Intensely in love with himself, egotistical, without dignity, tyrannical, ungrateful, and fond of flattery, Mr. Johnson was entirely unprepared to successfully resist the overtures of the slaveholding aristocracy, by whom he had so long wished to be recognized. It was some weeks after the death of the good President, that a committee of these Southerners visited the White House. They found Mr. Johnson alone; for they had asked for an audience, which had been readily granted. Humbly they came, the lords of the lash, the men who, five years before, would not have shaken hands with him with a pair of tongs ten feet long. Many of them the President had seen on former occasions: all of them he knew by reputation. As they stood before him, he viewed them from head to feet, and felt an inward triumph. He could scarcely realize the fact, and asked himself, “Is it possible? have I my old enemies before me, seeking favors?” Yes: it was so; and they had no wish to conceal the fact. The chairman of the committee, a man of years, one whose very look showed that he was not without influence among those who knew him, addressing the Chief Magistrate, said, “Mr. President, we come as a committee to represent to you the condition of the South, and its wants. We fear that your Excellency has had things misrepresented to you by the Radicals; and knowing you to be a man of justice, a statesman of unsullied reputation, one who to-day occupies the proudest position of any man in the world, we come to lay our wants before you. We have, in the past, been your political opponents. In the future, we shall be your friends; because we now see that you were right, and we were wrong. We ask, nay, we beg you to permit us to reconstruct the Southern States. Our people, South, are loyal to a man, and wish to return at once to their relations in the General Government. We look upon you, Mr. President, as the embodiment of the truly chivalrous Southerner,—one who, born and bred in the South, understands her people: to you we appeal for justice; for we are sure that your impulses are pure. Your future, Mr. President, is to be a brilliant one. At the next presidential election, the South will be a unit for the man who saves her from the hands of these Yankees, who now, under the protection of the Freedman’s Bureau, are making themselves rich. We shall stand by the man that saves us; and you are that man. Your genius, your sagacity, and your unequalled statesmanship, mark you out as the father of his country. Without casting a single ungenerous reflection upon the great name of George Washington, allow me to say what I am sure the rest of the delegation will join me in, and that is, that, a hundred years to come, the name of Andrew Johnson will be the brightest in American history.” Several times during the delivery of the above speech, the President was seen to wipe his eyes, for he was indeed moved to tears. At its conclusion, he said, “Gentlemen, your chairman has perfectly overwhelmed me. I was not, I confess, prepared for these kind words, this cordial support, of the people of the South. Your professions of loyalty, which I feel to be genuine, and your promises of future aid, unman me. I thought you were my enemies, and it is to enemies that I love to give battle. As to my friends, they can always govern me. I will lay your case before the cabinet.”—“We do not appeal to your cabinet,” continued the chairman, “it is to you, Mr. President, that we come. Were you a common man, we should expect you to ask advice of your cabinet; but we regard you as master, aud your secretaries as your servants. You are capable of acting without consulting them: we think you the Andrew Jackson of to-day. Presidents, sir, are regarded as mere tools. We hope you, like Jackson, will prove an exception. We, the people of the South, are willing to let you do precisely as you please; and still we will support you. We are proud to acknowledge you as our leader. All we ask is, that we shall be permitted to organize our State Governments, elect our senators and representatives, and return at once into the Union; and this, Mr. President, lies entirely with you, unless you acknowledge yourself to be in leading-strings, which we know is not so; for Andrew Johnson can never play second fiddle to men or parties.” These last remarks affected Mr. Johnson very much, which he in vain attempted to conceal. “Gentlemen,” replied the President, “I confess that your chairman, has, in his remarks, made an impression on my mind that I little dreamed of when you entered. I admit that I am not pleased with the manner in which the Radicals are acting.”—“Allow me,” said the chairman, interrupting the President, “to say a word or two that I had forgotten.” “Proceed,” said the Chief Magistrate. “You are not appreciated,” continued the chairman, “by the Radicals. They speak of you sneeringly as the ‘accidental President,’ just as if you were not the choice of the people. The people of the North would never elect you again. No man, except Mr. Lincoln, has ever been elected a second time to the presidency, from the free States. They have so many peddling politicians, like so many hungry wolves, seeking office, that they are always crying, ‘Rotation, rotation.’ But, with us of the South, it is different. When we find a man with genius, talent, a statesman, we hold on to him, and keep him in office. You, Mr. President, can carry all the Southern, and enough of the Northern States to elect you to another term.”—“Yes,” responded one of the committee, “to two terms more.” Mr. Johnson, with suppressed emotion, said, “I will at once lay down a policy, which, I think, will satisfy the entire people of the South; but, but—I said that treason should be made odious, and traitors should be punished: what can I do so as not to stultify myself?”
“I see it as clear as day, Mr. President,” said the chairman. “You have already made treason odious by those eloquent speeches which you have delivered at various times on the Rebellion; and now you can punish traitors by giving them office. St. Paul said, ‘If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.’ Now, many of the Southerners are your old enemies; and they are hungry for office, and thirst for the good liquor they used to get in the congressional saloons.”
