Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. III.djvu/23

 ANDREW JOHNSON 7 tion guaranteed by the constitution caused him to hold aloof from the Republicans on the other. This intermediate position suggested his avail ability as a popular candidate for the presidency; but in the Democratic convention he received only the vote of Tennessee, and when the convention reassembled in Baltimore he withdrew his name. In the canvass that followed, he supported the ex treme pro-slavery candidate, Breckinridge. John son had never believed it possible that any organ ized attempt to dissolve the Union could be made; but the events preceding the session of congress beginning in December, 1860, convinced him of his error. When congress met, he took decided and un equivocal grounds in opposition to secession, and on December 13 introduced a joint resolution, pro posing to amend the constitution so as to elect the president and vice-president by district votes, to elect senators by a direct popular vote, and to limit the terms of Federal judges to twenty years, half of them to be from slave-holding and half from non-slave-holding states. In his speech on this resolution, December 18 and 19, he declared his unyielding opposition to secession and announced his intention to stand by and act in and under the constitution. The southern states were then in the act of seceding, and every word uttered in congress was read and discussed with eagerness by thirty