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Library 
 
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 versity of NortK Carolina 
 
 lis book was presented by the family 
 of the late 
 
 KEMP PLUMMER BATTLE, '49 
 
 ent of the University of North (^Jarolina 
 from 1876 to 1890 
 
 , CT UlaU 
 
UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 00032193411 
 
 This book must not 
 be token from the 
 Library building. 
 
 IHIS IITLE His BEEN MICROFILMED 
 
 Form No. 471 
 
ENGitwiXO * p^rNTI^o. 
 
MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER 
 
 Andrew Johnson, 
 
 (A SENATOR FROM TENNESSEE,) 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE 
 
 Senate and House of Repeesentatives, 
 
 January 12, 1876. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF CONGRESS. 
 
 FORTY-FOURTH CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION. 
 1876. 
 
PROCEEDINGS 
 
 SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
ADDRESSES. 
 
 Addkess of Mr. Cooper, of Tennessee. 
 
 Mr. President, upon me devolves the sad duty of form- 
 ally announcing to the Senate the death of Hon. Andrew 
 Johnson, late a Senator from the State of Tennessee. 
 
 On the 31st day of July, 1875, near his mountain home 
 in East Tennessee, surrounded by family and friends, he 
 passed from earth to meet his reward. The event was a 
 shock to the people of the State who had so recently hon- 
 ored him by an election through their representatives to a 
 seat in this body; it w^as a shock to the nation, whose 
 highest offices lie had filled. 
 
 The conflicts of party in which lie freely mingled are 
 too recent not to have left deep scars; but throughout 
 our mighty Republic everywhere there were those who 
 delighted to do him honor. The greater part of his life was 
 passed in the public service; much of that time in the 
 councils of the nation; and having almost reached his 
 three-score years and ten, the scnptural limit of human 
 life, he has passed the portals of the tomb, been claimed 
 by the insatiate archer, his spirit summoned to God who 
 gave it, and his body consigned to the place appointed for 
 the dead. 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. COOPER ON THE 
 
 He will no more go in and out before us. No more 
 will his voice be heard in this Chamber. No more will 
 expectant friends crowd these galleries, to hang upon liis 
 words and catch the inspiration which he was accustomed 
 to impart to them by the fervor of his utterances. Nor 
 will the Senate again be edified or instructed by his expo- 
 sition of the Constitution, or the enunciation of his opin- 
 ions, lucid and mature as they always were. Life is ended. 
 The mortal has put on immortality, and what he has accom- 
 plished for the good of mankind alone remains to us of 
 this tribune of the people. 
 
 Senators, how frequent of late have been these visits of 
 death to this Chamber! Since our separation in March 
 last, once and again, and yet again, has he accomplished 
 his mission, and three of our associates been called from 
 our assemblies here to meet the realities of the future and 
 eternal life. The genial smile and friendly greeting of our 
 honored and revered friend, the late Vice-President, will 
 no more be seen and felt by us. His generous heart has 
 ceased to be affected by earthly woes. 
 
 Nor shall we again be permitted to listen to the words 
 of wisdom and instruction with which the late Senator 
 from Connecticut [Mr. Ferry] was accustomed to edify 
 and enlighten the Senate. He, too, has been called to 
 a higher sphere and a nobler work. Well may we exclaim, 
 in the language of the righteous man of Uz, "Have 
 pity upon me, ye my friends; for the hand of God hath 
 touched me." 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 7 
 
 Few men have been more prominent or conininnded to 
 a greater extent the attention of the people than Mr. 
 Johnson. 
 
 After his entrance upon pubhc Hfe his career was marked 
 by Avarm friendships and fierce antagonisms. He courted 
 controversy and shrank not when the contest came. In 
 this and the other House he was reckoned among- those who 
 contended for the mastery. He was often in the fiercest 
 of the conflict, and was not wanting in success. During 
 his terms of service he participated in most of the debates 
 which took place upon the questions then agitated in Con- 
 gress. He also engaged as a public speaker before the 
 people in all the canvasses which were waged after he be- 
 came a public man. Few speakers excelled him in depth 
 of conviction or in earnestness of utterance. He exer- 
 cised in an eminent degree the faculty of attracting the 
 attention of his hearers and retaining it with unflagging 
 interest to the end. Many of his speeches have been pre- 
 served, but will fail to give to those who may read them 
 in the future an adequate idea of their power upon those 
 who heard them. 
 
 His state papers while President will be the most lasting 
 monument of his claim to greatness as a statesman. Many 
 of them are productions which have seldom, if ever, been 
 excelled. 
 
 But this is neither a suitable nor proper occasion to pass 
 them in review, or to discuss their merits, or to compare 
 them with the productions of others, or to speak of the 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. COOPER ON THE 
 
 principles advocated. All this belongs to those who may 
 come after us, to those who will write history, and who 
 will assign each contestant for the world's honor his proper 
 niche in the temple of fame. 
 
