PRESIDENT JOHNSON.
[FROM A CORRESPONDENT.]
VHUN the late President Buchanan was serenely permitting the Union of the American States to go to pieces, on the ground that though the States had no right to secede the general Government had no right to prevent their doing so, the people cried, " Oh for a Jackson!" When President Lincoln, keeping severely to his inaugural declaration—" You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors"—permitted forts and batteries to be built around Fort Sumter, whose guns bore upon every one of them, without opposition, the sigh went again through the land, " Oh for an hour of Jackson! " General Jackson had always been associated in the American mind with a resolute sup- pression of the attempt by South Carolina to nullify the tariff laws of the United States in 1833. It is, however, scarcely true that he did so. He did- indeed vigorously oppose Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Jefferson Davis on that occasion, and he undoubtedly retarded the movement of the nullifiers by his heavy oath, " By the Eternal, rll hang them as high as Haman I" — but the Carolinians were not entirely defeated in that struggle. The matter was settled by a compromise. General Jackson signed the compromise tariff, though he condemned it as a concession to treasonable menace ; and to the end of his days heregretted that he had not caused Calhoun, who had been his Vice-President in the first, term, to be tried and punished for treason. He prophesied that more trouble would yet come from South Carolina. In a letter to a friend in Georgia in 1834 he wrote, " The Tariff weir but a pretext. The next will be the Slavery or Negro question." When the people in 1861 remembered Jackson, it was because theylelt that the old soldier would, were he living, deal vigorously with the leading secessionists.
It may be well imagined, however, that the strong spirit who had left such an impression of his personality on the country that they longed for him twenty years later In their greatest emergency was not entirely dead. When the angry deluge of secession swept through the capital at Washington in 1861, and bore away into the movement for disunion the Southern senators and representa- tives, it left standing one single Southerner. This was a man who, when General Jackson was struggling with nullification, was a youth of twenty-six years, with already a good local reputation in a Ismail town of Jackson's State—Tennessee. He had sat at the old soldier's feet, had drunk in his hearty hatred of treason, and vener- ated even his oaths. At this time he was Mayor of the town, Green- ville, and was much beloVed and trusted by his fellow-townsmen. Subsequently he represented his county-in the State Legislature, and from this went to Congress at Washington. In Congress he served for many years before the breaking out of the rebellion. Few, however, would have been careful to notice this plain, average, Western man, with his swarthy, bronzed face, who simply worked, year in and year ont, with the Democratic party,,which was always in the majority. He was generally regarded as a " party hack." In the Committees he was known as an almost over-cautious man, who could not make up his mind quite so swiftly as others, and insisted in any case upon going through all the papers one by one. If any one in the Senate Gallery inquired who that rough, dark- looking man was, he was generally told that it was Andrew John- son, of Tennessee, who, though long since a man of fortune and an occupant of the highest offices his State could- bestow, would never allow the old sign that was over his door when he was a tailor, twenty-one years of age, to be taken down.* He was not a' man of many companions, he was unaddicted to the besetting vices of Washington, and of unblemished character. The Northern men would scarcely have ventured to make overtures of friendliness to one who uniformly voted for the measures which they op- posed ; and possibly the aristocratic Southerners cared little for the acquaintance of one who was not only a tailor, and a descen- dant from the poor whites of the South, but also- known as a vehement admirer of the great anti-nullification hero, of whose course his maiden speech in Congress had been a defence. He rarely made &speech; and in society was remarkably taciturn. To the few wha.knew him. intimately he was affectionate.
When he stood alone among Southern men in Congress, confront- ing those who were plotting the destruction of the Union; his was plainly the traditionary voice of Andrew Jackson adapted for the new emergency which he had prophesied. Johnson, like Jackson, was a slaveholder, a democrat, a• voter with the South ; if Jackson had been elected one the ticket with Calhoun, Johnson had. been balloted for at Charleston and had voted for its nominee, Brecken- ridge ; but now there had come a question upon which he would not go with any interest of his own or theirs—the unity and integrity of his country. And in taking this stand he had a right to utter the words of Jackson, and he did so with a tremendous effect. " It seemed incredible," said one who heard his arraign- ment of the secessionists, "that this should be the same man by whose side we had sat so many years." His eyes, that had seemed heavy, flashed fire, and- his deep indignation glowed through the bronzed face. He had not separated from his party gladly or easily. When a compromise had been proposed which would have protected the South, six senators had, to his great surprise; refused to vote for it To' one of these, Senator Benjamin, he had privately said, " Mr. Benjamin, why do you not vote ? Why-not save this proposition, and see if we can bring the country to it ?" Mr. Benjamin (afterward of the Confederate Cabinet) answered him abruptly, " I can control my own action, without consulting you or anybody else." " Vote;" said Johnson, "and' show your- self an honest man," After the defeat of this proposition, which would have been carried had the six senators- voted• for it, he saw a telegram sent South by them which said, " We cannot get any compromise," and then he was convinced that the men with whom he had been acting had no real grievances, and that they were simply resolved to destroy the Government for selfish ends. In the chair was Mr. Breckenridge, of Kentuelty- Vice-President with Mr. Buchanan, who had been Mr. Johnson's candidate for the Presidency in the canvass against Mr. Lincoln —and who was now known to be combining with the seces- sionists. Mr. Johnson read from Breckenridge's speeches, which had lately been circulated as campaign documents, expressions of fervent devotion to the Union under any and all circumstances. "That," thundered Johnson, "that was the man I voted for. And, Sir, by those principles I mean to stand. And furthermore, if I could find the men who are plotting in the dark the destruc- tion of their country,—if I could find the men• who are writing treasonable letters to traitors on the very tables and stationery of this Government, I would try them, and if found guilty-of treason under the law I would, by the Eternal God, have them executed." There is no mistaking the meaning and spirit of a man when his soul is effused into his face. In using the very words of General • It hanjainote-to this days-"Andrew Johnson, Tenor."
