White House gossip

by Edna M. Colman

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.”