 Mr. Johnson was conspicuous in every position in which 
 he was placed. Whether in the halls of legislation or in 
 the executive departments of government he commanded 
 attention. Whether as governor, directing the affairs of a 
 single State, or in the presidential chair, superintending 
 the affairs of this great nation, the mass of his countrymen 
 award him the highest praise, and insist that his conduct 
 will bear favorable comparison with the purest and best of 
 those who preceded him in office. 
 
 His aim in the discharge of the high duties devolving 
 upon him in his exalted office, so far as we can know it 
 from official action, was to know the Constitution and to 
 follow it. A firm believer himself in the capacity of man 
 for self-government, and that our form of government 
 furnished the best model that has ever been devised for 
 proving the truth of the theory, he sought earnestly to 
 carry into j^ractice its every precept. In his opinion the 
 people may always be trusted to do right. They will 
 never do wrong intentionally. And if they do err, it will be 
 through the influence of trusted leaders, and but momenta- 
 rily ; 'Hlieir second sober thought" will always bring them 
 back to the path of safety, rectitude, and progress. To 
 them he confidently looked for the remedy of any fault 
 which might be developed in the working of our system 
 
LIFE AND CnARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 
 
 of g-ovornment. lie trusted the people implicitly, and 
 never doubted that they would see and })revent any suh- 
 version of their liberties or restraint of their rights and 
 privileges. 
 
 He was indeed a tribune of the people. In his care 
 their dearest rights and interests were secure, so far as 
 intentional injury upon his part was concerned. He was 
 one of the people, felt for them, sympathized with them, 
 and, they believed, was ready to do all in his power for 
 their political advancement. Hence the devotion of the 
 masses for him. The theater of his power and greatness 
 was before the masses. He swayed them by the earnest- 
 ness of his eloquence and the conviction which he aroused 
 in them of the sincerity of his beliefs and purposes. Few 
 men have shown greater power in arousing the people and 
 attaching them to his fortunes than did Mr. Johnson. 
 The secret lay in his own firm convictions and his un- 
 wavering belief in the patriotism, good sense, and integ- 
 rity of the masses, that they desired to do right and would 
 do so in the end, together with the faculty, which he pos- 
 sessed in an eminent degree, of impressing the truthful- 
 ness of these convictions upon his hearers. But why 
 should I dwell upon that which is so familiar to all who 
 knew him; and who is there to whom he was unknown? 
 
 His public life is known to all the people. The most 
 trying scenes in it are of too recent occuiTence and too 
 important in their eff'ects upon the nation to be easily for- 
 gotten. I will not enter upon the vain task of attempting 
 
10 ADDRESS OF MR. COOPER ON THE 
 
 to add anything to his fame. In this place, where he was 
 SO well known, amid those many of whom were actors in 
 the most important event of his eventful life, why portray 
 the past! Why dwell upon his merit, which will now be 
 so readily admitted! 
 
 But he will no more be seen among us. He has been 
 called to meet the Judge of all the earth. The places 
 which knew him here will know him no more forever. 
 Another has been called to fill his vacant chair and charged 
 with the performance of the duties which so recently 
 devolved upon him. "Alas, how soon we are forgotten," 
 is a truth felt by all who have lived to man's estate. Yet 
 there are some the memory of whose deeds will long sur- 
 vive and whose names the world will not willingly forget. 
 May we not hope that our lamented colleague will be one 
 in this roll of honor 1 Death has purified his fame. His 
 faults will be forgotten and his virtues cherished. In this 
 spirit I lay my wreath upon his tomb. 
 
 Mr. President, I offer for present consideration the fol- 
 lowing resolutions: 
 
 Hesolved, That the Senate has received with profound sorrow the aunonuce- 
 uient of the death of Hou. Andkew Johnson, late a Senator of the United States 
 from the State of Tennessee. 
 
 Resolved, That as a mark of respect for the memory of Mr. Johnson, the 
 members of the Senate will go into mourning by wearing crape upon the left 
 arm for thirty days. 
 
 Ecsohed, That, as an additional mark of respect for the memory of Mr. John- 
 son, the Seuate do now adjourn. 
 
 Ordered, That the Secretary communicate these resolutions to the House of 
 Representatives. 
 
LIFE AND CIIAKAOTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 11 
 
 Address of Mr. Morton, of Indiana. 
 
 Mr. President, as a member of this body, in the dis- 
 charge of what I regarded as a high official duty, I voted 
 for tlie impeachment of Andrew Johnson. I beheved he 
 had violated tlie law; and for that vote I have no excuse 
 or apology to offer; but, sir, I would let the memory of 
 what I regarded as his faults be buried witli him, and 
 choose to remember only his virtues and his services to 
 his country. I would exercise for him the same charity 
 that I would ask to have extended to myself in the inevi- 
 table hour. 
 
