CHAPTER II

ANDREW JOHNSON

My first chapter being on Abraham Lincoln, it seems fitting to follow it with one on Andrew Johnson.

I became interested in Andrew Johnson before the war, as a senator from Tennessee, and an advocate of the Homestead bill, when all other Southern senators, I believe, were hostile to it. This bill proposed to divide our Western Territories into small farms of one hundred and sixty acres each, and to give them to actual settlers there, and therefore was in the interests of free labor, and, of course, the South opposed it because it was hostile to slave labor. Johnson, nevertheless, courageously supported it, Congress after Congress; but it never became a law until the Southern statesmen seceded, and、 then the Republican majority placed it on the statute book, and under its wise and beneficent provisions the great West soon became an empire of small farmers.

I always thought Andrew Johnson deserved credit. for his manly advocacy of this bill, antagonistic as it was to his own section. Therefore, I was not surprised to see him take his stand by the Union in the dark winter of 1860-61, when the whole South, as a rule, went drifting to treason and rebellion.

I saw him first in March, 1861, in the Senate Chamber at Washington, D. C. I think it was March 3. On the invitation of an old and valued friend from Trenton, N. J., now a millionaire several times over (Samuel K. Wilson, Esq., the best friend I ever had), I had gone down there to "see Lincoln inaugurated," in common with many Republicans from the North, and on March 3

found myself and friend in the Senate gallery listening to the Southern senators as they made their farewell speeches. Among the rest was Wigfall, of Texas. He said, in substance, in his most bitter and eloquent style: "The Star of the West, flying your flag, swaggered into Charleston Harbor with supplies for Fort Sumter. South Carolina struck her between the eyes, and she staggered back; and now, what do you propose to do about it?" He sat down, and for a time nobody responded. It was a bitter taunt and defiance to the Union, and yet Seward and Sumner and Cameron and Chandler and Crittenden and all the rest sat silent, until the silence grew painful.

Then suddenly up rose Andrew Johnson, and in the midst of a stillness that could almost be felt he said, substantially: "Mr. President, I will tell the senator from Texas what I would do about it. I speak only for myself. But if I were President, as James Buchanan today is, and as Abraham Lincoln tomorrow will be, I would arrest the senator and his friends on the charge of high treason; I would have them tried by a jury of their countrymen, and, if convicted, by the eternal God, I would hang them!" He sat down as if shot, and for a minute or so the silence was even profounder than before.

Then away up in one corner of the gallery an unknown man sprang to his feet and, waving his hat, shouted out: "Three cheers for Andrew Johnson!" Three thousand Northerners crowded the galleries, but we rose as one man and gave three mighty cheers, such as the American Senate had never heard before. Of course, it was a "breach of the privileges of the Senate," and John C. Breckenridge (a double-dyed traitor), who sat in the Vice President's chair, immediately ordered the galleries cleared. Again that unknown man called out:

"And now three cheers for the Union!" and we gave these even mightier than before, amid the tossing of hats and waving of handkerchiefs; and then we filed out into the corridors of the Capitol, men shouting and hurrahing, and some even crying like children. This was my first personal experience of Andrew Johnson, and, I confess, greatly impressed me in his favor.

Soon afterward he went home to Tennessee by way of Virginia, with his life threatened en route because he was a Union man; and I did not see him again until November, 1863, when I was ordered to Nashville, and found him there in office as military governor of Tennessee. He had his headquarters in the classic State Capitol there, which he had fortified and barricaded and filled with troops (loyal East Tennesseans); and stood ready for legislation or battle, as the day might bring forth.

From then on to February, 1865, when he left for Washington to be inaugurated as Vice President, I saw a great deal of him, and he always bore himself as a hero and a statesman. From early morning until late in the afternoon he was usually in the Executive Chamber, listening to the pathetic tales of the refugees and freedmen, who crowded to him for counsel or relief from all parts of Tennessee; or else he was devising ways and means for their shelter and subsistence, or providing for their due enrollment in Union regiments and batteries.

There was no one so humble or ragged or destitute, that he could not approach his excellency with his tale of woe, and no one left his presence without aid or comfort of some sort. He early recognized the importance of freeing the slaves, and enlisting them on the side of the Union, and our freedmen had no truer friend in Tennessee than Andrew Johnson during all those dark days. In personal appearance and deportment he was a

model American statesman of those years, and was greatly honored and esteemed by all who came in contact with him-except rebels and traitors. Of course, these latter hated him bitterly, with an intensity of hatred inconceivable to Northerners. But, all the same, Andrew Johnson held on his course, and in the darkest hours there (as after Chickamauga and before Nashville, when the hearts of men like Stanton and Grant even misgave them) he

"Bated no jot of heart or hope,
But still bore up,

And steered right forward."

It is enough to his credit to say that he possessed the absolute confidence of Rosecrans, of Thomas, of Sherman, of Grant-of all who commanded out there-as well as of President Lincoln; while the rank and file of our Union troops were enthusiastic in his behalf.

In February, 1865, he left for Washington, and I did not see him again until August of that year, when I happened to be in Washington, and called at the White House to pay my respects to him as President. He was apparently the same simple, affable, approachable American citizen as previously, patriotic and Union-loving to the core. How he afterward came to cast himself into the arms of his old enemies, during our baleful period of reconstruction, has always been to me a mystery and a puzzle.

In September or October, 1865, I was one of a committee of Jerseymen to call upon him, in the interest of our freedmen and of the Fifteenth Amendment, and he was still stanch and steadfast in their behalf. When afterward he turned his back upon them (though once posing as their "Moses"), and upon all his own Union record, it was as if the sun had gone out at midday or another star had fallen-like Lucifer, son of the morn