Even when what he feared and fought against was become overt and bloody war, when his own life was vengefully sought, when his own friends were hunted down, and either murdered without mercy or dragged mercilessly away to fight an alien battle with a sword behind and cannon in front, even then he finds great difficulty in changing his point of view. He speaks no more of wrongs which the South has suffered; but it is because his feeling of that is overwhelmed by his sense of the horrible wrong it is committing. He declares, at length, that, if Slavery or the Union must go down, he will stand by the Union; but he evidently accepts the alternative with reluctance, though with resolution. When it becomes apparent that this possible alternative is indeed actual, he is true to his pledge; but it is a new charge in his mind against the Secessionists, that they have forced him to such election. They will have it so, he says, and since they will have it so, be it so; the necessity is not of his making; the retribution is real, but it is deserved. His final proclamation of freedom in Tennessee, in advance of executive warrant, was an intrepid and memorable act, worthy of his resolute spirit,—but was an act rather directed against the Rebels than prompted by sympathy with the slaves. His career in Tennessee was already far advanced before he fairly held forth his hand to the negroes as men, with the rights and interests of human beings; and it needed all the roused passion of his soul, all the touching trust of this people in him as their "Moses," all his intensity of recoil from treason, and all his sense of personal outrage, to nerve him for that triumph over his traditional prejudices.
The impression of Andrew Johnson which this book gives us is that of a deep, powerful, impassioned nature, inflexible, but inflexible rather by definite determination of character and fixity of conviction than by obstinacy of will. A man of large ability, he is, so to speak, deeply immersed in his own past,—limited by the bonds of his earnest, but, until lately, narrow experience. His power to change his point of view upon theoretical considerations is small, for he does little but expand his experience into theory. Facts alone can instruct him; and if these run counter to his intellectual predilection, they must be impressive to be effectual. He follows the law of his mind in proceeding to make an "experiment" in dealing with the South, and in making it as nearly as possible in accordance with the ancient customs of his thought. There is danger, we think, that he will look at facts too much with a traditional eye; but there is no danger that he will not act upon them with vigor, courage, and honest patriotism so far as he shall see them in their true light.
It should be said, that, to learn the latest modifications of his opinions, the reader must consult the Introduction.