 Mr. Johnson was a man of remarkable traits of char- 
 acter. He was distinguished for his tenacity of purpose, 
 perhaps for his impatience of opposition. He was com- 
 bative in his temperament; and that quality of his mind, 
 I have no doubt, led him to do many of those things to 
 which objection was taken. He was born in the humble 
 walks of life; he lived in poverty, and had no advantages 
 of early education. I have heard it said that his wife 
 taught liim to read. But he was distinguished for his 
 thirst for knowledge and for an honorable ambition, and 
 he went up step by step; first, holding an office in the 
 town in which he lived, and afterward in the Legislature 
 of Tennessee ; then a member of the other House of Con- 
 
12 ADDRESS OF MR. MORTON ON THE 
 
 gress, and then a member of this body. In every position 
 hi Hfe he showed himself to be a man of abihty and of 
 courage, and I beheve it is proper to say of Andrew 
 Johnson that his honesty has never been suspected; the 
 smell of corruption was never upon his garments. 
 
 As a member of this body, in 1858, he introduced a bill 
 granting a homestead of one hundred and sixty acres of 
 land to every actual settler. He was far in advance of the 
 statesmen of his own section, and even those of the North, 
 upon that question. It was a measure that was not pop- 
 ular in the South, for reasons which we can all understand, 
 but which it is not necessary to advert to now. That 
 measure did not become a law then, though it did after- 
 ward ; but Mr. Johnson was entitled to none the less credit 
 for his early and bold advocacy of it. The estabhshment 
 of the homestead was almost an era in tlie history of this 
 country. It was one of the greatest blessings that was 
 ^ver conferred by a single act of Congress. 
 
 When the storm of secession swept over the South and 
 through this Hall, Andrew Johnson was the only mem- 
 ber of Congress from the Soutli in either House, so far as 
 I remember, who resisted that wave and stood faitlifully 
 to the Union. In introducing this matter, of course I 
 desire to arouse no partisan feeling here, but simply to do 
 justice to his history. It cost something to be a Union 
 man in the South. These Southern Senators can testify 
 to that. It required courage and daring that were not 
 required to take a similar position in the North. Mr. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 13 
 
 Johnson understood full well that it would cost him the 
 friendship of his life-long neighbors in Tennessee; that it 
 would, at least for a time, make him an outcast from their 
 society; that he might even become an exile from the 
 State in which he had lived and which he had so lono" and 
 so ably served; but he stood in this Chamber and declared 
 his devotion to the Union, turned his back upon those 
 seductive influences to go with the South in that terrible 
 controversy, defied their threats, hurled back with indig- 
 nation the epithets that had been launched upon him. 
 He made a speech here on the 5th and 6tli days of Feb- 
 ruary, 1861, which I have taken the pains to hunt up. I 
 remember the effect of those words as they rang through 
 the North. In the course of that speech Mr. Johnson 
 said: 
 
 Sir, I intend to stand by that flag, and by the Union of which it is the emblem. 
 I agree with Mr. A. H. Stephens, of Georgia, " that this Government of our 
 fathers, with all its defects, comes nearer the objects of all good governments 
 than any other on the face of the earth." 
 
 And again he said: 
 
 I have been told, and I have heard it repeated, that this Union is gone. It 
 has been said in this Chamber that it is in the cold sweat of death ; that, in fact, 
 it is really dead, and merely lying in state waiting for the funeral obsequies to 
 be performed. If this be so, and the war that has been made upon me in conse- 
 quence of advocating the Constitution and the Union is to result in my overthrow 
 and in my destruction, and that flag, that glorious flag, the emblem of the Union, 
 which was borne by Washington through a seven years' struggle, shall be struck 
 from the Capitol and trailed in the dust; when this Union is interred, I want no 
 more honorable winding-sheet than that brave old flag, and no more glorious 
 grave than to be interred in the tomb of the Union. 
 
 Those were brave words to be uttered by Andrew 
 Johnson under the circumstances. I admired and hon- 
 ored him at the time ; I do so now, and ever shall. He 
 
14 ADDRESS OF MR. MORTON ON THE 
 
 was a brave man, and he encountered risks and subjected 
 himself to dangers which we of the North scarcely knew 
 anything about. Perhaps no man in Congress exerted the 
 same influence on the public sentiment of the North at 
 the beginning of the war as Andrew Johnson. 
 
