CLOSING SCENES OF THE REBELLION-SURRENDER OF JOHNSTON'S ARMY-ALL THE REBELS LAY DOWN DISBANDING THE GREAT ARMY-THE SOUTH, ITS GEN- ERALS, MEN, MONEY, AND MANAGEMENT-JEFFERSON DAVIS-STARTING THE WORK OF RECONSTRUCTION— CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT - THE COMMITTEE ON RECONSTRUCTION-THE TWO WAYS NOT RIGHT- THE VETO AND THE VETO-THE EXECUTIVE OVER- THROWN, BUT UNCONQUERED THE CONGRESSIONAL TENURE-OF-OFFICE ACT-OPINIONS FOR AND AGAINST THE PRESIDENT RECONSTRUCTION STRUGGLES-THE PAR- VAIN EFFORTS TO HARMONIZE THE PRESIDENT AND CON- GRESS TWO STUBBORN BODIES-THE IMPEACHMENT A REVIEW-THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS-PLANS OF RECONSTRUCTION WHO WAS RIGHT?-PRESIDENT 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. L ITTLE has ever been written of the parents and family of President Johnson. Even their nationality 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. 13 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." |