White House gossip

by Edna M. Colman

CHAPTER I

ADMINISTRATION OF ANDREW JOHNSON

April 15, 1865, to March 4, 1869

LATE April and early May of 1865 brought none of the usual springtime joys to Washington, the Capital City; its residents, in common with the rest of the nation, were shaken with grief over the death of President Lincoln. Public buildings and private houses hid behind dismal swathings of crêpe, and the people were still subdued with the harrowing incidents that had their beginning on the terrible night of April 14th. Previous sectional opinions were set aside in the general regret over the loss of the gaunt, kindly man whom the troubled, disrupted country had learned to trust. The tragedy at Ford’s Theatre, with the simultaneous attack upon Secretary of State William Seward, was the hourly topic of conversation.

Search for the conspirators had begun, and suspicion, fear, and suspense hung like a pall over the land. Peace and security were gone. None knew when or where the relentless arm of the law would pounce upon another suspect. Innocent and guilty alike went through the gruelling. Especially did the fear of Northern soldier vengeance lie heavily upon Southern hearts already bowed in the sorrow of defeat.

Andrew Johnson, the Union Democrat, the “Tailor from Tennessee”—“The Knight of the Shears and Goose,” as Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton had so often dubbed President Lincoln’s running mate—had stepped into the presidential shoes and was handling the reins of government with dominant force and decision. Punishment radiated from every fibre of his being. As he turned from the bier of his slain chief, two paramount purposes were definite in his mind: to follow Lincoln’s policies, and to punish those guilty of his death. He could think of the tragedy in no other terms but those that spelled treason in its blackest form, especially as, upon every hand, because of the attack upon Seward, he found public sentiment committed to the belief that a general conspiracy had been formed in the South for the purpose of exterminating the entire Lincoln Cabinet, together with himself as Vice President, and also General Grant.

From the hour he took the presidential oath and established his offices in the Treasury building, the demands for vengeance poured in upon him from every side.

At the moment, the surrender of all of the Southern arms was incomplete, and a vast Northern army, two hundred thousand strong, chafing at restraint, was ready at a word to take the matter of avenging the death of “Father Abraham” into its own hands and thus renew the bloody conflict. Never had a man stepped into the Presidency under such difficult and soul-trying conditions, or been confronted with greater tasks, more exacting demands, or more serious responsibilities. Never had there been such urgent need for a calm, judicial, well-balanced mind, able to rise above partisan bias, poised to hold firmly to the ability to see both sides of each problem and to refrain from impetuous action.

A nation torn asunder through an internal upheaval had to be brought together and welded into one again.

Although Andrew Johnson had spent thirty years in public service, fighting for what he conceived to be right, his experience had not been of the type to furnish the subtle diplomacy or suave poise needed to handle successfully the great problems that now confronted him. It is doubtful if any man who participated in the political contests of that period, even the great, wise Lincoln, could have brought harmony out of the hysteria and chaos that prevailed in the nation on the morning of April 15, 1865.

Following his induction into office and his inaugural address, Johnson called his first Cabinet meeting at twelve o’clock on April 15th, at which two important measures were decided. These were the arrangements for the funeral of Mr. Lincoln and the appointment of Mr. W. Hunter as temporary Secretary of State pending the recovery of Secretary Seward. At this time the new President requested the members of the Cabinet to retain their portfolios.

In his first proclamation President Johnson expressed his horror of the crime and his resolve to punish the guilty participants. This document also offered rewards for the arrest of those believed to be implicated—one hundred thousand dollars for Jefferson Davis; twenty-five thousand dollars each for Clement C. Clay, Jacob Thompson, George N. Sanders, and Beverly Tucker; and ten thousand dollars for William C. Cleary, late clerk of Clement C. Clay.

It might be stated here that, despite the most exhaustive efforts, not the slightest evidence was produced to connect any of the Southern leaders with the crime of Booth. Jefferson Davis was captured May 10, 1865, at Irwinsville, Wilkinson County, Ga., and sent to Fortress Monroe. Although indicted for treason against the United States in the Federal Court for the District of Virginia, he was finally admitted to bail, one of his bondsmen being Horace Greeley, the abolitionist leader of the North, and released without trial.

Colonel Lafayette Baker, Chief of Secret Service, was out of Washington the night of the tragedy. On his return, he at once applied himself to the task of capturing Booth, Herold, and all others suspected by Secretary of War Stanton, for the apprehension of whom the latter had offered liberal rewards in a proclamation issued immediately following the tragedy. The Stanton proclamation stated that $50,000 would be paid by the War Department for the apprehension of the murderers of the late President. All persons were warned against harbouring or aiding them in any way on pain of being treated by the government as accomplices in the plot.

The City of Washington also offered a reward of $20,000 for the arrest of the assassin and his associates implicated in the crime.

These rewards stirred up extra zeal, and the army of searchers grew steadily.

The search for Booth through the swamps and the final scenes of his capture and death were most graphically told by George Alfred Townsend, a newspaper correspondent, in the New York World during that eventful period. “Gath,” as he was familiarly known, gathered his daily reports from the most reliable sources. Those bearing upon Booth’s wild act he later assembled in booklet form and published in 1865. From it this picture of Booth’s final stand is copied.

The assassin had been traced to the Garrett home on the Rappahannock, some distance from Bowling Green, by the little force sent out by Colonel Lafayette Baker, Chief of the Secret Service, with instructions not to return till they had their man. The company was in charge of Colonel Baker’s former Lieutenant Colonel, E. J. Conger, and of his cousin, Lieutenant L. B. Baker. At two o’clock, early morning, they approached the house.

“In the dead stillness, Baker dismounted and forced the outer gate; Conger kept close behind him, and the horsemen followed cautiously. So they surrounded the pleasant old homestead, each horseman, carbine in poise, adjusted under the grove of locusts, so as to inclose the dwelling with a circle of fire. After a pause, Baker rode to the kitchen door on the side, and dismounting, rapped and hallooed lustily. An old man, in drawers and a nightshirt, hastily undrew the bolts, and stood on the threshold, peering shiveringly into the darkness.

“Baker seized him by the throat at once, and held a pistol to his ear. ‘Who—who is it that calls me?’ cried the old man. ‘Where are the men who stay with you?’ challenged Baker. ‘If you prevaricate you are a dead man!’ The old fellow, who proved to be the head of the family, was so overawed and paralyzed that he stammered and shook, and said not a word. ‘Go light a candle,’ cried Baker, sternly, ‘and be quick about it.’ The trembling old man obeyed, and in a moment the imperfect rays flared upon his whitening hairs and bluishly pallid face. Then the question was repeated, backed up by the glimmering pistol, ‘Where are those men?’ The old man held to the wall and his knees smote each other. ‘They are gone,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got them in the house. I assure you that they are gone.’ Here there were sounds and whisperings in the main building adjoining, and the lieutenant strode to the door. A ludicrous instant intervened, the old man’s modesty outran his terror. ‘Don’t go in there,’ he said feebly, ‘there are women undressed in there.’ ‘Damn the women,’ cried Baker; ‘what if they are undressed? We shall go in if they haven’t a rag.’ Leaving the old man in mute astonishment, Baker bolted through the door, and stood in the assemblage of bare arms and night robes. His loaded pistol disarmed modesty of its delicacy and substituted therefor a seasonable terror. Here he repeated his summons, and the half light gave to his face a more than bandit ferocity. They all denied knowledge of the strangers’ whereabouts.

“In the interim, Conger had also entered, and while the household and its invaders were thus in weird tableaux, a young man appeared, as if he had risen from the ground. The muzzles of every gun turned upon him in a second; but, while he blanched, he did not lose loquacity. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘we had better tell the truth about the matter. Those men whom you seek, gentlemen, are in the barn, I know. They went there to sleep.’ Leaving one soldier to guard the old man—and the soldier was very glad of the job, as it relieved him of personal hazard in the approaching combat—all the rest, with cocked pistols at the young man’s head, followed on to the barn. It lay a hundred yards from the house, the front barn door facing the west gable, and was an old and spacious structure, with floors only a trifle above the ground level.

“The troops dismounted, were stationed at regular intervals around it, and ten yards distant at every point, four special guards placed to command the door and all with weapons in supple preparation, while Baker and Conger went direct to the portal. It had a padlock upon it, and the key of this Baker secured at once. In the interval of silence that ensued, the rustling of planks and straw was heard inside, as of persons rising from sleep.

“At the same moment, Baker hailed: ‘To the persons in this barn. I have a proposal to make; we are about to send in to you the son of the man in whose custody you are found. Either surrender to him your arms and then give yourselves up, or we’ll set fire to the place. We mean to take you both, or to have a bonfire and a shooting match.’

