LIFE, ADMINISTRATION, AND TIMES

OF

ANDREW JOHNSON,

SIXTEENTH VICE-PRESIDENT AND SEVENTEENTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

April 15, 1865, to March 4, 1869.

CHAPTER I.

PARENTAGE AND EARLY LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON.

ITTLE has ever been written of the parents and

ality is doubtful. This latter point may, at this day, in America be deemed a matter of little moment. A country which has for so long a time boasted of furnishing an asylum for the overburdened of every land, could take little pride now in attempts at unraveling the many-colored thread woven into its social fabric. Even in the South, where slavery created and maintained some distinctions not found elsewhere, and where it has been invidiously, and to some extent inaccurately, held that the aristocracy of blood or family was superior to that of brain and virtue, blood failed to assert itself, and the current, bent in every direction, became undistinguishable in its turbid branches.

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Jacob Johnson, the father of Andrew Johnson, was an ignorant old man, who lived in Raleigh, North Carolina, and about him little could be said. Some strained efforts have indeed been made to wring something of unusual value out of his life and character, but the futility of the attempts is too apparent. One thing may be confidently asserted, be it much or little, that while a few words may tell of all the good there was in Jacob Johnson and his wife, in a common way of speaking there was no bad in them. In some of President Johnson's political races in Tennessee some of his opponents were in the habit of speaking very disparagingly of old Jacob Johnson; but there is no evidence that this was anything else than partisan insincerity, a species of low trickery to which men of almost every mental rank have resorted, usually with doubtful effects upon their own schemes. The most that may be said against Jacob Johnson, perhaps, was that he was a shiftless, improvident man, with little energy, and with little or no care about lifting himself and his family out of ignorance and social worthlessness.

In a remarkable "Life" of President Johnson, written by an American, but for what purpose it is not necessary to conjecture, I find these words :

"A little more than fifty years ago, a poor but industrious couple resided in Raleigh, the Capital of North Carolina. Their social position was, necessarily, from their pecuniary circumstances, of that grade which debarred them from all save business intercourse with their more wealthy and aristocratic neighbors."

In another of these books may be seen this interesting remark about Jacob Johnson: "He was a poor man, but a man of probity and honor."

Among such ambiguous and two-edged commendations the North and the South met on common grounds in ante-war times, before Mason and Dixon's line was rubbed from the face of the common country, now fast losing its old political and social compass-points. To whatever extent the South monopolized the question of blood or pedigree, the North never fell behind in the aristocracy of wealth. Nor was ignorance ever a barrier to this aristocracy in the North. A good coat and a full pocket have been more than a match for everything else. However, few men who have had brain or character enough to write any kind of book, especially in the North, have ventured to assert that" pecuniary circumstances" alone could shut a man from all intercourse with his kind "save in business."

This whole subject of distinctions and difficulties between the rich and the poor is utterly unworthy of a moment's consideration, were it not for the startling aspects in which it places man as a selfish, ignorant, and erroneous animal. Men are lifted above other men, intrinsically, by what they acquire for themselves in mind and character, and genuine life from these. See if the calm judgment of the world, pagan or Christian, controverts this assertion. It is a sham elevation of man which is effected by the things constituting no part of him. Only those things which are within, and come from within him,

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determine the real character of the man. Are probity and honor" predicable of the poor only? Or is it rare that "probity and honor". can be attributed to the poor? Are poverty and crime synonymous things? Is wealth only upright and good? Is wealth a sure passport to refinement and wisdom? Most lives will be estimated in the end by their little, not their great, deeds. In this view, is the preponderance likely to be against those denominated the poor? Shall the poor woman's mite be the lightest? Who shall judge?

"Jesus saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury, and he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites; and he said, Of a truth, I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all."

But this true potency may not always be concealed behind these little deeds. Poverty and wealth, after all, are perhaps well balanced in the world, in their false pretenses and their evils. The fortunate condition of plenty, from contented and constant work of mind and body, escapes most follies in itself, and is never the envy of the two extremes, which are said to be natural enemies, if not curses, to their possessors.

If in many of those traits regarded as moral, Jacob Johnson and his wife were estimated from the character of their only distinguished child, the case would not be favorable to them. But Jacob Johnson, dying in January, 1812, three years after the birth of Andrew, had little to do with his training.

At the time of his death there appeared, it is said, in a Raleigh newspaper, this notice :

"Died, in this city on Saturday last, Jacob Johnson, who had, for many years, occupied a humble but useful station in society. He was city constable, sexton, and porter of the State Bank. In his last illness he was visited by the principal inhabitants of the city, by all of whom he was esteemed for his honesty, sobriety, industry, and humane, friendly disposition. Among all by whom he was known and esteemed, none lament him more (except, perhaps, his relatives) than the publisher of this paper, for he owes his life, on a particular occasion, to the boldness and humanity of Johnson."

These petty offices held by Jacob Johnson were at that day undoubtedly some index to his real character. And the good deed attributed to him here was one which few men have the opportunity to perform, but which is, in itself, not out of the ordinary disposition of men, risking his own life to save that of another. Thomas Henderson being accidentally thrown from a canoe, Johnson went into the river and rescued him.

Jacob Johnson left several children. Most of them followed their mother into Tennessee; and some of them finally settled in other portions of the Southwest, but none of them are now living.

President Johnson, the only member of this family of whom history can take any note, was born in a little one-story house at the Capital of North Carolina, December 29, 1808, and died on the last day of July, 1875.

If Andrew Johnson's mother cared anything about