Andrew Johnson's Obituary
[From page 1 of The New York Times, August 1, 1875]
ANDREW JOHNSON DEAD.
SKETCH OF THE EX-PRESIDENT'S CAREER.
HIS DEATH AT HIS DAUGHTER'S HOUSE -- HIS LIFE HISTORY --
THE BOY WHO NEVER WENT TO SCHOOL GROWS UP TO BE PRESIDENT -- HIS ATTITUDE
IN THE REBELLION -- THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL.
Andrew Johnson, ex-President of the United States and member of the Senate
from Tennessee, died at the house of his daughter, Mrs. W.R. Brown, near
Elizabethtown, Carter County, Tenn., at 2 o'clock yesterday morning. The
history this man leaves is a rare one. His career was remarkable, even in
this country; it would have been quite impossible in any other. It
presents the spectacle of a man who never went to school a day in his life
rising from a humble beginning as a tailor's apprentice through a long
succession of posts of civil responsibility to the highest office in the
land, and evincing his continued hold upon the popular heart by a
subsequent election to the Senate in the teeth of a bitter personal and
political opposition. Andrew Johnson was born in Raleigh, N.C., Dec. 29,
1808. His father, Jacob Johnson, who was in the humblest circumstances,
was drowned while attempting to save the life of Editor Henderson, of the
Raleigh Gazette, in 1812, and six years later young Andrew, at
the age of ten, was apprenticed to a tailor named Selby. School was then
out of the question, of course, and the outlook was that the young man
would grow up to an illiterate life. But the intellect that was in him was
aroused through the instrumentality of a Raleigh gentleman, whose practice
it was to read aloud to the tailor's employees from books of published
speeches. The speeches of some of the British statesmen particularly
attracted his attention, and he set about learning to read with the same
determination which characterized his later life. By resolute application
after work hours and in moments taken from sleep, he soon succeeded and was
able to read the speeches and other books for himself. He left Raleigh in
1824, before his apprenticeship had expired, and went to Laurens Court
House, S.C., where he worked two years at his trade, and then, after a
return to Raleigh and a brief stay there, he removed with his mother to
Greenville, Tenn. He soon married, and was fortunate enough to get a wife
who was a help-meet to him in every sense of the word. She set herself at
once to supply his greatest lack, became his teacher, giving him such oral
instruction as was possible while he was at work, and teaching him writing,
arithmetic, and other branches at night. Under her faithful tuition he
acquired a fair education. The native forces of his mind supplied the
remaining elements of his success.
We find him early in politics. In natural sympathy with the laboring
classes, he became their local champion, and organized a Working Man's
party in 1828, and, as its candidate for Alderman of Greenville, defeated
the more aristocratic party and broke their rule in the town. In 1830 he
was chosen Mayor, and held that office for three years. Four years later
he gained a more than local prominence by active exertions to secure the
adoption of a new State Constitution, and offering himself the next year as
a Democratic candidate for the lower branch of the Legislature, he was
elected, winning support mainly by his vigorous speeches. A grand and
costly scheme of internal improvement which came before the Legislature
incurred his earnest opposition, and though his denunciation of it made him
temporarily unpopular and defeated him in the canvass of 1837, yet his
course was vindicated by the deplorable working of the enacted bill, and he
was returned to the Legislature in 1839. He was one of the Democratic
electors in the Presidential year of 1840, and canvassed Tennessee for
Martin Van Buren. His powers of oratory were then first publicly revealed,
and they proved very effective even against some of the noted public men of
the day. He was elected to the State Senate in 1841, and gained much
credit for the introduction and advocacy of a judicious plan of internal
improvement of the eastern portion of the State. But he was destined to a
broader sphere of influence. In 1843 he was elected to Congress in the
First Tennessee District, defeating Col. John A. Asken, a Democrat of the
United States Bank stamp. By successive re-elections he was continued in
Congress for ten years. He was during the time a prominent supporter of
the national measures of his party, favoring the annexation of Texas and
the Mexican war, and being a conspicuous advocate of the Homestead bill, to
give 160 acres of the public lands to any one who would settle upon and
till them. It is curious and suggestive to find him in 1848 making a long
and powerful speech in favor of the veto power. By a redistricting of his
State a Whig majority was created in his district, and in 1853 he was
defeated in the Congressional canvass. Compensation came in his election
as Governor of the State the same year, over Gustavus A. Henry, the Whig
and "Know-Nothing" candidate. The canvass was unusually spirited, even for
Tennessee, and on one occasion when he was to address a large gathering,
Mr. Johnson appeared on the platform with a pistol in his hand. He was
re-elected Governor in 1855, and his administration of the State affairs,
both in that and the preceding term of office, was marked by a regard for
the public interest, rather than party fealty. A higher honor came to him
in his election to the United States Senate by the Legislature of 1857. In
his Senatorial career he was generally found upon the side of retrenchment
and the interests of the laboring classes. He opposed the increase of the
Army and the Pacific Railroad bill, and, as in the House, urged the passage
of the Homestead bill -- which, however, was lost by President Buchanan's
veto -- and took an active part in the discussion concerning retrenchment.