“No answer came to this of any kind. The lad, John M. Garrett, who was in deadly fear, was here pushed through the door by a sudden opening of it, and immediately Lieutenant Baker locked the door on the outside. The boy was heard to state his appeal in undertone. Booth replied:

“‘Damn you! Get out of here. You have betrayed me.’

“At the same time he placed his hand in his pocket as for a pistol. A remonstrance followed, but the boy slipped quickly over the reopened portal, reporting that his errand had failed, and that he dared not enter again. All this time, the candle brought from the house to the barn was burning close beside the two detectives, rendering it easy for any one within to have shot them dead. This observed, the light was cautiously removed, and everybody took care to keep out of its reflection. By this time, the crisis of the position was at hand, the cavalry exhibited very variable inclinations, some to run away, others to shoot Booth without a summons, but all were excited and fitfully silent. At the house near by, the female folks were seen collected in the doorway, and the necessities of the case provoked prompt conclusions. The boy was placed at a remote point. The summons was repeated by Baker:

“‘You must surrender inside there. Give up your arms and appear. There is no chance for escape. We give you five minutes to make up your mind.’

“A bold, clarion reply came from within, so strong as to be heard at the house door:

“‘Who are you and what do you want with us?’

“Baker again urged: ‘We want you to deliver up your arms and become our prisoners.’

“‘But who are you?’ hallooed the same strong voice.

“Baker—‘That makes no difference. We know who you are, and we want you. We have here fifty men, armed with carbines and pistols. You cannot escape.’

“There was a long pause, and then Booth said:

“‘Captain, this is a hard case, I swear. Perhaps I am being taken by my own friends.’ No reply from the detectives.

“Booth—‘Well, give us a little time to consider.’

“Baker—‘Very well. Take time.’

“Here ensued a long and eventful pause. What thronging memories it brought to Booth, we can only guess. In this little interval he made the resolve to die. But he was cool and steady to the end. Baker, after a lapse, hailed for the last time.

“‘Well, we have waited long enough; surrender your arms and come out, or we’ll fire the barn.’

“Booth answered thus: ‘I am but a cripple, a one-legged man. Withdraw your forces one hundred yards from the door, and I will come. Give me a chance for my life, Captain, I will never be taken alive.’

“Baker—‘We did not come here to fight, but to capture you. I say again, appear, or the barn shall be fired.’

“Then, with a long breath, which could be heard outside, Booth cried in sudden calmness, still invisible, as were to him his enemies:

“‘Well, then, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me.’

“There was a pause, broken by low discussions within between Booth and his associate, the former saying, as if in answer to some remonstrance or appeal, ‘Get away from me, you are a damned coward and mean to leave me in my distress; but go! go! I don’t want you to stay. I won’t have you stay.’ Then he shouted aloud:

“‘There’s a man inside who wants to surrender.’...

“At this time, Herold was quite up to the door, within whispering distance of Baker. The latter told him to put out his hands to be handcuffed, at the same time drawing open the door a little distance. Herold thrust forth his hands, when Baker, seizing him, jerked him into the night, and straightway delivered him over to a deputation of cavalrymen. The fellow began to talk of his innocence and plead so noisily that Conger threatened to gag him unless he ceased. Then Booth made his last appeal, in the same clear, unbroken voice:

“‘Captain, give me a chance. Draw off your men and I will fight them singly. I could have killed you six times to-night, but I believe you to be a brave man, and would not murder you. Give a lame man a show.’

“It was too late for parley. All this time Booth’s voice had sounded from the middle of the barn.

“Here he ceased speaking, Colonel Conger, slipping around to the rear, drew some loose straws through a crack and lit a match upon them. They were dry and blazed up in an instant, carrying a sheet of smoke and flame through the parted planks, and heaving in a twinkling a world of light and heat upon the magazine within. The blaze lit up the black recesses of the great barn till every wasp’s nest and cobweb in the roof was luminous. Behind the blaze, with his eye to a crack, Conger saw Wilkes Booth standing upright upon a crutch. He likens him at this instant to his brother Edwin, whom he says he so much resembled that he half believed, for the moment, the whole pursuit to have been a mistake. At the gleam of the fire Wilkes dropped his crutch, and, carbine in both hands, crept up to the spot to espy the incendiary and shoot him dead.... In vain he peered with vengeance in his look; the blaze that made him visible concealed his enemy. A second he turned, glaring at the fire, as if to leap upon it and extinguish it, but it had made such headway that this was a futile impulse, and he dismissed it. As calmly as upon the battlefield a veteran stands amidst the hail of ball and shell and plunging iron, Booth turned to the door, carbine in poise, and the last resolve of death, which we name despair, set on his high, bloodless forehead.

“As so he dashed forward, intent to expire not unaccompanied, a disobedient sergeant at an eye-hole drew upon him the fatal bead. The barn was all glorious with conflagration, and in the beautiful ruin this outlawed man strode like all that we know of wicked valour, stern in the face of death. A shock, a shout, a gathering up of his splendid figure as if to overtrip the stature God gave him, and John Wilkes Booth fell headlong to the floor, lying there in a heap, a little life remaining. ‘He has shot himself!’ cried Baker, unaware of the source of the report, and rushing in, he grasped his arms to guard against any feint or strategy. A moment convinced him that further struggle with the prone flesh was useless. Booth did not move, nor breathe, nor gasp. Conger and two sergeants now entered, and taking up the body, they bore it in haste from the advancing flame, and laid it without upon the grass, all fresh, with heavenly dew.

“‘Water,’ cried Conger, ‘bring water.’

“When this was dashed into his face, he revived a moment and stirred his lips. Baker put his ear close down and heard him say:

“‘Tell Mother—I die—for my country.’

“They lifted him again, the fire encroaching in hotness upon them, and placed him on the porch before the dwelling.

“A mattress was brought down, on which they placed him and propped his head, and gave him water and brandy. The women of the household, joined meantime by another son, who had been found in one of the corn cribs, watching, as he said, to see that Booth and Herold did not steal the horses, were nervous, but prompt to do the dying man all kindnesses, although waved sternly back by the detectives. They dipped a rag in brandy and water, and this being put between Booth’s teeth, he sucked it greedily. When he was able to articulate again, he muttered to Mr. Baker the same words, with an addendum, ‘Tell Mother I died for my country. I thought I did for the best.’ Baker repeated this, saying at the same time, ‘Booth, do I repeat it correctly?’ Booth nodded his head. Twice he was heard to say, ‘Kill me, kill me.’ His lips often moved but could complete no appreciable sound. He made once a motion which the quick eye of Conger understood to mean that his throat pained him. Conger put his finger there, when the dying man attempted to cough, but only caused the blood at his perforated neck to flow more lively. He bled very little, although shot quite through, beneath and behind the ears, his collar bone being severed on both sides.

“A soldier had been meanwhile dispatched for a doctor three miles away. Just at his coming, Booth had asked to have his hands raised and shown him. They were so paralyzed that he did not know their location. When they were displayed, he muttered with a sad lethargy, ‘Useless, useless.’ These were the last words he ever uttered. As he began to die, the sun rose and threw beams into all the tree-tops. It was of a man’s height when the struggle of death twitched and fingered in the fading bravo’s face. His jaw drew spasmodically and obliquely downward; his eyeballs rolled toward his feet, and began to swell; lividness, like a horrible shadow, fastened upon him, and, with a sort of gurgle and sudden check, he stretched his feet and threw his head back and gave up the ghost.

“They sewed him up in a saddle blanket. This was his shroud; too like a soldier’s. Herold, meantime, had been tied to a tree, but was now released for the march. Colonel Conger pushed on immediately for Washington; the cortège was to follow. Booth’s only arms were his carbine, knife, and two revolvers. They found about him bills for exchange, Canada money, and a diary. A venerable old Negro living in the vicinity had the misfortune to possess a horse. This horse was a relic of former generations, and showed by his protruding ribs the general leanness of the land. To this old Negro’s horse was harnessed a very shaky and absurd wagon, which rattled like approaching dissolution. It had no tailboard, and its shafts were sharp as famine; and into this mimicry of a vehicle the murderer was to be sent to the Potomac River, while the man he had murdered was moving in state across the continent. The corpse was tied with ropes around the legs and made fast to the wagon sides. Herold’s legs were tied to stirrups, and he was placed in the centre of four murderous-looking cavalrymen.... When the wagon started, Booth’s wound, till now scarcely dribbling, began to run anew. It fell through the crack of the wagon, dripping upon the axle, and spotting the road with the terrible wafers. It stained the planks, and soaked the blankets; and the old Negro, at a stoppage, dabbled his hands in it by mistake; he drew back instantly, with a shudder and stifled expletive, ‘Gor-r-r, dat’ll never come off in de world; it’s murderer’s blood.’ He wrung his hands and looked imploringly at the officers, and shuddered again: ‘Gor-r-r, I wouldn’t have dat on me fur t’ousand, t’ousand dollars.’