 Afterward, in the spring of 1862, I think it was in 
 March, Mr. Lincoln appointed him military governor of 
 the State of Tennessee. He went there at the imminent 
 risk of his life. He was subjected to violence, I think at 
 Lynchburgh, on the road ; and when he arrived at Nash- 
 ville he was threatened with assassination on the streets 
 and in public assemblies ; but he went on the streets ; he 
 defied those dangers ; he went into public assemblies, and 
 on one occasion went into a public meeting, drew his pis- 
 tol, laid it on the desk before him, and said, '' I have been 
 told that I should be assassinated if I came here. If that 
 is to be done, then it is the first business in order, and let 
 that be attended to." No attempt having been made, he 
 said: ''I conclude the danger has passed by;" and then 
 he proceeded to make his speech. His conduct as mili- 
 tary governor was distinguished for courage, for devotion 
 to the interests of the Union ; and the admiration created 
 by his conduct throughout the North led to his nomina- 
 tion for Vice-President upon the republican ticket in 1864. 
 He was elected, and afterward became President of the 
 United States by the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 We were personal friends. The first time I ever met 
 Mr. Johnson was in this Chamber. I was on a casual visit 
 
LIFE AND CnARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 15 
 
 here, and heard the debate in which Mr. Breckinridge 
 made his final speech before leaving to join the confeder- 
 ate army. I was introduced to Mr. Johnson then, and 
 from that time we were friends. After I had voted for 
 his impeachment, and met him accidentally, he wore the 
 same kindly smile as in times before, and offered me liis 
 hand. I thought it showed nobility of soul. There were 
 not many men who could have done that. 
 
 He has gone ! We are all soon to follow him. If he 
 had his faults, let them be buried with him. Let us 
 remember the great services he rendered to his country. 
 He was faithful to his country in a time of great trial, 
 and let that fidelity and those great services always be 
 remembered. 
 
16 ADDRESS OF MR. M'CREERY ON THE 
 
 Address of Mr. McCreery, of Kentucky. 
 
 Mr. President, the Senator of Indiana [Mr. Morton] 
 introduced his remarks by a reference to the impeachment 
 trial. I will say that I had the honor to be one of the 
 Senators who voted for acquittal on that occasion. Like 
 him, I have no apologies to make for that vote. 
 
 Death has stricken a great name from the roll of the 
 Senate. The providence of God is over us, and we bow 
 reverently to the dispensation, even though the bonds of 
 brotherhood are broken. The mortal remains of Andrew 
 Johnson lie buried under the soil of Tennessee. His 
 record as a statesman is finished. His career, with its 
 toils, its struggles, and its anxieties, is completed. We 
 turn for a few moments from the discharge of our ordi- 
 nary duties to make this last sad offering to the memory 
 of that extraordinary man, and his name and his fame are 
 ready for history. He was plain and simple in his man- 
 ners and tastes, and if it were possible for him to exert a 
 controlling: influence over the solemn exercises of this 
 hour, he would prefer the words of soberness and truth 
 to the exaggeration and extravagance of eulogy. In the 
 walks of private life he was considered a good citizen. 
 He spoke the truth, paid his taxes, settled his just debts; 
 he was an honest man. So well was he established in 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 17 
 
 that recrard, that where he was best known his bitterest 
 enemy would resent even an insinuation that he had been 
 guilty of duplicity, falsehood, or fraud in any of his busi- 
 ness transactions. Senator Brownlow has never been 
 conspicuous for moderation in controversy, neither has he 
 been extravagant, but, on the contrary, exceedingly econ- 
 omical and frugal, in the use of compliment toward his 
 adversaries; but that Senator, in the long years of their 
 fierce antagonism, not only never assailed, but he never 
 failed on proper occasion, before or after the death of 
 Johnson, to vindicate his integi-ity. Integrity w^as the 
 foundation upon which he reared the superstructure of 
 his political fortune. He enjoyed more of the confidence 
 and respect than he did of the personal regard and esteem 
 of his fellow-citizens. He had not the dash which some- 
 times elevates an empty-headed demagogue to great pop- 
 ularity, which leaves him as suddenly and perhaps as 
 unexpectedly as it was acquired. He wore a sad expres- 
 sion, and his conversation was neither witty nor brilliant, 
 but direct and to the point. If it possessed any charm, it 
 was due in a measure to the modulations of a clear, mel- 
 low voice, the tones of which rose and fell as passion, 
 interest, or indifference predominated at the moment. 
 These, however, were not even elements of his strength. 
 The people believed he was honest, they knew he was 
 capable, and that was enough for them. 
 
 If the departed Senator belonged to any church, it must 
 have been to the church militant, for life with him was a 
 
18 ADDRESS OF 3VIE. M'CREERY ON THE 
 
 warfare from beginning to end. He was aggressive, un- 
 yielding, uncompromising. When smitten, he forgot the 
 injunction and smote the smiter, and the battle was 
 measured by resource and endurance. Christian or Mos- 
 lem stood by the symbol of his faith with no more tenacity 
 and resolution than he displayed in defense of his princi- 
 ples. He enjoyed triumph with moderation, but it cannot 
 be said that he bore defeat with true philosophy. If he 
 had reflected that position was as desirable to others as to 
 himself, it might have turned the edge of his resentment. 
 The champion of popular rights had little respect even for 
 a popular verdict adverse to himself, and a new trial and 
 a re-argument of the cause were demanded. 
 