Jackson to the Carolinians of 1883, there was plainly no imitative- ness in Andrew Johnson, but merely the outburst of a similar devotion to his country from an equally earnest man.
Mr. Johnson was destined to be put to severer tests than any which had tried Jackson. The stand he had taken excited great indignation in his State. His effigy was hung at Memphis, and it was freely declared that the recreant senator would' be served in the same way when he should return home. Nevertheless he started upon his way home by his usual route through. Virginia. In Lynchburg, and again at Liberty, in Virginia, he was seized by a mob, which came into his railway carriage, and subjected to every indignity. At liberty it seemed inevitable that his life would be takes; he was kicked and dragged from the carriage by the infuriated people ; a slip-knot was placed about his neck, and he was dragged to a tree to be hanged. An aged citizen of the neighbourhood barely availed to save him from this fate by re- presenting that the people of his (Johnson's) own State had resolved to hang him when he should reach home, and that Vir- ginians had no right to take away the privileges of Tennesseans. During these proceedings Johnson was perfectly quiet, made no resistance, and uttered no word. When he arrived at Greenville he was subjected to many insults, but could not be forced into any retractation of the positions taken in Congress. When separated afterwards from his family, when the rebellion had been the means of his losing a son, when his daughter had been shot at her father's door, he still bore himself nobly. And though recently some have supposed that his personal sufferings by the rebellion had exasperated his tone towards the leaders of the rebellion, it is certain that it is not so, but that his language at the beginning was, if anything, more severe than now.
The hearts of the Northern people were naturally very much drawn towards this Southerner, who was suffering so• much for his gallant devotion to the country ; and when it was known that he would return to Congress through the Free States—the Vir- ginian route being, no longer open to him—formal receptions were prepared for him, The writer of this paper had in earlier years fre- quently seen Andrew Johnson in Congress without taking any care to- observe him especially, but now gladly availed himself• of one of these receptions in a Western State to see him again, and hear him speak. He was a man of fifty-five years, a little under six feet, slightly- stooping, of a dark complexion, but with good, clear, grey eyes, one of which had a tendency to close partly, with high cheek-bones, and rather broad than long head ; a forehead narrow and high, and with very deep lines in it ; a strong nose, of the kind called " cogitative ;" not a very high head in the region assigned to veneration, a strong, round oceiput, and hair brown, passing into grey. His manner was grave almost to grimness, and his animation only occasional. Nothings could be more distant from Mr. Lincoln's habitual humour. Nothing was said to provoke laughter, though some of his expressions were well calculated to raise a smile, as when he said, "'It is—. excuse me, I do not mean to be profane—a hell-born and a hell- bound rebellion." His own seriousness was absolute, when others smiled at his strong expressions. His power of denunciation was terrible, and on one occasion in Congress the crowded galleries broke through all the rules and responded to him in plaudits and cheers, which the presiding secessionist, writhing under his words, was at last able to quell only by ordering the Serjeant-at- Arms to clear the galleries. Mr. Johnson• was, however; so entirely absorbed in his speech as to be unaware of the feeling which he had excited.
To this.man slavery, by its own bloody election, has consigned the Government, —this man whom it has insulted and mobbed; and whose children it has stricken down. It is expected that he will be severe. But it should not be' forgotten that, since he has suffered thus, he has had, by the commission of the late President, the trust of governing with military authority one of the seceded States, and that under his rule no execution has
occurred. He was, in his Government of Tennessee, more success- ful than any other administrator appointed by the late Pre- sident. He was indeed uncompromising in the matter of loyalty, but his every act was evidently inspired by the purest patriotism, and no secessionist has ever accused him of cruelty or of working for private ends. He liberated early in the war his own slaves,
and through his influence the State Convention of. Tennessee declared a general Act of Emancipation. The freedom and the loyalty of Tennessee are his honourable trophies, and may be regarded as indications of what he will strive to secure for the entire country. Ili D. C:
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