“Toward noon, the cortège reached Port Royal and proceeded to Bell Plain, where the old Negro was niggardly dismissed with two paper dollars. The corpse was cast upon the deck of a steamer, and the journey to Washington began.

“All the way associated with the carcass went Herold, shuddering in so grim companionship, and in the awakened fears of his own approaching ordeal, beyond which loomed already the gossamer fabric of a scaffold. He tried to talk for his own exoneration, saying he had ridden, as was his wont, beyond the East Branch, and returning, found Booth wounded, who begged him to be his companion. Of his crime he knew nothing, so help him God, &c. But nobody listened to him. All interest of crime, courage, and retribution centred in the dead flesh at his feet. At Washington, high and low turned out to look on Booth. Only a few were permitted to see his corpse for purposes of recognition. It was fairly preserved, though on one side of the face distorted, and looking blue like death, and wildly bandit-like, as if beaten by avenging winds.

“Yesterday, the Secretary of War, without instructions of any kind, committed to Colonel Lafayette C. Baker, of the Secret Service, the stark corpse of J. Wilkes Booth. The Secret Service never fulfilled its volition more secretively. ‘What have you done with the body?’ said I to Baker. ‘That is known,’ he answered, ‘to only one man living beside myself. It is gone. I will not tell you where. The only man who knows is sworn to silence. Never till the great trumpeter comes shall the grave of Booth be discovered.’ And this is true. Last night, the 27th of April, a small rowboat received the carcass of the murderer; two men were in it, they carried the body off into the darkness, and out of that darkness it will never return.”

Gossip and rumour have played fast and loose with the life and death of Booth, and statements and evidence have been plentiful disputing the fact that Booth was the man killed in the Garrett barn. Plausible theories have been advanced as to his escape, due to the secrecy imposed by Colonel Baker in the interment of the body. The corpse really was interred beneath the floor of one of the cells in the penitentiary in the Arsenal grounds, and not committed to the river, as some believed. Later, the Booth family were permitted to remove the body to their own burial plot in Maryland.

Doubtless, to the end of time in American history, the question of Booth’s death, like that of the fate of the Dauphin of France, will inspire tales of romance and adventure for the pen of the imaginative writer.

However, he was proved dead to the satisfaction of those empowered to apprehend him, and to the satisfaction of those most vitally interested in the punishment of the murderer, and all further search for Booth was abandoned. Robert Todd Lincoln, eldest son of the President, who was on General Grant’s staff at the time of the tragedy, gave a statement in his eighty-second year to the effect that he had never doubted that Booth met his death in the Garrett barn; that the evidence produced at the time was sufficiently conclusive, and that the numerous stories of the escape of the assassin were merely fabrications created for sensation.

From the diary of Booth, discovered on his body after his death, the whole scheme of the actor was disclosed. The repeated failure of a plan to kidnap the President while he was driving or walking about the city, and take him by force to Richmond and keep him there as a hostage for the release of a large group of Confederate prisoners, was the reason that brought Booth finally to the point of planning assassination.

This diary was not produced at the trial of the conspirators, nor did it receive publication in the newspapers until President Johnson ordered a certified copy of it sent to him two years later. Then, on Wednesday, May 22, 1867, the National Republican printed a certified copy of it together with the facts connected with its capture.

To the President
The following is a copy of the writing (which was in pencil) found in the diary taken from the body of J. Wilkes Booth.

OFFICIAL COPY:

J. Holt
Judge Advocate General

Te Amo
April 13-14—Friday the Ides.

Until to-day nothing was ever thought of sacrificing to our country’s wrongs. For six months we had worked to capture. But our cause was almost lost. Something decisive and great must be done. But its failure was owing to others who did not strike for their country with a heart. I struck boldly and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed in. A colonel was at his side. I shouted “sic semper” before I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets. Rode sixty miles that night with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump.

I can never repent it though we hated to kill. Our country owed all her troubles to him and God simply made me the instrument of His punishment.

The country is not

April 15, 1865.

what it was. This forced union is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of me. I have no desire to out-live my country. This night (before he died) I wrote a long article and left it for one of the editors of the Intelligencer in which I fully set forth our reasons for our proceedings.

He or the Gov’s

Friday 21

After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gunboats till I was forced to return wet, cold, and starving with every man’s hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus was honored for, what made Tell a hero, and yet I, striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as a common cut-throat. My action was purer than either of theirs. One hoped to be great. The other had not only his country’s but his own wrongs to avenge. I hoped for no gain. I knew no private wrong. I struck for my country and that alone. A country that groaned beneath this tyranny and prayed for this end, and yet behold the cold hand they extend to me. God cannot pardon me if I have done wrong. Yet I cannot see my wrong, except in serving a degenerate people. The little, the very little I left behind to clear my name the Gov’t will not allow to be printed. So ends All. For my country I have given all that makes life sweet and holy, brought misery upon my family and am sure that there is no pardon in the Heavens for me since man condemns me so. I have only heard of what has been (except what I did myself) and it fills me with horror. God try and forgive me and bless my mother. To-night I will once more try the river with intent to cross. Though I have a greater desire and almost a mind to return to Washington and in a measure clear my name—which I feel I can do.

I do not repent the blow I struck. I may before God, but not to man. I think I have done well. Though I am abandoned with the curse of Cain upon me, though, if the world knew my heart, that one blow would have made me great though I did desire no greatness.

To-night I try to escape those bloodhounds once more. Who, who can read his fate? God’s will be done. I have too great a soul to die like a criminal. Oh, may He spare me that and let me die bravely. I bless the entire world, have never hated or wronged any one. This last was not a wrong unless God deems it so. And it is with Him to damn or bless me.

And for this brave boy with me, who often prays (yes, before and since) with a true and sincere heart, was it a crime in him, if so, why can he pray the same? I do not wish to shed a drop of blood but I must fight the course, ’tis all that’s left me.

As the Capital City was still under military rule, a military commission was appointed to meet at Washington, D. C., on May 8, 1865, for the trial of the conspirators and other persons implicated in the murder of the late President Lincoln and the attempted assassination of Hon. William E. Seward, Secretary of State.

Throngs gathered about the Court (sitting then in the Penitentiary at the Arsenal) daily eager to view the spectacle of the prisoners, hooded and in irons. Mrs. Surratt was manacled like the men, according to the account given by Ben Perley Poore.

The Court finished its task on June 30, 1865, and a full report of its findings was ordered to be submitted to the President. On July 5th, the President approved the report and ordered the executions of Mrs. Surratt, David E. Herold, George A. Atzerodt, and Lewis Payne to take place at once. On July 7th, these sentences were carried out. The others implicated, Samuel Arnold, Edward Spangler, Samuel Mudd, and Michael O’Laughlin, were sent to the military prison at Dry Tortugas.

In Mrs. Surratt’s case, every effort made by her daughter and her father confessor, as well as a group of prominent men and women who sought to intercede in her behalf, met with complete failure. Although the daughter knelt upon the White House steps for hours beseeching a hearing by the President, Mrs. Johnson, and even Mrs. Patterson, admission was denied to her and all others on the same mission.

The recommendation for clemency for Mrs. Surratt, making her sentence one of life imprisonment instead of execution, because of her age and sex, was signed by all members of the Court except General Lew Wallace, A. P. Howe, Colonel R. Clennin, and T. M. Harris. This paper was prepared, signed, and given to Judge Holt to be handed to the President with the findings of the Court.

President Johnson declared this petition never reached him, and the supposition is that it was either blocked or mislaid accidentally or intentionally in the War Department.

Great was the furore stirred up in legal circles over this trial, and dissenting opinion was freely expressed. Judge Andrew Wiley, of the District Supreme Court, known as one of the strongest characters on the bench, did not concur in the plans for a military trial for the conspirators. He arose early on the morning of the execution day to sign a writ of habeas corpus for the release of Mrs. Surratt. Judge Wiley, a devoted friend of Abraham Lincoln, having received his appointment to the bench from him, believed that the legality of Mrs. Surratt’s conviction by court martial should be determined by a civil court. He concurred in the effort to secure a stay of execution by signing the writ of habeas corpus, directing General Hancock to produce her in court. The writ was served, but General Hancock did not obey it. Judge Wiley’s scathing rebuke to the military authorities for thus ignoring and overriding the civil powers is one of the most notable in the annals of court history.

