Andrew Johnson

“ Never before did the first office in the gift of the people appear so poor an object of human ambition, as when Andrew Johnson made it an eminence on which to exhibit inability to behave and incapacity to reason. His low cunning conspired with his devouring egotism to make him throw off all the restraints of official decorum, in the expectation that he would find duplicates of himself in the crowds he addressed, and that mob diffused would heartily sympathize with Mob impersonated. ”

“ Now, I say, that upon all these various propositions, upon the necessity of a change in the basis of representation, upon the necessity for protecting the negroes, upon this question of suffrage —upon all these questions that have arisen in our politics of late, the differences between Andrew Johnson and Congress are not such as need excite the alarm of any patriotic citizen. No, my friends, we have a great duty to perform to our country. ”

“ It is not strange that the framers of the Constitution, which had no model in the past, should not have fully comprehended the excellence of their own work. Fresh from a struggle against arbitrary power, many patriots suffered from harassing fears of an absorption of the State governments by the General Government, and many from a dread that the States would break away from their orbits. But the very greatness of our country should allay the apprehension of encroachments by the General Government. ”

“ Origin of Andrew Johnson.—His Speeches in Tennessee.—The Negro’s Moses.—The Deceived Brahmin.—The Comparison.—Interview with Southerners.—Northern Delegation.—Delegation of Colored Men.—Their Appeal.
Springing from the highest circle of the lowest class of whites of the South, gradually rising, coming up over a tailor’s board, and all the obstacles that slaveholding society places between an humbly-born man and social and political elevation, Andrew Johnson entered upon his presidential duties, at the death of Mr. Lincoln, with the hearty good feeling of the American people. ”

“ One is that no nomination has ever been sent by Andrew Johnson to the Senate of the United States of any man of that stripe of politics. No flattery, no cajolery can draw him from that line. He is a man who fights his own battles, and whether they are old friends or foes that assail him he fights them with equal freedom and boldness, and sometimes, perhaps indiscreetly ”

“ The impression of Andrew Johnson which this book gives us is that of a deep, powerful, impassioned nature, inflexible, but inflexible rather by definite determination of character and fixity of conviction than by obstinacy of will. A man of large ability, he is, so to speak, deeply immersed in his own past,—limited by the bonds of his earnest, but, until lately, narrow experience. ”

“ That the President of the United States, Andrew Johnson, in exercising the power of his high office in resisting the aggressions of Congress upon the constitutional rights of the states and the people, is entitled to the gratitude of the whole American people ”

“ Where in any part of the globe can institutions be found so suited to their habits or so entitled to their love as their own free Constitution? Every one of them, then, in whatever part of the land he has his home, must wish its perpetuity. Who of them will not now acknowledge, in the words of Washington, that "every step by which the people of the United States have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency"? ”

“ Yet the system of measures established by these acts of Congress does totally subvert and destroy the form as well as the substance of republican government in the ten States to which they apply. It binds them hand and foot in absolute slavery, and subjects them to a strange and hostile power, more unlimited and more likely to be abused than any other now known among civilized men. It tramples down all those rights in which the essence of liberty consists, and which a free government is always most careful to protect. ”

“ Andrew Johnson was not the only man the world is full of them who have held important positions and no doubt have wondered what evil influence ever put them into positions which brought so much trouble upon them. ”

“ The Union and the Constitution are inseparable. As long as one is obeyed by all parties, the other will be preserved; and if one is destroyed, both must perish together. The destruction of the Constitution will be followed by other and still greater calamities. It was ordained not only to form a more perfect union between the States, but to "establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." ”

“ The intermitted exercise of its power brings no sense of security to its subjects, for they can never know what more they will be called to endure when its red right hand is armed to plague them again. Nor is it possible to conjecture how or where power, unrestrained by law, may seek its next victims. The States that are still free may be enslaved at any moment; for if the Constitution does not protect all, it protects none. ”

“ We shall stand by the man that saves us; and you are that man. Your genius, your sagacity, and your unequalled statesmanship, mark you out as the father of his country. Without casting a single ungenerous reflection upon the great name of George Washington, allow me to say what I am sure the rest of the delegation will join me in, and that is, that, a hundred years to come, the name of Andrew Johnson will be the brightest in American history. ”

“ More than seventy-six years have glided away since these words were spoken; the United States have passed through severer trials than were foreseen; and now, at this new epoch in our existence as one nation, with our Union purified by sorrows and strengthened by conflict and established by the virtue of the people, the greatness of the occasion invites us once more to repeat with solemnity the pledges of our fathers to hold ourselves answerable before our fellow-men for the success of the republican form of government. Experience has proved its sufficiency in peace and in war ”

“ How the question of slavery was then treated by the men solving the problem of maintaining the Union is not neglected. Andrew Johnson is referred to as product of the poor white stock that hoped to see the evil of slavery exterminated because it was at variance with the principles of democracy, but on the other hand believed that it was so deeply rooted in the life of the nation that it should not be molested so long as it "remained in strict subordination to and in harmony with the government." ”