Coming from a slave State, and himself owning slaves, he held slavery to be
protected by the Constitution and beyond the interference of Congress;
nevertheless, he believed in its ultimate overthrow. He denounced the John
Brown raid, and in those early mutterings of the coming tempest he urged
concessions to the South to calm the rising discontent, and new guarantees
for the protection of slavery.
It was in the era of the rebellion that Andrew Johnson achieved his
greatest distinction. It was not necessary for him to weigh the chances of
the coming struggle, or to nicely estimate its moral elements, like some
others of the less radical class of Southern statesmen. He was by
principle and training unreservedly for the right, and he declared without
hesitation for the Union, and strove with all the strength of his rugged
soul against the secession faction. In the Presidential campaign of 1860,
he at first supported Breckinridge and Lane, who represented the
ultra-Southern Democrats, but at the first unmasking of the secession
designs of this wing of his party he quitted their camp and vehemently
denounced their unhallowed purpose. He saw no threat of injustice to the
South in the election of Abraham Lincoln, and in the memorable Senate
debates which preceded the withdrawal of the Southern members his powerful
appeal to them to remain and "fight for the constitutional rights on the
battlements of the Constitution," defined most clearly his position, and
will be remembered as a noble and patriotic effort. But secession had then
too vigorous a growth to be checked by any forensic effort, however moving.
One after another the Southern States seceded, and finally Mr. Johnson's
own State, Tennessee, was declared out of the Union by its Legislature,
though the people had voted against holding a convention to consider the
question of secession. Out of this discord a condition of mob law and
anarchy was speedily developed, and when Senator Johnson returned home in
April, 1861, at the close of the session of Congress, he found himself
exposed to violence, and in the gravest personal peril. He was burned in
effigy in nearly every city in the State, and on one occasion a mob entered
a railroad car in which he was riding declaring that they were going to
lynch him. He met them with a pistol in his hand and cowed them. At the
East Tennessee Union Convention of May 3, 1861, he was prominent, and a
little later, while on his way to attend a special session of Congress, he
was honored by an enthusiastic public reception in Cincinnati. Through his
efforts the Unionists of East Tennessee, persecuted and driven from their
homes by the rebels, were given shelter, food and protection at Camp Dick
Robinson, established by the Government.
President Lincoln nominated Mr. Johnson Military Governor of Tennessee
March 4, 1862, and on the 12th he assumed the trying responsibilities of
that office at Nashville. The rebel State Government had been driven from
that city to Memphis. Mr. Johnson's wife and child had only a little while
before been driven from their home and his property and slaves confiscated,
but in a proclamation announcing his appointment, he said that, though it
might be necessary to punish conscious treason in high places, no merely
vindictive or retaliatory policy would be pursued. It required no common
courage to rule with the firmness he displayed in that dark and perilous
time. Civil officers who refused to take the oath of allegiance were at
once removed and their places filled by Union men. He even imprisoned the
disloyal clergymen of Nashville after they had expressed their
determination not to take the oath. He levied a tax upon prominent
secessionists to maintain the women and children whose husbands and fathers
had been "forced into the armies of this unholy and nefarious rebellion."
In the Summer of 1863 the entire State of Tennessee was brought under
Federal military control, and a convention was held at Nashville in
September to consider the question of restoring the State to the Union.
Gov. Johnson then expressed the belief that it had never been out of the
Union, holding that there was no constitutional provision permitting
secession. In January, 1864, the machinery of the State civil government
was set in motion again by an election of State and county officers ordered
by him. The National Republican Convention of June 7, 1864, held at
Baltimore, renominated Abraham Lincoln for President, with Andrew Johnson
as the nominee for Vice President. In September he ordered an election in
Tennessee for the choice of Presidential Electors, and made a rigid test
oath the condition of suffrage. He was inaugurated with Mr. Lincoln March
4, 1865.
