Andrew Johnson, Senator from Tennessee, and ex-President of the United
States, died on August 31. He was an uneducated man, of unusual abilities, and retained throughout his political life the affection of the people of his own State. He was, how- ever, one of those drinkers who, from some failure of dignity, always get drunk when drunkenness is disgraceful, as well as bad, and he had an overweening notion of his own importance as representative of the people. Called to the Presidency only by accident, he behaved like a vulgar Cmsar, vetoed laws supported by two-thirds' majorities, called Congress a " body hanging on to the skirts of the Government," and was so suspected of an in- tention to reign alone, that he was impeached. The impeach- ment failed, and justly, for he did not intend to upset the Con- stitution, but only interpreted it wrongly, and after his term had expired Tennessee returned him to the Senate, and he was even named as a possible candidate for the Presidency. it is probable that his Western "ways," his habit of drinking, and his "loud" talk rather blinded his critics, both in America and England, to his great natural powers. He was not Lincoln's equal, but he was Jackson's.
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