 Justice to Andeew Johnson requires at least an allu- 
 sion to his humble origin, to his early orphanage, and to 
 his^ poverty at the outset of life. He had learned the 
 ti'ade of a tailor, and the work on the board might be said 
 to constitute the boundary of his useful knowledge. But 
 an angel had taken her place by his side to share his joys 
 and his sorrows, and to cheer and to bless and to enlighten 
 him by her counsel and instruction. He labored diligently 
 for her support, and she more than canceled the obligation 
 by gently dispelling the dark shadows and imparting light 
 and life and energy to his understanding. She prepared him 
 to stand forth in the stature and strength of manhood, and 
 to discharge the highest and most responsible duties of an 
 American citizen. He was not the creature of accident 
 nor the offsprmg of chance, but a self-reliant man, of 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 10 
 
 steady purpose and iron will, who started from the bottom, 
 and from a village alderman rose rapidly through the dif- 
 ferent grades of the public service to the most exalted 
 position upon earth. After a few years of private life he 
 was returned by his State to the Senate under circum- 
 stances peculiar in some respects. He was the first Ex- 
 President who had entered the Senate, and it was under- 
 stood that he acknowledged no special fealty and no par- 
 ticular partiality to any political organization. Much was 
 expected from him. Whether the highest hopes and 
 expectations of his friends and admirers would have been 
 realized or not is a matter of conjecture concerning which 
 every man will enjoy his own opinion. 
 
 I never heard a speech from him until a short time before 
 our final separation. That speech was published as deliv- 
 ered, without revision or coiTection. Critics may discover 
 redundancy and repetition, but we who heard it know 
 that it was a powerful appeal in behalf of the Constitution. 
 Other speakers may have been as logical and as eloquent, 
 but no man spoke with more earnestness than he did. 
 He related no anecdotes, and aimed at no pleasantries ; 
 but voice, manner, and diction rose to the level of the 
 great question he was considering, and Senate and galler- 
 ies listened with profound attention. The unvarying 
 earnestness of his delivery may have been the secret of 
 his power and the key to his strong hold upon the confi- 
 dence of the people of Tennessee. But speculation is 
 idle ; we only know that from a most unpromising begin- 
 
20 ADDRESS OF MR. M'CREERY ON THE 
 
 ning he accomplished surprising and wonderful results. 
 When he went to Greene ville he was a stranger, and a 
 tailor's "kit," his thimbles and his needles, were probably 
 the sum-total of his earthly possessions; at liis death, the 
 hills and the valleys and the mountains and the rivers 
 sent forth their thousands to testify to the general grief at 
 the irreparable loss. 
 
 I honor him for that manly courage which sustained 
 him on every occasion, and which never quailed in pres- 
 ence of opposition, no matter how imposing. I honor him 
 for that independence of soul which had no scorn for the 
 lowly and no cringing adulation for the exalted. I honor 
 him for that sterling integrity which was beyond the 
 reach of temptation, and which, at the close of his public 
 service, left no blot, no stain upon his escutcheon. I 
 honor him for that magnanimity which, after the war- 
 cloud had passed and the elements had settled, would 
 have brought every citizen under the radiant arch of the 
 bow of peace and pardon. 
 
 It is the province of patriotism to guard the ashes and 
 to cherish and perpetuate the memories of the mighty 
 dead. Every locality has its particular treasures. Jack- 
 son, Polk, and Johnson ! Will these names be forgotten 
 in Tennessee 1 The sun and the stars will shine in their 
 seasons, but revolving years will neither quench nor dim 
 the liglit of their great examples. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 21 
 
 Address of Mr. Merrimon, of North Carolina. 
 
 Mr. President, it seems to me appropriate that the voice 
 of North CaroHna should join in these solemn ceremonies. 
 There our late associate, the late Ex-President Johnson, 
 was born, and there he began his remarkable career which 
 rendered him famous in this and other lands. The people 
 of that State watched with more than ordinary interest his 
 eventful life — sometimes approvingly and at others with 
 disapprobation; they recognized his marked ability, his 
 industry and self-reliance, his courage and fortitude, his 
 firmness and integrity, his successes and his triumphs; 
 they condemned his faults, but over them they have cast 
 the mantle of charity and forgetfulness, and they have 
 shared largely and sincerely in the general sorrow occa- 
 sioned by his sudden death. 
 
 My personal acquaintance with Mr. Johnson began 
 shortly after I became a member of the Senate; it was 
 brief and agreeable, and served to strengthen my impres- 
 sions of his character derived from a general knowledge of 
 him for a long while as a prominent public man. He was 
 not only a distinguished citizen, but in many respects lie 
 was one of the great men of his country and of the age in 
 which he lived. His cast of mind, his character, and suc- 
 cesses in life present an interesting study in connection 
 
22 ADDRESS OF MR. MERRIMON ON THE 
 
 with our political institutions and their pecuHar workings 
 in the development of the talents and vu'tues of men in 
 every class and condition of society. He did what few 
 have accomplished in the course of time. From a birth, 
 a boyhood, and circumstances the most humble and unto- 
 ward, without aid and without extraordinary advantages 
 at any period of his life, often under the frowns of the 
 great and powerful, by the exercise of his own powers and 
 his own efforts, he passed gradually, and always with dis- 
 tinction, through stations small and great until he reached 
 and filled with striking ability, and under circumstances 
 the most trying, one of the most exalted on earth. 
 