“I am satisfied,” said the President, “that I can restore the Southern States to their relations to the Union, and let all who held office before the war, resume their positions again.—“Yes,” remarked a member of the committee; “and you can build up a new party of your own, that shall take the place of the Democratic party, which is already dead.”—“Very true,” replied the President, “there is both room and need of another political party. You may rest assured, gentlemen, that you will be re-instated in your former positions.” The committee withdrew. “My policy” was commenced. The Republicans did not like it; and a committee was sent to the White House, composed of some of the leading men of the North, the chairman of which was a man some six feet in height, stout, and well made; features coarse; full head of hair, touched with the frost of over fifty winters; dressed in a gray suit, light felt hat. The committee, on entering, found the President seated, with his feet under the table. He did not rise to welcome the delegation, but seemed to push his feet still farther under the table, for fear that they might think he was going to rise. The chairman, whom I have already described, said in a rather strong voice, “Mr. President, we have called to ask you to use your official power to protect the Union men of the South, white and black, from the murderous feeling of the rebels.
“As faithful friends, and supporters of your Administration, we most respectfully petition you to suspend for the present your policy towards the rebel States. We should not present this prayer if we were not painfully convinced that, thus far, it has failed to obtain any reasonable guarantees for that security in the future which is essential to peace and reconciliation. To our minds, it abandons the freedmen to the control of their ancient masters, and leaves the national debt exposed to repudiation by returning rebels. The Declaration of Independence asserts the equality of all men, and that rightful government can be founded only on the consent of the governed. We see small chance of peace unless these great principles are practically established. Without this, the house will continue divided against itself.”
“Gentlemen,” replied the President, “I will take your request into consideration, and give it that attention that it demands.” The committee left, satisfied that Mr. Johnson was a changed man. Soon after, the President was called upon by another delegation, a committee of colored men, consisting of Frederick Douglass, William Whipper, George T. Downing, and L. H. Douglass. The negro race was singularly fortunate in having these gentlemen to represent them; for they are not only amongst the ablest of their class, but are men of culture, and all of them writers and speakers of distinguished, ability. The delegation, on entering, found the President seated, with his feet under the table, and his hands in his breeches pockets, and looking a little sour. Mr. Downing, the delegate from New England, first addressed the Chief Magistrate; and his finely chosen-words, and well-rounded periods, no doubt made the President not a lit-, tie uneasy, for he looked daggers at the speaker. The reflection of Downing’s highly cultivated mind, as seen through his admirable address, doubtless reminded the President of his own inferiority, and made him still more petulant; for, when he replied to the delegate, he said,—
“I am free to say to you that I do not like to be arraigned by some who can get up handsomely-rounded periods, and deal in rhetoric, and talk about abstract ideas of liberty, who never perilled life, liberty, or property. This kind of theoretical, hollow, unpractical friendship, amounts to very little.”
After Downing, came the strong words of Douglass. Of this speaker, the President had heard much, and appeared to eye him from head to feet; took his hands out of his pockets; and rested his elbows upon the table. Douglass, no doubt, reminded him of the well-dressed free negro, who, nearly forty years before, had pushed him into the ditch; and this recollection brought up, also, that hateful tailor’s bench, and, still back of that, his low origin.
Mr. Douglass also reminded the President of his promise to be the negro’s Moses. This last remark was cruel in the speaker, for it carried Mr. Johnson back to the days when he was carrying out that deceptive policy by which he secured the nomination on the ticket with Mr. Lincoln; and he appeared much irritated at the remark. His whole reply to the delegation was weak, unfair, and without the slightest atom of logic. Mr. Downing addressed the President as follows:—
“We present ourselves to your Excellency to make known, with pleasure, the respect which we are glad to cherish for you,—a respect which is your due as our Chief Magistrate. It is our desire that you should know that we come, feeling that we are friends meeting friends. We may, however, have manifested our friendship by not coming to further tax your already much-burdened and valuable time; but we have another object in calling. We are in a passage to equality before the law. God hath made it by opening a Red Sea. We would have your assistance through the same. We come to you in the name of the United States, and are delegated to come by some who have unjustly worn iron manacles on their bodies; by some whose minds have been manacled by class legislation in States called free. The colored people of the States of Illinois, Wisconsin, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, the New-England States, and the District of Columbia, have specially delegated us to come. Our coming is a marked circumstance. We are not satisfied with an amendment prohibiting slavery; but we wish that amendment enforced with appropriate legislation. This is our desire. We ask for it intelligently, with the knowledge and conviction that the fathers of the Revolution intended freedom for every American; that they should be protected in their rights as citizens, and be equal before the law. We are Americans,—native-born Americans. We are citizens. We are glad to have it known to the world that we bear no doubtful record on this point. On this fact, and with confidence in the triumph of justice, we base our hope. We see no recognition of color or race in the organic law of the land. It knows no privileged class, and therefore we cherish the hope that we may be fully enfranchised, not only here in this district, but throughout the land. We respectfully submit, that rendering any thing less than this will be rendering to us less than our just due; that granting any thing less than our full rights will be a disregard of our just rights,—of due respect for our feelings. If the powers that be do so, it will be used as a license, as it were, or an apology, for any community or individual, so disposed, to outrage our rights and feelings. It has been shown in the present war that the Government may justly reach its strong arm into States, and demand from them—from those who owe it—their allegiance, assistance, and support. May it not reach out a like arm to secure and protect its subjects upon whom it has a claim?”
Following Mr. Downing, Mr. Frederick Douglass advanced, and addressed the President, saying,—