Undoubtedly the greatest misfortune that ever befell Andrew Johnson was the
assassination of President Lincoln, April 14, 1865. It promoted him to the
eminent position of President of the nation, it is true, but the student of
history is forced to conclude that his posthumous fame would have been
brighter without this high honor and the consequences it entailed. Up to
this time Mr. Johnson's public life had been such that he incurred, in
weightier matters, only the hostility of men whose opposition was, to an
upright and honest man, more honorable than their approval; but his
Presidential acts were of a kind that speedily alienated from him the party
whose votes elected him, and left him only the questionable and lukewarm
support of the opposition. In a speech of welcome to a delegation of
citizens of Illinois who called on him on the 18th of April, President
Johnson said:
"The times we live in are not without instruction. The American people
must be taught -- if they do not already feel -- that treason is a crime
and must be punished; that the Government will not always bear with its
enemies; that it is strong not only to protect but to punish."
These words seemed to foreshadow a reconstruction policy which would deal
with the leading secessionists severely, as the people were then in a mood
to demand. He offered $100,000 for the arrest of Jefferson Davis, and
large sums also for other leading Confederates. Early in May rules were
issued governing trade with the States lately in rebellion, but on the 24th
of June all restrictions were removed. Then rapidly followed orders
restoring Virginia to her Federal relations, establishing provisional
governments in the Southern States, and (on May 29) granting a general
amnesty to all persons engaged in the rebellion, except certain classes who
could receive pardon by special application. When Congress assembled the
popular opposition to this hasty method of reconstruction took shape in a
quarrel between Congress and the President. The Republican majority held
that some substantial guarantee of good faith should be required of the
rebellious States before they were admitted to their former rights and
privileges, and that some provision should be made for protecting the
freedmen. The difference of opinion between the Executive and Congress led
to his vetoing the first Civil Rights bill and an act extending the
Freedmen's Bureau. The bills were both passed over his veto, and President
Johnson, certainly with questionably taste, repeatedly asserted in public
that Congress was in an attitude of rebellion. It was not possible for the
Cabinet chosen by Mr. Lincoln to be in harmony with his successor's policy,
and in July, Postmaster General Dennison, Attorney General Speed, and
Secretary of the Interior Harlan resigned, and the President at once
filling their places. In the latter part of August President Johnson with
Secretaries Seward and Welles, and Gen. Grant and others, set out for
Chicago to attend the ceremonies of laying the corner-stone of the monument
to Stephen A. Douglas. It was this trip that gave rise to the well-known
expression "swinging around the circle." The President spoke very freely of
his policy in the different places on the route, openly denouncing Congress
and saying many things that were decidedly inconsistent with the dignity of
his position, and unquestionably injurious to him. The Fall elections
showed incontestably that the popular approval was with Congress. On the
reassembling of Congress the President vetoed bills denying the admission
of States that had not ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, and giving the
right of suffrage without distinction of color in Territories and the
District of Columbia. Congress passed the bills over his veto, however.
That body having also passed over his veto a bill establishing military
districts in ten of the seceding States and making the civil authority
therein subordinate to the military commanders, representing the United
States Government, there arose a difficulty that widened the breach between
the Executive and the Congress.
Attorney General Stanbury decided, on application of the President, that
some provisions of the act were unconstitutional, whereby its enforcement
by the military commanders was greatly impeded. Congress passed another
act in July, 1867, making these commanders responsible only to the General
of the Army, and after its passage over his veto President Johnson removed
the commanders and substituted others. On the 12th of August, the same
year, Edwin M. Stanton was removed from the office of Secretary of War by
the President, and Gen. Grant appointed. The Tenure-of-office bill, passed
the previous March, made the consent of the Senate necessary to such
removals, and provided that its sanction was required, at the next ensuing
session, in the case of appointments made in recess. Accordingly Secretary
Stanton vacated his office under protest. The Senate, at its reassembling,
refused to sanction his removal, and Gen. Grant at once resigned in his
favor, but it was not in the nature of so determined a man as Andrew
Johnson to yield the point thus, and he again removed Mr. Stanton, and
appointed Gen. Lorenzo Thomas in his stead. The Senate at once declared
that the President had exceeded his authority, and the House of
Representatives passed a resolution -- 126 yeas to 47 nays -- that he be
impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. The House agreed to the
articles of impeachment March 3, 1868, and the Senate received them two
days later. They specified his removal of Secretary Stanton, his
publicly-expressed contempt for the Thirty-ninth Congress and his
hindrances to the execution of its measures as acts calling for his
impeachment. The trial began in the Senate, sitting as a high court of
impeachment, on March 23. The managers of the trial on the part of the
accusation were Thaddeus Stevens, B.F. Butler, John H. Bingham, George S.
Boutwell, J.F. Wilson, T. Williams, and John A. Logan, all members of the
House; for the President appeared Attorney General Henry Stanbury, Benjamin
R. Curtis, Jeremiah S. Black, William M. Evarts, and Thomas A.R. Nelson.
The votes on the two articles were taken May 16 and 26, standing, in each
case, thirty-five guilty and nineteen not guilty, which acquitted the
President, as a two-thirds vote is required to convict. Mr. Stanton at
once resigned, and Gen. Schofield was made Secretary of War.