During the short period of the trial, from May 8th to June 30th, 403 witnesses were subpœnaed, 247 examined for the prosecution, 236 for the defense, 4,300 pages of legal copy testimony taken, with an additional 700 pages of arguments.

John Surratt, whose intimate association with Booth led to his mother’s being implicated, escaped to Canada and for two years evaded capture. Finally, he was apprehended, but owing to the odium that had followed the Military Commission, he had a civil court trial. This grew into such a bitter controversy over the execution of his mother that it became more of a trial of a former court than of himself, and through the failure of the jury to agree he was released.

The first great task of President Johnson was the disbandment of the army. As a fitting climax to their four years of terrible struggle and hardship, President Lincoln had planned the Grand Review in Washington for May 23 and 24, 1865. To completing the preparations for this notable event, the President and Secretary Stanton devoted much attention, keenly aware of the impression which the assembly of the nation’s armed force would make upon the minds of foreign representatives and of its influence upon the general public.

As the time for the pageant drew near, there came a lifting of the gloom that had enveloped the capital, still a tented city surrounded on a circuit of thirty-seven miles by a ring of sixty-eight armed forts, with their encircling watch fires—a picture that had inspired Julia Ward Howe to write the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Public squares were still occupied by camps, and all available structures, converted into hospitals, were filled to overflowing with wounded soldiers.

Washington’s streets were notorious for their clouds of dust or wallows of sticky mud. As the dust prevailed at this period, the services of the Fire Department were necessary on both mornings to sprinkle the line of march to make the passing of the procession fairly comfortable for marchers and onlookers. Patrols guarded the intersections.

Upon the grassy hillsides and steps of the Capitol were massed the city’s school children in gala dress, with wreaths, flags, and bouquets, ready to greet the conquering hosts with patriotic songs. Four gaily decorated reviewing stands were erected in front of the White House for officials and celebrities. With the President were the members of the Cabinet and General U. S. Grant. Every window, roof, and tree presented its full limit of spectators while every foot of standing room along the entire line of march was filled with enthusiastic people.

With military promptness, on each morning at 9 o’clock, the great divisions of the army began their movement down Capitol Hill. The Army of the Potomac, with General George A. Meade commanding, occupied the entire day on Tuesday in passing in review, while Sherman’s army, with its two wings—the Army of Tennessee commanded by Major General John A. Logan, affectionately called “Black Jack” by his men because of his swarthy complexion, and the Army of Georgia, in command of Major General Henry D. Slocum—kept a weary audience shouting applause until dark on Wednesday. Before the columns started, the young women and girls of the city decked officers, men, horses, cannon, and guns with floral wreaths, garlands, and bouquets, and as each officer passed, he received a special ovation.

Brevet Major General George M. Custer, in command of the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac, was a picturesque figure, mounted upon a handsome stallion, his long hair reaching to his shoulders. Just as the procession turned into Pennsylvania Avenue from Fifteenth Street, the onlookers were horrified to see his horse rear and wildly dash up the street. The General’s hat flew off, and everyone expected to see him pitched to the ground and killed. But fears were turned to shouts of admiration at his horsemanship when he suddenly quieted the horse, turned, and rode back to his place, picking up his hat as easily as if he had planned the performance. In fact, such a charge was made. Every man in his contingent wore the Custer tie, a red scarf around the neck and extending almost to the belt.

A slowly increasing roar of applause greeted the coming of Sherman and Major General Oliver O. Howard, whose empty sleeve was an eloquent testimony of his service. These two rode a little in advance—horses flower decked and wreathed—and after they passed the reviewing stand, they too dismounted and joined the receiving party.

Spectators and marchers alike thrilled over the battle-torn flags that brought forth such storms of applause as they appeared. One flag alone drew every eye but no applause. It hung from the portico of the Treasury building—the flag of the Treasury Guard Regiment—a flag never to be forgotten. The lower portion was torn and jagged, not by bullet or shell, but by the spur on the boot of Booth the assassin, when he had jumped from the presidential box to the stage in Ford’s Theatre.

No military pageant in the history of the world had ever surpassed or equalled this review in size or character. The four years of constant conflict with a foe equally fine in every respect as themselves had battered, trained, and polished the raw recruits of the North, who had responded so quickly to President Lincoln’s call for volunteers, into the finest military organization in the world, unmatched anywhere save by their Confederate antagonists, also trained in the same rigorous school of experience.

From early morning until dark, on each day, eighty thousand bronzed patriots, in a column reaching from curb to curb, tramped up Pennsylvania Avenue to the triumphant music of their bands. Powerful, grim, relentless, they typified the rigours of war. Upon them still was the atmosphere of the conquest of half a continent reflected in their resolute faces and their worn clothes. No dress-parade soldiers were these. They were men who had witnessed and experienced every phase of the terrible game of war and had paid its heavy toll in wounds and hardship. None needed to scan the ragged emblems they carried so proudly to know that they had met and sustained the shock of combat. Veterans of Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Petersburg, and the final glory of Appomattox; veterans of Donelson, Belmont, Shiloh, Corinth, Perryville, Stone River, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Mission Ridge, Atlanta, Savannah, the Carolinas, Bentonville, and scores upon scores of other places. Behind them, upon these and many other blood-dyed fields, they had left another host, a silent army whose mangled bodies had consecrated the cause for which they and Abraham Lincoln had fallen.

Following this majestic and awe-inspiring pageant came the queerest collection of flotsam and jetsam ever gathered together—the “Bummers.” These were the stragglers that had attached themselves to the various corps, odd assortments of humans, animals, loot and salvage, hangers-on of Sherman’s March to the Sea, drift-wood clinging to the only anchorage that promised food and safety. They furnished the oddest parade ever seen in Washington before or since. Mules, goats, asses, horses, dogs, sheep, pigs, colts, raccoons, chickens, cats, and Negroes all ambling along contentedly as though their only object in life was to follow the army—as, indeed, it was. Each beast of burden was loaded to its carrying capacity with the odds and ends of camp luggage, equipment, and the queer lot of junk the soldiers had gathered “to carry home some day”—tents, knapsacks, hampers, sacks, bundles of clothing, boxes, valises, blankets, pots, kettles, fiddles, bird cages, camp stools, a few stray cradles, plenty of pickaninnies, and here and there, presiding over the lot, a black woman. Realism thus painted a living picture of the vicissitudes of the long weary march of destruction through the forests, swamps, plantations, and towns that came within the path of the blue-clad torrent which had swept all before it.

In this epochal review were numbers of distinguished officers: Merritt, Macy, Benham, Griffin, Humphreys, Davies, Devin, Patrick, Woods, Carey, Hunter, Hancock, Ross, Blair, Ward, Smith, Nagle, Geary, and others, too many to enumerate with any degree of accuracy—names a grateful nation has since placed high upon the honour roll in her Memorial Hall of Fame.

Most deservedly interesting of them all was the quiet, diffident man, with the three stars in his shoulder straps, the idolized commander of all of the armies of the North during the last year of the war—Ulysses S. Grant, whom Lincoln had chosen to bring peace to a sorely stricken land. A silent and unassuming observer, he seemed entirely unconscious that through his persistent and efficient service the Stars and Stripes were floating over a reunited nation.

A tanner’s clerk with a series of mercantile failures behind him when the guns of Sumter opened the war, he was the honoured and loved commander of half a million veterans, with the faith and trust of a nation when it closed—the leader of the greatest army from every standpoint that any man had ever had subject to his call.

Inarticulate in public, modest and silent by nature, General Grant’s pride and elation in the day’s event were manifest in the concentrated attention he gave to the passing marchers. His popularity demanded his almost constant response to the ovations to himself.

During the four years of the war for the preservation of the Union, there had been more than twenty-four hundred engagements of greater or lesser importance. In all, 2,600,000 men had been enlisted in the Federal armies, and while some of the records of the Confederate forces were destroyed, it has been estimated that they put more than a million men under arms.

The conclusion of the review sent back to civil life a vast host. All but a standing army of 15,000 men were disbanded.

The time had now come when President Johnson’s task assumed herculean proportions. Secession was abolished, slavery was an institution of the past, the Negroes were free, and the indestructibility of the Union and the supremacy of the national government were definitely and completely established. With the conspirators captured and on trial, public attention turned with redoubled interest to the political situation and with concentrated scrutiny to the attitude of the new Executive toward the problems that developed and multiplied daily about his head in stabilizing the government and reviving long-neglected and stagnant industries.

Before him lay the greatest responsibility and the greatest opportunity that had ever confronted any executive of the United States. From a huge disorganized fluid mass of opposed human elements, each committed to and allied to some of the varied forces that made up the national chaos, he must either bring reorganization, a harmonious welding of the mighty forces into a structure of government to endure, or must suffer retrogression, the tragedy of dissolution and national eclipse. Medusa-headed were the disrupting units, and legion the demands, needs, and appeals for attention and action.