 Without intending here to approve or disapprove his 
 general course of action, if we consider fairly the extraor- 
 dinary, perilous, and revolutionary circumstances that sur- 
 rounded the country at the time he filled the high station 
 of President, it may well be doubted whether any of the 
 great men who at different periods filled that place could 
 have ruled and subdued the storm of passion and partisan 
 fury that threatened to ingulf the Government more suc- 
 cessfully than he did. Whatever the unfriendly critic may 
 say, all disinterested men will agree that he filled most of 
 the many stations he occupied with great acceptability and 
 all of them with great credit to himself. I think it may 
 be fairly said of him that in all the responsible places he 
 filled he never failed to prove himself equal to the duties 
 devolved upon him. Doubtless he did not discharge them 
 acceptably to all; but all must admit that he did so with 
 
LIFE AND OHAEACTEB OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 2'S 
 
 distinguished ability. For his elevation and distinction 
 he was not indebted to any sudden freak of fortune in arms 
 or civil life, but to his native talents, his efforts, and his 
 persistency in sunshine and storm alike. He lacked the 
 polish of high culture and training, but he possessed in a 
 large degree the moral, intellectual, and physical power to 
 command fortune. This epitome of his life marks him one 
 of the strong and great men of his age. 
 
 Mr. Johnson possessed a strong, logical, and aggressive 
 mind and a powerful will. He had stern irltegrity, which 
 he carried into all the relations of life; indeed, this was 
 one of his leading and striking characteristics; he was 
 remarkable for his honesty, and — 
 
 To be bouest, as tbis world goes, is to be one mau picked out of ten tbousaud. 
 
 His moral and physical courage was unbending, often 
 rising to heroism. The adverse circumstances of his early 
 life deprived him of the essential advantages of youthful 
 education and training, but he overleaped this obstacle; 
 he was self-educated; he had not the finish of systematic 
 culture, nor could he claim great learning, but he thought, 
 wrote, and spoke strongly and intelligently on all subjects 
 that engaged his attention. Some of his state papers will 
 compare favorably with the best. He had an extensive 
 and correct knowledge of human nature and large insight 
 into the motives of men. He measured them at a glance 
 mentally and morally, and generally with singular accu- 
 racy. He had administrative capacity of no ordinary 
 mold or measure. 
 
24 ADDRESS OF MR. MERRIMON ON THE 
 
 He was always thoroughly and honestly in sympathy 
 with the masses of the people and popular government. 
 He was essentially a man of the people; and however he 
 may sometimes have erred in judgment looking to that 
 end, he zealously desired their welfare and happiness. 
 He made them believe so, and this may be reckoned one 
 of the strongest elements of his power with, before, and 
 over the masses of his fellow-countrymen.. 
 
 He made mistakes, some of them grave ones ; but who 
 is free from error? He had faults; he may have had 
 serious ones; it were strange indeed if, under the conflicts 
 and temptations of his life, he were free from them. And 
 let me ask, Avhat man of us is free from them? His virtues 
 and pariotism far outweighed and outmeasured his errors 
 and follies. Let ns keep fresh in our memory the fonner, 
 and over the latter let the mantle of charity be cast. 
 
 I well remember how on the 4th of March last, when 
 he entered this Chamber to take his seat agrain as a mem- 
 ber of the Senate, his countrymen, crowding the galleries 
 and corridors, saluted him with loud and spontaneous ap- 
 plause, and how they did a second time, when he stej^ped 
 forward to be sworn. Admiring, tasteful, and delicate 
 friends had richly adorned his desk with beautiful and 
 expressive flowers, and when that day the Senate adjourned 
 hundreds of his friends, and men, too, who had in the past 
 been unfriendly toward him, hurried to his seat to tender 
 him respect and sincere congratulations. That was a 
 grand occasion for him, and his heart was glad! 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOnNSON. 25 
 
 He was not an aged man. His friends had hoped that 
 he would be spared to his country many years to come 
 to do much and noble service for that country. But his 
 work is done; his labors are ended. Death suddenly 
 snatched him away from the scenes, the conflicts and sor- 
 rows, the pleasures and the honors of this life, and he is 
 gone to try the realities of eternal things. May his coun- 
 trymen remember and emulate his virtues and his noble 
 deeds. 
 
20 ADDRESS OF MR. PADDOCK ON THE 
 
 Address of Mr. Paddock, of Nebraska. 
 