The remainder of his Presidential career is not especially noteworthy. He
issued a full pardon to everybody who had taken part in the rebellion, on
the 25th of December. On the expiration of his term, in March, 1869, he
retired to his home at Greenville, Tenn. In 1870 he was a candidate for
the United States Senate, but was defeated by two votes; in 1872 he was
defeated on independent nomination for Congress. He came again into
public life, however, in the beginning of the present year, being elected
to the United States Senate by the Tennessee Legislature after an exciting
contest, receiving on the fifty-fifth ballot fifty-two votes, which was
only four more than was necessary for a choice. The popular demonstrations
and rejoicings in the cities and towns of his vicinity were very flattering
to him, and only expressed the genuine satisfaction that was felt all over
the country at his return to the councils of the nation, in which, just
then, the Louisiana affair and financial questions were in active
discussion. It is needless to review this latest public service of Mr.
Johnson, as it is recent, and fresh in the memory. Suffice it to say that
he was honest and courageous as ever. Whatever else may be said of him,
his integrity and courage have been seldom questioned though often proved.
He was by nature and temperament squarely disposed toward justice and the
right, and was a determined warrior for his convictions. He erred from
limitation of grasp and perception, perhaps, or through sore perplexity in
trying times, but never weakly or consciously. He was always headstrong
and "sure he was right" even in his errors.
THE EX-PRESIDENT'S LAST HOURS.
HIS FAMILY PRESENT AT HIS DEATH-BED -- THE FUNERAL TO TAKE
PLACE TUESDAY.
Cincinnati, Ohio, July 31. -- The Gazette's Greenville special
says: This morning at about 2 o'clock ex-President Johnson died at the
residence of his daughter, Mrs. W.R. Brown, formerly Mrs. Col. Stover, in
Carter County, from a paralytic stroke. He had been in rather bad health
since the adjournment of the last session of Congress, but nothing serious
was anticipated. On Wednesday morning he left the train for Carter's
Station, and from thence he went on horseback to his daughter's residence,
a distance of about seven miles, riding in the hot sun. Arriving there he
felt very fatigued, and the same afternoon, about 4 o'clock, his right side
was paralyzed, rendering him speechless. His wife was with him at the
time, and his son, Frank, and daughter, Mrs. Patterson, were at once sent
for and left Greenville on Thursday. On Thursday about noon he became
conscious and had a partial use of his side again, but it was evident that
the great commoner could not live long, and thus surrounded by his entire
family and neighboring friends he passed away about 2 o'clock this morning.
Much feeling is manifested here and at Knoxville.
It is expected that a large delegation will arrive from Knoxville to attend
the funeral. A public meeting is in session in the Court-house, which will
make arrangements to receive visitors from abroad.
The funeral will take place at Greenville, on Tuesday, Aug. 3. Several
Masonic lodges, military companies, and civil associations from adjoining
towns will join with the citizens in paying the last tribute to his
remains. The body will arrive here to-morrow. A great many distinguished
men from all sections of the United States are sending telegrams to this
place, stating their desire to be present at the funeral.
The family are greatly overcome with their sad bereavement, in which they
have the sympathy of the whole community.
HOW THE NEWS WAS RECEIVED IN NASHVILLE.
Nashville, Tenn., July 31. -- A public meeting of the citizens of this
city, held this evening for the purpose of expressing condolence and
sympathy for the nation's loss in the death of ex-President Johnson, passed
the following resolutions:
First. -- That we have heard with sorrow of the sad bereavement of
the people of Tennessee in the loss of a guide, who has for so many years
pointed out the right way to political safety, and whose services at this
time appeared to us so important to the Republic.
Second. -- That we deeply sympathize with his aged and afflicted
wife in her bereavement, and with his daughter and son and their families
in the loss they are called to mourn.
Third. -- That in view of the exalted character, great labors, and
the sublime lessons taught by him to this generation of his countrymen, a
committee from the various counties of Middle Tennessee be appointed to
select some suitable place and day for appropriately celebrating the
obsequies of our departed countryman, and that the committee be authorized
to select some person who shall prepare an address embodying the lessons
which Andrew Johnson has given to his countrymen, and that the following
persons be appointed as such committee upon the obsequies of Andrew
Johnson.
The committee is composed of over 100 of the most prominent citizens of
Middle Tennessee. Every arrangement is made for the funeral to take place
at Greenville, Tenn., on Tuesday, but this may be changed, and the remains
brought to this city for interment.