It was a crucial period, when legal astuteness, super-statesmanship, extraordinary political acumen, expert diplomacy, unbiased vision, indomitable courage, and, above all, unswerving patriotism and Gibraltar-like strength to hold to convictions were the qualifications needed to control the rocking ship of state.

To form any just estimate of the administration of Andrew Johnson in his accidentally conferred office through such an epochal period, one must first get a concept of the man—his background of ancestry, environment, education, and former achievements.

The whole story of his life and public service reveals one of the most notable examples of self-development in our national history. Never was man more entirely captain of his own soul and master of his own destiny. Adversity surrounded him with every baffling agency in his childhood, and opportunity forgot him in his boyhood. But the fates that presided at his birth showered him liberally with pugnacity, energy, determination, and unlimited ambition which, though late in awakening, drove him unceasingly until the end of his life.

With these qualities, he builded his own career, a sturdy structure of achievement of which his posterity may be proud and to which a nation now pays a measure of tardy tribute.

Throughout his entire life, Johnson conducted a personal defense of the Constitution of the United States, which he treasured as his Bible, a much-worn copy never being absent from his pocket. However, though staunch and unswerving in his loyalty to his country, his perspective was narrowed by his own stubbornness, and his vision limited by his passion for detail.

In unwavering patriotism and firm devotion to the Union, he may be compared with Abraham Lincoln, and in the measure of his martyrdom, he falls not far behind that great emancipator.

President Lincoln lived long enough to see his gigantic struggle crowned with success, to hear the wild enthusiasm over Northern victory, and to feel the first great relief in the dawn of peace. His death, the deed of a crazed actor, enshrined him forever in American hearts.

Not even a small measure of any satisfaction or acclaim came to Andrew Johnson. He had turned his back on his native southland, upon his constituents, and had led his own state back into the Union in the face of every possible personal risk and sacrifice. With notable courage, he had taken his stand at the side of Abraham Lincoln in every crisis through the war, with a price upon his head and a curse for him in the hearts of all of the Confederacy.

When he found himself in the midst of the delegation that came to wait upon him with the news of the death of his chief and to witness his taking the oath that placed the sceptre of a great office in his hands, he plainly and emphatically avowed his purpose to carry out President Lincoln’s often-expressed policies toward the defeated Southern States. With the purest, best intentions in the world, he attempted to do this, but because he lacked the calm patience and ability to hold himself impervious to personal slander and abuse, he was denied the satisfaction that came to Abraham Lincoln before tragedy brought oblivion. Andrew Johnson found himself put through indignities and subjected to affronts such as no other President has ever been called upon to meet.

His official family withheld their support and deserted him, he was stripped officially of his prerogatives, was accused of treason and of complicity in the murder of his chief, and, finally, was haled before a Court of Impeachment, thereby providing a spectacle for the public during which he was required to defend every word and act of his public career. Attacked and ridiculed by the press, he was, at last, forced to stand before the world a leader chosen for his policies when a national exigency needed him, yet repudiated a few months later because of those same policies.

His blunders—and that he made blunders is admitted by his staunchest friends—were due to his zeal to bring to pass the measures that his point of view decreed as conducive to the best interests of his country. He met attack with counter attack, and criticism and incrimination with retort and recrimination. Herein lay the pit of his own digging—the ever-widening chasm between himself and Congress into which he was finally plunged on the most trivial and unwarranted charges. The whole matter was a product of the wild spirit of the disorganization that was then upon the land.

Through all of the abuse and criticism, Johnson, nevertheless, remained to the bitter end the same stubborn fighter, yielding not one tittle of his principles. Brusque of manner and more brusque of speech, he maintained his attitude, austere, forbidding, uncompromising, and defiant toward a hostile Congress that omitted no opportunity to belittle, discredit, and humiliate him in its final effort to depose a man it could not control for party ends. Exasperated, again and again, and led into violent retorts and unwise attacks not compatible with the dignity of his high office, he kept his faith in himself and his countrymen, in spite of all.

When he was finally vindicated, and that by but a single vote, and thus escaped being deposed, it is claimed his mask of indifference was so firmly set that he showed no elation or emotion whatever, unless it was a sense of disappointment that the long battle was over.

Johnson was born December 20, 1808, in Raleigh, N. C., in a one-room log cabin. When the boy was but four years old, the father died, leaving him and his mother to battle with poverty and obscurity. The child scrambled daily for pennies, and the best that befell him was his apprenticeship to a tailor, at the age of ten. He had no schooling whatever, not even a knowledge of the alphabet.

While he was fully engrossed in learning the technic of tailoring and becoming expert with the shears and goose he heard, through a friend, of a gentleman of the city whose favourite form of social service was that of reading aloud to labouring men in their luncheon hours. Andrew joined the group and manifested such interest that he received as a gift the book used in these readings. This imbued him with the courage to learn to read for himself.

In a moment of mischief, while still an apprentice, he and some other boys directed a rock bombardment upon what they believed to be an empty house. To his horror, he learned the next day it was occupied, and that the owner had recognized him and made a formal complaint against him. Young Johnson did not care to face a session with his employer or be taken to court; so he ran away in the night with only the clothes upon his back and the tools of his trade. His employer posted the following advertisement for the return of this future president of the United States.

Ten Dollars Reward.

RAN AWAY from the Subscriber, on the night of the 15th instant, two apprentice boys, legally bound, named WILLIAM and ANDREW JOHNSON. The former is of a dark complexion, black hair, eyes, and habits. They are much of a height, about 5 feet 4 or 5 inches. The latter is very fleshy freckled face, light hair, and fair complexion. They went off with two other apprentices, advertised by Messrs Wm. & Chas. Fowler. When they went away, they were well clad—blue cloth coats, light colored homespun coats, and new hats, the maker’s name in the crown of the hats, is Theodore Clark. I will pay the above Reward to any person who will deliver said apprentices to me in Raleigh, or I will give the above Reward for Andrew Johnson alone.

All persons are cautioned against harboring or employing said apprentices, on pain of being prosecuted.

JAMES J. SELBY, Tailor.

Raleigh, N. C. June 24, 1824 26 3t

For two years, he worked in a tailor’s shop in Laurens, S. C., and while there had his first love affair, the young lady being Miss Sarah Wood. His devotion found expression in assisting her in making a patchwork quilt, still preserved by her descendants. The story current of the quilt included the fact that the initials S. W., found on the corners, were the unassisted handiwork of the young lover.

When Andrew Johnson decided upon matrimony, he returned to see his mother and to make peace with his former employer. In bidding his fiancée farewell, he presented her with his treasured goose. Their parting proved final, for they disagreed and broke their engagement.

Andrew found his mother had remarried. Owing to the advertisements posted in so many places, no one would employ him, as he was considered bound to Mr. Selby until of age. His eagerness to establish himself independently in new fields gained his former employer’s sympathy, and with his trouble adjusted, he prevailed upon his mother and stepfather, Turner Dougherty, to travel westward with him. They settled in Greeneville, Tenn., where the young man quickly found employment and soon had his own little shop, the site of which is one of the historic spots of the town.

One of the traditions of his arrival at Greeneville is to the effect that, on that day, he and his parents passed a little group of girls, among whom was Eliza McCardle, daughter of the village shoemaker. As the young lad passed, she prophesied to her companions, “Girls, there is my beau—you wait and see.” They “saw” Andrew Johnson and Eliza McCardle married within a year, on May 17, 1827, when he was nineteen and she but seventeen.

While he had acquired a rudimentary knowledge of the three “R’s” in Raleigh, he was far behind his girl wife in education. As she came of prudent Scotch ancestry and was a schoolteacher, she set to work to encourage and instruct her young husband. He studied while he plied his needle, and she taught to help the finances of the little home until her babies absorbed all of her time. Thus, together, they budded the foundation of his later career.

The more he read and studied, the more public service and politics attracted him. To become a speaker, he joined a debating society and tramped eight miles regularly each week to listen and participate. To lose no opportunity for absorbing information, he hired a schoolboy for fifty cents a day to read to him while he worked at his bench.

Financial success awarded his steady industry as a tailor and political honours his determined self-development. From town commissioner to the White House, he fought his way through defeat and victory in a continual succession of elective offices. His ambition carried him through the State Legislature, through both houses of the United States Congress, through the governorship to the vice presidency, while accident sent him into the White House.

During the war, he was the most conspicuous figure in official life—a United States Senator from a seceded state, standing with President Lincoln against his own constituency. He threw himself into the fight against the ordinance of Secession passed by the Tennessee Legislature and toured his state, making powerful speeches for the Union.

