ANDREW JOHNSON.

  HENRY STANBERY,
  B.R.  CURTIS,
  THOMAS A.R.  NELSON,
  WILLIAM M. EVARTS,
  W.S.  GROESBECK,

Of Counsel.

[For Exhibits A and B see veto message of March 2, 1867, pp. 492-498, and special message of December 12, 1867, pp. 583-594.]

EXHIBIT C.

ADDRESS TO THE PRESIDENT BY HON.  REVERDY JOHNSON, AUGUST, 18, 1866.

Mr. PRESIDENT:  We are before you as a committee of the National Union Convention, which met in Philadelphia on Tuesday, the 14th instant, charged with the duty of presenting you with an authentic copy of its proceedings.

Before placing it in your hands you will permit us to congratulate you that in the object for which the convention was called, in the enthusiasm with which in every State and Territory the call was responded to, in the unbroken harmony of its deliberations, in the unanimity with which the principles it has declared were adopted, and more especially in the patriotic and constitutional character of the principles themselves, we are confident that you and the country will find gratifying and cheering evidence that there exists among the people a public sentiment which renders an early and complete restoration of the Union as established by the Constitution certain and inevitable.  Party faction, seeking the continuance of its misrule, may momentarily delay it, but the principles of political liberty for which our fathers successfully contended, and to secure which they adopted the Constitution, are so glaringly inconsistent with the condition in which the country has been placed by such misrule that it will not be permitted a much longer duration.

We wish, Mr. President, you could have witnessed the spirit of concord and brotherly affection which animated every member of the convention.  Great as your confidence has ever been in the intelligence and patriotism of your fellow-citizens, in their deep devotion to the Union and their present determination to reinstate and maintain it, that confidence would have become a positive conviction could you have seen and heard all that was done and said upon the occasion.  Every heart was evidently full of joy; every eye beamed with patriotic animation; despondency gave place to the assurance that, our late dreadful civil strife ended, the blissful reign of peace, under the protection, not of arms, but of the Constitution and laws, would have sway, and be in every part of our land cheerfully acknowledged and in perfect good faith obeyed.  You would not have doubted that the recurrence of dangerous domestic insurrections in the future is not to be apprehended.