 Mr. President, it is with no ordinary diffidence that I 
 arise to address the Senate upon an occasion of so much 
 interest as the present. The fear that I, who have so re- 
 cently come among you, may commit an offense against 
 the proprieties which should be as a law unto us all in this 
 Chamber, almost overwhelms me. Indeed, sir, so much 
 has already been so appropriately, so eloquently said by 
 my seniors here, whose fame is the very fame of the Re- 
 public itself, that my poor words, however fitly spoken, 
 will, I doubt not, be considered presumptuous. But, sir, 
 I am impelled by a sense of duty to the State I have the 
 honor to represent, in part, upon this floor, to briefly ex- 
 press, on the behalf of all the people thereof, of whatever 
 party, sect, or class, the universal sorrow occasioned there 
 by the death of Andrew Johnson. Especially, sir, do I 
 offer here for the memory of the departed Senator the 
 gratitude and the unselfish reverence, homely though it 
 be, of the thousands in my State who to-day occupy 
 farms of broad fertile acres secured to them through the 
 beneficent provisions of the homestead law. They, sir, and 
 the generations that are to come after them, will ever 
 hold in grateful remembrance his manful advocacy of the 
 principles of that law long before its enactment. At a 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 27 
 
 time, sir, when it had few if any friends but himself, and 
 seeming-ly but Httle to hope from the future, Andrew 
 Johnson pointed the way, and the repubhcan party, to its 
 honor and its glory be it said, afterward followed therein 
 until this srreat boon for the homeless and the landless 
 was secured. 
 
 Mr. President, I recall to-day a reminiscence of unusual 
 interest to myself, at least. Will you indulge me while I 
 refer to it 1 On the sixth day of next month fifteen years 
 will have passed since in company with another gentle- 
 man, both of us citizens of the then sparsely-settled Ter- 
 ritory of Nebraska, I sat in yonder gallery, electrified by 
 the patriotic eloquence of Andeew Johnson. That, as I 
 remember, was my first visit to this Chamber ; certainly 
 his great speech for the Union, deHvered upon that occa- 
 sion, was the first to which I ever hstened here. On the 
 5th day of last March I met Andrew Johnson upon this 
 floor, after his long absence from the Senate. We met 
 here then as Senators-elect, and when, together, we swore 
 to uphold the Constitution of our country, my memory 
 went back over the eventful interval of time that had 
 elapsed, and the patriot statesman, who, alone of all his 
 section, had stood bravely up from out the very ranks of 
 secession on yonder side, and, with firm but tearful utter- 
 ance, proclaimed his unalterable fealty to the Union and 
 the old flag, was again before me. My companion, too, 
 of the gallery was here ; I meet him now as my colleague 
 upon this floor; we were here together to represent a 
 
28 ADDRESS OF MR. PADDCJCK ON THE 
 
 State containing nearly half a million of people, a sov- 
 ereignty which did not exist when, upon that memorable 
 occasion to which I have adverted, Andrew Johnson de- 
 nounced secession and disunion with so much power and 
 vehemence ; the rebellion had come and gone, bearing its 
 full fruition of direful consequences, as he did then pre- 
 dict ; a river of blood had carried between its full banks, 
 upon a resistless tide, the worn and battered hulk of slav- 
 ery far into the sea of perdition. The Union was re- 
 stored, re-invigorated by the rich draughts it had drawn 
 fresh from the fountain of liberty, and the great army of 
 American civilization, with " standards full high ad- 
 vanced," was moving forward to new centenary conquests. 
 That, sir, was a moment of intensest interest to my whole 
 nature for the reflections it induced, as this is one of pro- 
 foundest sorrow for the memories that, crowding mourn- 
 fully each upon the other, have taken full possession of 
 us all. 
 
 Mr. President, I believe, sir, notwithstanding the fact 
 that a painful chapter of history relating to the official 
 acts of Andrew Johnson was made in this very Chamber, 
 that no Senator here present will refuse to-day to join me 
 in the declaration that he was essentially an honest man ; 
 ay, sir, a patriot in the fullest sense of the term. It is 
 true, indeed, sir, that he possessed his full share of the 
 weakness by which human nature, wherever found, in its 
 highest as well as its lowest estate, is always beset. And 
 yet, sir, who among us will undertake to exalt himself 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 29 
 
 above his fellows in respect of his freedom therefrom'? 
 Speaking for myself alone, I do frankly admit that upon 
 sudden impulse, under great excitement, I have spoken 
 Avords and performed acts which I would gladly expunge 
 from life's record, and thank my God upon bended knees 
 for the opportunity so to do. Who of you, brother Sen- 
 ators, will say less than this for himself? Who of you 
 will undertake ta say more than this of Andrew Johnson? 
 To-day, sir, the voice of party is hushed, and the war of 
 factions and policies is forgotten, while, as mourners as of 
 a common brotherhood, Ave all do pause before the new- 
 made grave of Andrew Johnson to drop the tear of sad 
 remembrance. His ashes now ming-le Avith the soil of the 
 State he loved so well and served so faithfully in the 
 Union he helped to save, but his spirit has gone, Avith those 
 of Wilson and of Ferry, to unite Avith those of Lincoln 
 and Seward and the other immortal patriots who Avent 
 before in that invisible spiritual aggregation Avhence Ave 
 are to draAv the inspiration which shall quicken here the 
 development and the growth of a higher, a purer civil- 
 ization, and a stronger, a nobler nationality. God speed 
 the day, sir, when, by the aid of this inspiring influence, 
 the popular sentiment of our country as Avell as its ethics 
 shall demand of politicians, of statesmen, of parties, and 
 that political power, the press, the exercise of the broadest 
 and the fullest Christian charity in all their intercourse 
 each toAvard the other. 
 
