South
consisted of a lot of fanatical abolitionists who excited the negroes
with all sorts of dangerous notions, and that all would be well if he
would only restore the Southern State government as quickly as
possible according to his own plan as laid down in the North Carolina
proclamation, and that he was a great man to whom they looked up as
their savior. It was now thought that Mr. Johnson, the plebeian who
before the war had been treated with undisguised contempt by the
slaveholding aristocracy, could not withstand the subtle flattery of
the same aristocracy when they flocked around him as humble
suppliants cajoling his vanity.

I went to work at my general report with the utmost care. My
statements of fact were invariably accompanied by the sources of my
information, my testimony being produced in the language of my
informants. I scrupulously avoided exaggeration and cultivated sober
and moderate forms of expression. It gives me some satisfaction now to
say that none of those statements of fact has ever been effectually
controverted. I cannot speak with the same assurance of my conclusions
and recommendations, for they were matters, not of knowledge, but of
judgment.

In the concluding paragraph of my report I respectfully suggested to
the President that he advise Congress to send one or more
investigating committees into the Southern States to inquire for
themselves into the actual condition of things before taking final and
irreversible action, I sent the completed document to the President on
November 22, asking him at the same time to permit me to publish it,
on my sole responsibility and in such a manner as would preclude the