This trip proved the most exciting and dangerous of all his experiences. His life was in constant danger, and he was insulted and threatened in various places, and was repeatedly hanged or burned in effigy as a traitor to the South.

Antipathy to his policies and hatred of his acts ran so high that, before appearing to make one address, he was warned that he would be shot upon his appearance on the platform. Upon arriving at the hall, he marched to the platform, faced the audience calmly, and, looking over the assembly, leisurely pulled a revolver from his pocket, remarking crisply, “Before I begin my speech, there is another matter that needs to be attended to. Threats have been made that if I appeared here to-night I would be shot. Now, if any man has any shooting to do, let him begin.”

He looked about a bit, and, seeing no move, continued: “I have been misinformed and will now proceed to address you on the issues which have called us together.”

His subsequent remarks must have been convincing, as was the case wherever he spoke, for his efforts won the citizens as supporters of the Union cause, and East Tennessee not only voted against the act of Secession but refused to be governed by it.

To danger he was indifferent. It was Mrs. Johnson who paid the heavy price in suffering for his energetic service to the Union. When the little family was finally reunited in Nashville after two years of separation, it was a most eventful and happy day. The occasion was one of the few, if not the only one, where rumour credits Senator Johnson with exhibiting any emotion of joy. Mrs. Johnson’s strength, however, gave way, and disease fastened upon her so tenaciously that she was reduced to complete invalidism for the balance of her life.

The Johnson element quickly formed themselves into a fighting unit for action, a procedure that was characterized by Jefferson Davis as the “rebellion of East Tennessee.”

President Lincoln appointed Senator Johnson Military Governor of Tennessee on March 7, 1862, with the rank of Brigadier General, with full authority to do as seemed best to him to bring order out of the chaos in that state.

Johnson inaugurated a rule of stringency and dictatorship that was long remembered.

In the autumn of that year General Buell, chief in command, proposed to evacuate the city on the approach of the Confederate Army. Governor Johnson determined to prevent this and requested the President to remove General Buell, threatening to shoot the first man who talked of surrender.

At this juncture, when the Governor was most alarmed over the impending disaster, he was visited by the fighting Parson of the Buckeye state, Reverend Granville Moody. A story often related of their meeting is as follows:

“Mr. Johnson turned to Mr. Moody, exclaiming, ‘Moody, we are sold out. Buell is a traitor. He is going to evacuate the city, and in forty-eight hours we will be in the hands of the rebels.’ Presently, when calmer, he said, ‘Moody, can you pray?’ ‘That’s my business as a minister of the gospel,’ said the preacher. ‘Well, I wish you would pray,’ said Johnson. The two knelt down at their chairs, and as the prayer became more fervent, Johnson added his ‘Amen’ with true Methodist energy. Presently, he crawled over to the preacher and put his arms about him as he prayed, and when the prayer was over, Johnson said emphatically, ‘Moody, I feel better.’ A moment later he said, ‘Moody, I don’t want you to think I have become religious because I asked you to pray. I am sorry to say it, but I have never pretended to be religious, but, Moody, there is one thing I do believe: I believe in Almighty God, and I also believe in the Bible, and I say, I’ll be damned if Nashville shall be surrendered.’”

Nashville was not surrendered. President Lincoln relieved General Buell. In his office of Brigadier General, Andrew Johnson raised and equipped twenty-five regiments for service in Tennessee, in which his sons and sons-in-law were all enrolled.

This position was to his liking, and he reluctantly turned his face to Washington for the inauguration of March 4, 1865.

Much has been written of Andrew Johnson’s words and deeds, but detailed descriptions of his appearance, habits, and personal characteristics have not been either prolific or expansive.

The descriptions written of him by his various secretaries are perhaps the most dependable, since these men had the advantage of seeing him at all times under all conditions of mental stress and calm, in his moments of relaxation and under the irritation of attack.

He possessed neither the physique nor the temperament to inspire admiration or win friends. His life struggle had been too severe, and all that he had gained had exacted a heavy toll. He was in constant physical pain, with an ailment of long duration that caused him so much suffering at times that he stood for hours to gain relief. In his features, as a result, had come a grim severity of expression, forbidding and repelling. It impregnated the atmosphere about him and gave him the morose irritability that his many anxieties accentuated. His nerve tension was so great at times that even audible laughter annoyed him.

To offset this, his speech was courteous and suave and kindly, his manner distant. Fred Cowan, who served as one of his secretaries at the White House, said in his reminiscences that he never saw the President smile but once in more than two years; nor did he ever see him relax from the austere dignity which encased him like an armour. He greeted friends with the pleasure showing in his face. A deep-cut line or wrinkle took the place of a smile. The sorrows of his private life, the loss of one son, the weakness of another, the perpetual illness of his wife were heavy upon him.

The arrival of the President’s family in June brought him great pleasure and was a source of delight to the White House.

There were in the party Mrs. Johnson, Colonel Robert Johnson, who assisted his father in a secretarial capacity, Mrs. David Patterson, eldest daughter, wife of Senator Patterson with her two children, Mary Belle and Andrew J.; Mrs. Stover, second daughter of the President, and the three little Stovers, Sarah, Lettie, and Andrew J.; and last but not least important, the President’s youngest son, Andrew Johnson, Jr., a lad of fourteen years.

Naturally, all attention was turned upon the new First Lady of the Land and her daughter. Mrs. Johnson, from the beginning, took no active part in the direction of affairs. All matters were delegated to Mrs. Patterson and to Mrs. Stover. According to Colonel Wm. W. Crook, whose service in the mansion extended over a period of thirty years, Mrs. Johnson was a small, fragile woman afflicted with old-fashioned consumption, exceedingly pleasant and thoughtful, but very dignified. Owing to her long illness, she was weak and emaciated, and was obliged to walk very slowly.

Mrs. Johnson appeared at but three functions during her entire residence at the White House, and seldom came to breakfast, spending most of her time in her room in a little rocking chair with her needlework and a book. She kept abreast of the times and had decided literary tastes, preferring serious books to fiction. Her husband had long since learned to respect her opinion and to value her judgment. Her influence with him was greater than that of any one else.

Mrs. Patterson was very like her father; they were thoroughly in accord and congenial. She understood his disposition and at once applied herself to the task of turning a much disorganized and dishevelled establishment into an orderly household. The entire atmosphere of the place had changed with the arrival of the troop of five lively youngsters, who adored their grandfather and grandmother, and who raced pell-mell, whooping like Indians, through the corridors and halls. Andrew Johnson, Jr., was put into public school and a competent teacher engaged to come to the White House every morning for the grandchildren.

To make the White House wholesome and attractive for the New Year reception of 1866, the first function of their rêgime, was a gigantic task to which Mrs. Patterson devoted her energy and created a great transformation. Congress had appropriated $30,000—a mere bagatelle against the necessities of repairing and cleaning a supply of worn-out equipment.

The dingy carpet of the great East Room was covered with fresh white linen, as were also the shabbiest pieces of the furniture. The other carpets were removed, leaving the oilcloth beneath them. Flowers were used in quantities, and the air of cheerfulness and welcome that pervaded the place, where happy children’s voices were heard, destroyed much of the gloom that had settled over the mansion with the tragedy and funeral of the previous spring.

President Johnson received in the Blue Room with Mrs. Patterson at his side. She made a charming picture in a regal gown of rich black velvet with elegant point lace trimmings, a white japonica in her hair. She showed much skill in keeping political friction out of her drawing-room. The great value of her calm, diplomatic social charm was apparent to everyone, and her unfailing graciousness won continual regard and admiration.

Her hobby was her dairy. She introduced into the White House the newest, most spotless dairy equipment, and her daily routine of duty began with her regular early morning visit to supervise her milk pans. Her dress covered by a large print apron, she showed a vast pride in her shining pans and spotless crocks and the quality of her butter, and took as great delight in conducting friends through her dairy as through the conservatory. She made all of the butter used in the mansion during her father’s term, and was proud of the accomplishment. To her is credited this statement: “We are plain people from the mountains of Tennessee, brought here through a national calamity. We trust too much will not be expected of us.” When making this statement, she was the daughter of a President and the wife of a United States Senator, and she had no need to explain or deprecate her discharge of the duties of the position which she graced with such success to the end of her father’s administration.