“ On one of his blockade-running visits to Washington, Colonel Abercrombie learned that Senator Andrew Johnson, as it then was (though afterwards Vice-President, and still afterwards President of the United States) , had rooms at Beveridge's Hotel, the very place that he was making his headquarters when in Washington. Knowing the Senator to be a fierce, uncompromising Union man, the news of his close proximity at first alarmed the Colonel ”

“ Several men of importance, such as Fessenden and Sherman in the Senate and some prominent members of the House, seriously endeavored to pour oil upon the agitated waters by making speeches of a conciliatory tenor. Indeed, if Andrew Johnson had possessed only a little of Abraham Lincoln's sweet temper, generous tolerance, and patient tact in the treatment of opponents, he might at least have prevented the conflict of opinions from degenerating into an angry and vicious personal brawl. ”

“ As a rule, it requires an unscrupulous and unprincipled man to succeed in politics in America. Honorable men do, sometimes, of course, make their way to high places; but these form the exceptions, not the [Pg 824] rule. Andrew Johnson succeeded in politics. In the earlier stages of our troubles, he spoke and wrote like a Southern man, demanding, in behalf of the South, some security for the future, in the way of additional guaranties. ”

“ Any serious breach of the organic law, persisted in for a considerable time, can not but create fears for the stability of our institutions. Habitual violation of prescribed rules, which we bind ourselves to observe, must demoralize the people. Our only standard of civil duty being set at naught, the sheet anchor of our political morality is lost, the public conscience swings from its moorings and yields to every impulse of passion and interest. If we repudiate the Constitution, we will not be expected to care much for mere pecuniary obligations. ”

“ Seeing that I observed him, he tried to assume a more friendly appearance, but it was too late; it is useless to close the door when all within has been seen. His first glance was the frown of the man; the second was the bland and sickly smile of the demagogue. I turned to Mrs. Dorsey and said, "Whatever Andrew Johnson may be, he certainly is no friend of our race."
No stronger contrast between two men could well be presented than the one exhibited on this day between President Lincoln and Vice-President Johnson. ”

“ Why, sir, even Andrew Johnson, when he arrived at that point where those of his friends who respected themselves turned their backs upon him, was firmly convinced that his popularity with the people was omnipotent; and Presidents of better sense are not exempt from the danger of falling into errors of similar significance. ”

“ Jackson held that the action of the General Government should always be strictly confined to the sphere of its appropriate duties, and justly and forcibly urged that our Government is not to be maintained nor our Union preserved "by invasions of the rights and powers of the several States. In thus attempting to make our General Government strong we make it weak. Its true strength consists in leaving individuals and States as much as possible to themselves; in making itself felt, not in its power, but in its beneficence ”

“ The Statesman is 'for Andrew Johnson against all his enemies.' We are for the whole loyal party and will not sever our connection with it to go with a single person, even though that person be the one who has all the federal offices at his disposal. ”

“ Crimes against the United States can be prevented or punished by the proper judicial authorities in a manner entirely practicable and legal. There is therefore no reason why the Constitution should not be obeyed, unless those who exercise its powers have determined that it shall be disregarded and violated. The mere naked will of this Government, or of some one or more of its branches, is the only obstacle that can exist to a perfect union of all the States. ”

“ Reason, conscience, understanding, have no impersonality to him. When he uses the words, he uses them as synonymes of his determinations, or as decorative terms into which it pleases him to translate the rough vernacular of his wilfulness and caprices. The "Constitution," also, a word constantly profaned by his lips, is not so much, as he uses it, the Constitution of the United States as the moral and mental constitution of Andrew Johnson, which, in his view, is the one primary fact to which all other facts must be subordinate. ”

“ Indeed, it is not too much to ask of the States which are now resuming their places in the family of the Union to give this pledge of perpetual loyalty and peace. Until it is done the past, however much we may desire it, will not be forgotten, The adoption of the amendment reunites us beyond all power of disruption; it heals the wound that is still imperfectly closed: it removes slavery, the element which has so long perplexed and divided the country; it makes of us once more a united people, renewed and strengthened, bound more than ever to mutual affection and support. ”

“ The powers of patronage and rule which would have been exercised under the President, over a vast and populous and naturally wealthy region are greater than, unless under extreme necessity, I should be willing to intrust to any one man. They are such as, for myself, I could never, unless on occasions of great emergency, consent to exercise. The willful use of such powers, if continued through a period of years, would have endangered the purity of the general administration and the liberties of the States which remained loyal. ”

“ Lincoln, Mr. Johnson keenly appreciated the importance of the people of the South returning at once to the Union, free and independent American citizens, clothed with all the rights, privileges and obligations common to such. In his Cabinet Councils, and to a degree supreme in that board sat William H. Seward, as he had throughout Mr. Lincoln's administration, than whom the Republic has produced no wiser, more sagacious, or patriotic statesman. ”

“ The subjects that come unquestionably within its jurisdiction are so numerous that it must ever naturally refuse to be embarrassed by questions that lie beyond it. Were it otherwise the Executive would sink beneath the burden, the channels of justice would be choked, legislation would be obstructed by excess, so that there is a greater temptation to exercise some of the functions of the General Government through the States than to trespass on their rightful sphere. ”