In the White House, President Johnson’s life was as simply conducted as when he had worked at his bench. He arose at six o’clock, read the papers carefully, breakfasted at eight, visited with the family and his wife a few minutes before entering his office, where he remained until lunch. In the afternoon, conferences and callers occupied him until four o’clock, when he returned to the family group, visiting until dinner, which was served at five. Then he would either walk or ride for a while. In the evening, when there were no formal functions, he received callers from nine to eleven. He had very few intimate friends, but such as were his cronies came to his room whenever they chose. Nothing delighted the President more than to gather up the three little Andrews and such of the rest of the family as could go, and stage an impromptu picnic in the country. He was a different person in the midst of his family, for then he relaxed and entered into all of the fun and interests of the group. When the boys and girls wanted to ask him something, they trooped into his office without permission or ceremony, for they knew they were welcome. His pronounced fondness for children was not well known. They had many joyous times with him in the privacy of the home group, where, in dressing gown and slippers, he would join in the popcorn feasts and the chestnut and apple roasts.

The new President made much history in the months between his induction into the office on April 15th and the assembling of the Thirty-ninth Congress the following December. He was engrossed in the question of reëstablishing the seceded states, which was the thought in every mind and the topic on every tongue.

From the beginning of his rêgime, he made it clear that his own policy toward the restoration of the Southern states was exactly that which Abraham Lincoln had so definitely expressed; that the Government of the United States was erected as a perpetuity; that the Constitution provides for the admission of the states, but not for their secession or destruction. Said President Johnson: “A rebellious state, when it comes out of a rebellion, is still a state. I hold it a high duty to protect and to secure to those states a republican form of government, but such a state must be restored by its friends, not smothered by its enemies.”

As first step toward accomplishing the restoration of the civil status of the South, Johnson bent all his energies to the task of encouraging and aiding the states to make the required pledges of allegiance. This he regarded as a political and economic necessity and his most important duty as the Executive of the nation.

On May 9th, Johnson issued an order declaring that all acts, proceedings of the political, military, and civil organizations which had been in a state of rebellion against the authority of the United States within the State of Virginia were null and void and that the various heads of the Federal government should proceed to reorganize civil authority in the state. He also appointed Francis H. Pierpoint governor with power to reëstablish civil government.

From May 29th to July 13th, he issued similar proclamations appointing provisional governors for North Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida, with authority and instructions to reorganize state governments. These governments had been partially reorganized when the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting slavery, had been submitted to them and ratified by them by the time Congress assembled. Mass meetings and conventions were held daily throughout the South, where the terms for readmission to the Union were discussed. These terms required them to renounce the Confederate debt and the right of secession, and to abolish slavery.

By December, 1865, conventions had met in all of the states where Johnson had appointed provisional governors. The ordinance of secession had been repealed or had been declared void; slavery had been abolished. All but two states had repudiated the Confederate debt, and all but two had adopted the Thirteenth Amendment. State governments had been organized and representatives and senators had been generally elected. In fact, all of the eleven seceding states save Texas were ready, or in the process of getting ready, to be restored to the privileges of citizenship and participation in the legislation of the land.

During all this time, every effort had been put forth to induce Johnson to call a special session of Congress. Of its own volition, that body could not assemble until the regular time of meeting. The President, however, refused. He thoroughly disagreed with such radicals as were led by Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, Ben Wade of Ohio, and Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. His own theory of reconstruction was in accord with Lincoln’s ideas. It had been approved by the Cabinet. Johnson’s firm conviction was that, for the good of everyone concerned, he must put it into execution and he felt he could carry it out more easily without interference from Congress. He had begun his administration with the expressed approval of Northern leaders on his policy toward the South. But to delegate to himself, as he did, the handling of matters of such vital national importance, however they might have been approved, incurred criticism that never abated and that soon developed into open hostility.

He reiterated the Monroe Doctrine in reference to the occupation of Mexico by the French forces under Maximilian and threw down the gauntlet by stating that “now that the Civil War is over, the attention of the administration will be directed, among other matters, to that objectionable invasion.” This statement, coming from a man whose forcefulness in his office was already making itself felt, was most disturbing news to the hostile foreign financiers who had invested fully $600,000,000 in Confederate bonds, to say nothing of the vast sums expended on Confederate ships, supplies, and Southern cotton. Many of Mr. Johnson’s friends believed that this foreign antagonism started the propaganda against him. At any rate, a cabal of slander and distrust was started that resulted in the most trying situation a president was ever called upon to face. Abroad and at home, a torrent of abuse broke out.

The Thirty-ninth Congress was chiefly Republican. Thirty-nine of the fifty senators were of this party, while the political disparity in the House of Representatives was even greater.

Trouble started at once, for both Houses began to form a policy regarding the Southern States without waiting for the customary presidential message which, upon its receipt, did not meet with the approval of Congress. To add to the tension, twenty-two senators elect and a much larger delegation of representatives elect, representing the seceded states, sought seats in the legislative body. Both Houses of Congress refused admission to the waiting applicants, in spite of the fact that their state governments had been reorganized and had approved the Thirteenth Amendment.

A joint committee was appointed to consider the terms of reconstruction of the Southern States, and until this committee should report, no action would be taken to seat the waiting legislators elect. Congress thus repudiated what Johnson had done toward reconstruction and made it clear that it regarded the restoration of seceded states to a full participation in government a matter for legislative and not executive decision.

The Republican house leader, Thaddeus Stevens, was bitter against the South. He declared it to be his conviction that the Confederate states had been out of the Union, insisting that they were conquered territory, entirely under the disposition of Congress—a theory diametrically opposed to that of Abraham Lincoln and Johnson. Stevens attacked President Johnson’s policy in vigorous terms, denouncing it from every standpoint. Secretary of State Seward sought to have the subject brought into amicable discussion, but his efforts to get a friendly or even unbiassed hearing for the administration policy not only failed utterly but aroused a bitter contest that was aggravated on both sides by the persistent lampooning of the Chief Executive by the foreign press.

Photo. by Brady

ANDREW JOHNSON’S FIRST TAILOR SHOP
Now a Museum in Greeneville, Tennessee

Photos. by Brady

THE GRAND REVIEW OF THE ARMIES OF THE NORTH
Washington, May 23rd, 24th, 1865. Reviewed by President Johnson and
Cabinet and General Grant

Party lines were drawn so tight that arbitration was out of the question. Senator Sumner then came forward with another suggestion, which held that, while no state could legally go out of the Union, yet, by its act of rebellion, it had lost its status as a state. This was often referred to as his State Suicide theory. He also insisted that under this plan it could be restored only by the united effort of its own loyal element and Congress. Under the leadership of Stevens and Sumner, Congress finally decided this momentous question, rejecting the theory of President Lincoln and also the radical view of Stevens. Republican leaders repudiated past professions and declarations upon which the North had so thoroughly agreed in the conduct of the war. Through the winter of 1866 and until the end of the session, antagonism to President Johnson continued to grow.

Acting in accordance with his theories, Johnson vetoed the bill providing for the continuance of the Freedman’s Bureau, the Civil Rights Bill, the import of which was to place the Negroes on the same footing with the whites. Congress passed both of these bills over his veto. Regarding Civil Rights, President Johnson said: “I yield to no one in attachment to that rule of general suffrage which distinguished our policy as a nation, but there is a limit wisely observed hitherto which makes the ballot a privilege and a trust, and which requires of some classes a time suitable for probation and preparation. To give indiscriminately to a new class wholly unprepared by previous habits and opportunities to perform the trust it demands is to degrade it and finally to destroy its power.”

Now the advisers of the President began to urge upon him the need of making more friends, so that he should have less opposition in the next Congress. As the summer of 1866 waned, they became more insistent on the importance of his making a tour through the principal cities of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. The occasion presented was the laying of the cornerstone of the Chicago monument to Stephen A. Douglas arranged for September 6th. The tour started on August 28th and was the most unusual trip ever made by a president. Mrs. Patterson, her husband, Senator Patterson, Secretaries Seward and Welles, Mrs. Welles, Postmaster General Randall, General Grant, Admiral Farragut, and a group of sixty people accompanied him. He had continual ovation for three weeks.

But his responses and speeches failed to please. They were considered campaign utterances, and campaigning was regarded as unbecoming to presidential etiquette. The criticisms did not deter him, however, for he never allowed himself to be governed by precedent when he considered principle involved. Throughout the tour his speeches were aggressive, even violent. He had much provocation, as the storm of impeachment proceedings was already brewing, and he read of himself frequently as a traitor who should be hanged.

The fight with Congress grew in bitterness. The President retaliated by taking the stump in an effort to defeat his traducers for reëlection. His resentment expressed by his manner, he declared, “I would ask you, with all the pains this Congress has taken to poison the minds of their constituency against me, what has this Congress done? Have they done anything to restore the Union? No! On the contrary, they have done everything to prevent it.”

“If my predecessor had lived,” the President stated in another address, “the vials of wrath from a mendacious press and subsidized gang of hirelings would have been poured upon him as upon me.”

Upon another occasion, he declared, “I have been fighting traitors South. They have been whipped and crushed and acknowledge their defeat. Now, I am fighting traitors North. Some talk about traitors in the South—when they have not the courage to go away from home and fight, but remain cowardly at home, speculating and committing frauds in the government.”

The President vetoed all of the Reconstruction acts but they were passed over his vetoes. The Tenure of Office Act was passed March 2d, taking away from the Executive the power of removal of all officers whose nomination required confirmation by the Senate.[1] The President might suspend such an officer during the recess of the Senate, but must within twenty days after that body reassembled present his reasons therefor. If the Senate deemed them insufficient, the officer at once resumed his place. On March 2, 1867, also through a rider attached to an Appropriation bill, the President was forbidden to give any orders to the army save through the general of the army, General Grant, or to order him from Washington save with the consent of the Senate.

[1] This Act was repealed in 1887.

President Johnson stoutly maintained that all of these acts were unconstitutional. Supplementary Reconstruction acts set aside the instructions of the President issued to the military governors, notwithstanding the fact that all of the Cabinet had endorsed them, with the exception of Stanton.

From the beginning of President Johnson’s efforts to readmit the seceded states, Secretary Stanton’s contempt for his chief, whom he ridiculed as the “Tailor from Tennessee, the Knight of the Shears and Goose,” developed into open hostility, and he had aligned himself with the opponents of Johnson in Congress. The President considered his presence in his Cabinet out of place and undesirable. On August 5, 1867, he sent the following communication to Secretary Stanton:

Sir:

Public considerations of a high character constrain me to say that your resignation as Secretary of War will be accepted.

(Signed) Andrew Johnson.

Mr. Stanton replied the same day as follows:

War Department,
Washington, Aug. 5, 1867.

Sir:

Your note of this day has been received, stating that public considerations of a high character constrain you to say that my resignation as Secretary of War will be accepted.

In reply, I have the honour to say that public considerations of a high character, which alone have induced me to continue as the head of this Department, constrain me not to resign the office of Secretary of War before the next meeting of Congress.

Very respectfully yours,
(Signed) Edwin M. Stanton.

A week later, President Johnson sent the following letter to Secretary Stanton:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 12, 1867.

Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War.

Sir:

By virtue of the power and authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and laws of the United States, you are, hereby, suspended from office as Secretary of War, and will cease to exercise any and all functions pertaining to the same.

You will, at once, transfer to General Ulysses S. Grant, who has, this day, been authorized and empowered to act as Secretary of War, ad interim, all records, books, papers, and other public property now in your custody and charge.

In his reply, Secretary Stanton said in part:

Under a sense of public duty, I am compelled to deny your right under the Constitution and laws of the United States, without the advice and consent of the Senate and without legal cause, to suspend me from office as Secretary of War, or the exercise of any or all functions pertaining to the same, or without such advice and consent to compel me to transfer to any person the records, books, papers, and public property in my custody as Secretary.

But inasmuch as the general commanding the armies of the United States has been appointed Secretary, ad interim, and has notified me that he has accepted the appointment, I have no alternative but to submit, under protest, to superior force.

When Congress convened, the Senate voted the reason for suspension insufficient. The President hoped that General Grant would contest the decision, but the latter was wholly guided by the Senate and retired without even notifying his chief of his intention. Stanton resumed charge at once.

Johnson let the matter rest until February 21, 1863, when he dismissed Stanton and appointed General B. Lorenzo Thomas, Adjutant General of the Army, Secretary, ad interim. General Thomas, mild and courteous, presented his papers and was literally ejected from Stanton’s office. Stanton barricaded himself in and sent distress calls to his Senator friends at the Capitol. This produced an executive session of the Senate which lasted many hours. Stanton was ordered to hang on to his job, Sumner sending him one cryptic word, “stick,” and the impeachment bubble, so long threatening, burst.

President Johnson’s actions in ordering Secretary Stanton’s removal in spite of the Tenure of Office Act was exactly what was wanted by his opponents in Congress, led in the House by Stevens and in the Senate by Sumner. These vigorous leaders, angered by President Johnson’s utter ignoring of their policies, rushed a resolution through the House declaring that, “Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, be impeached of high crimes and misdemeanours.”

The managers for the House were Thaddeus Stevens, Pennsylvania; George S. Boutwell, Massachusetts; James F. Wilson, Ohio; Benjamin F. Butler, Massachusetts; George F. Miller, Pennsylvania; John A. Bingham, Pennsylvania; William Lawrence, Ohio; William Williams, Pennsylvania; and John A. Logan, Illinois. They filed into the Senate Chamber and formally read their charges against the President, who, when his presence was called for, responded by proxy.

The impeachment court organized March 5th; the trial began on March 13th. The eleven articles of offense were boiled down to five:

1. That the President had violated the Tenure of Office Act by dismissing Stanton.

2. That he had violated the Anti-conspiracy Act.

3. That he had declared laws unconstitutional.

4. That he had criticized and ridiculed Congress.

5. That he had attempted to prevent the execution of various acts of Congress.

The papers were served on President Johnson. He appeared with Henry Stanbury, his Attorney General, who had resigned from that office to act as his counsel. Through his counsel he asked that he be given thirty days to prepare a reply to the charges. His request was curtly refused, and the demand was made that the case proceed at once, ten days being finally permitted him in which to prepare his defense. The trial lasted over the month, ninety witnesses being heard. When this sensational jury voted, thirty-five declared the President guilty and nineteen voted not guilty. Immediately after the announcement by Chief Justice that two thirds of the Senators had not voted him guilty, President Johnson was acquitted.

Analyzed and stripped of all superfluous matter, the difficulty revealed itself strictly as a contest between the executive and the legislative branches of the government. Naturally, during the war, the executive branch had eclipsed the other two. After the death of President Lincoln, powerful leaders in the two houses clamoured for the subordination of the executive branch to the legislative. Mr. Johnson’s firm fight for the independence of the Executive was in reality the cause of his unpopularity. Had he been impeached, undoubtedly succeeding presidents would have found their position stripped of many of its prerogatives and reduced to that of being mere figureheads.

This bare escape, though by a single vote, was, nevertheless, a victory. It kept the nation from having still another cataclysm over the selection of a successor to the President. But, for the balance of his term, President Johnson was entirely ignored by Congress, or at least the part that had opposed him so vigorously. It passed bills over his veto with apparent delight, and he went out of office despised and ignored by such of its members as had fought him all through his term.

Despite all of the discord and agitation that prevailed during Johnson’s administration, much important legislation was accomplished. One of the most noteworthy acts was the purchase of Alaska, effected for $7,200,000, in 1867, under the negotiations of Secretary Seward, who was greatly abused for having bought icefields and polar bears.

The laying of the Atlantic cable was another achievement. On December 25, 1868, President Johnson issued his last Amnesty proclamation. This was universal, and under it Jefferson Davis was released and his case dismissed, as was also that of John Surratt.

The last reception was so largely attended as to assume the form of an ovation. Thousands passed through the White House to felicitate the Chief Executive upon the outcome of the impeachment proceedings. In this farewell, his policy was commended and the social rêgime highly praised. His attitude toward receiving gifts was applauded.

The only record of his acceptance of any gift of value was that of the tea or coffee set presented to him in the opening days of his administration, a unique silver, brass, and porcelain facsimile of a railroad locomotive and tender which had been especially designed as a gift to Jefferson Davis and owned by him previously to the evacuation of Richmond. It had been purchased at auction and was sent to President Johnson by Mr. A. Barratti. The boiler received the tea or coffee and made and then discharged it through a spigot, the miniature steam whistle indicating when the beverage was ready. The tender carried the sugar and glasses and container for the cognac. Its sides carried racks for cigars, and a tiny secret music box, when set, played eight popular airs. Upon the side of the locomotive, “President Jefferson Davis” was emblazoned. In front, where the cow catcher belonged, the Confederate banner and battle flag, entwined with the ensign of France, had been fashioned into a charming design.

With the advent of Inauguration Day, the Johnson family left the White House with relief. The retiring President took his departure from the scenes of his great trial without regret. His trip to Greeneville was a continuous ovation, with praise and applause upon every hand. It seemed as though the crowds sought to console him for the affronts he had suffered. But the dream of his life—the election to the Presidency as his party’s choice—was denied him.

Johnson’s energy and dominant will would not let him retire to idleness. Not only did he still continue to study diction, but he began another congressional race. He was defeated successively for both the House and the Senate. He ran again for the Senate as an independent and was elected, taking his seat March 5, 1875, at a special session called by President Grant, and was the most interesting member of that body. At the close of the special session, he returned to his home. On July 29, 1875, he suffered a stroke of paralysis, and on the 31st he died at the home of his daughter Mrs. Stover, where he was visiting for a few days.