30 ADDRESS OF MR. BOGY ON THE 
 
 Address of Mr Bogy, of Missouri. 
 
 Mr. President, having held an important position under 
 Mr. Johnson while he was President of the United States, 
 I was frequently brought in contact with him, and I had 
 for this reason a good opportunity to form an estimate of 
 his abilities and to study the main characteristics of his 
 mind and the great outlines of his general character. A 
 sense of duty, growing out of this official connection, im- 
 pels me to say a few words on this occasion. I do this 
 with great diffidence, not only because of my inability to 
 do justice to the subject, but also because I follow other 
 Senators who have spoken with much more eloquence 
 than I pretend to possess. 
 
 That our late brother was a remarkable man is a fact 
 which is beyond all doubt, and which no one will contest; 
 indeed, his singularly remarkable career is enough to estab- 
 lish this. In my opinion, it is not extravagant to say that 
 this career has no parallel in history in this or any other 
 country, nor in this or any other age of the world. For, al- 
 though history has preserved and transmitted to us the names 
 of many men born in obscurity and in the humblest station 
 in life who attained the very highest positions in their 
 country, yet in most instances, if not in every one, these 
 men were thrown up as it were by the force of great events 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. .51 
 
 with which they were in some way connected, and in most 
 cases these remarkable ascents of men from obscurity to 
 distinction were of military characters. History informs 
 us that several of the emperors of Rome, when it was 
 the mistress of the civilized and barbarian world, were 
 born in slavery. Pizarro, a hog-driver, became the con- 
 queror of Peru, and his name will live in the annals of 
 history forever. And yet it is not difficult to understand 
 the rise of the Roman slave or of the young hog-driver; 
 great events Avith which they were connected, and which 
 they had the genius to control, made them what they 
 were. But in the case of Mr. Johnson his rise from ob- 
 scurity to distinction through a long gradation of offices 
 and to a seat in this body was the work of his own hands 
 and the legitimate results of his own unaided exertions and 
 great native ability. He was truly the sole architect of his 
 own fortunes. No fortunate or singular circumstances 
 favored his election as alderman of his village nor as mayor, 
 or his election as a member of the Legislature of his State, 
 or to a seat in the House of Representatives of the United 
 States, nor as governor of his State, and finally to a seat 
 in this body as an American Senator. Up to this time it 
 can be truly said that he carved his own fortunes alone 
 and unaided by any adventitious circumstances of any 
 kind. Will, pluck, and ability were the weapons he 
 Avielded to accomplish his purposes; and we are informed 
 from his well-known history that he attained the ends 
 which he aimed to accomplish, not by intrigue or cunning, 
 
32 ADDRESS OF ME. BOGY ON THE 
 
 but by a stern and manly course, meeting his opponents 
 and all opposition boldly and defiantly, and so far from 
 attempting to avoid opposition, inviting it Indeed, his 
 combative temper always brought about very great oppo- 
 sition. This he seemed to enjoy. He loved the excite- 
 ment of a warm political contest, and for it he was most 
 singularly adapted — a ready debater, quick at repartee, a 
 naturally close reasoner, having a profound knowledge of 
 the heart of the people among whom his lot was cast, 
 ready and able to take advantage of any favorable circum- 
 stance which presented itself He went before the people 
 with views, and opinions of his own, advocating them boldly 
 and ably, and was always willing and ready to stand or 
 fall with them, and, although a democrat, very seldom, if 
 ever, in line with his party. He was not a demagogue, 
 but he always presented himself as the friend of the peo- 
 ple, and particularly of the poor and humble. That in 
 presenting himself on all occasions as the friend of the 
 poor and humble he was honest and sincere, admits of no 
 doubt. His own humble birth and the circumstances sur- 
 rounding his early years were enough of themselves to 
 impart to his peculiar nature a feeling of sincere love and 
 sympathy for this portion of his fellow-men. He was one 
 of them, and his sympathy for them was natural. And 
 this sympathy he exhibited during his long political life. 
 Yet this by itself would not be sufficient to account for his 
 extraordinary success. 
 
 I said at the outset that my official position while he was 
 
LIFE AND CnARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 33 
 
 President of the United States enabled me to form an esti- 
 mate of his abihties and of his general character. While 
 his abilities, in my opinion, were not of the very liighest 
 order, yet they were very far above the common run of 
 men, and indeed, when his want of early training- is con- 
 sidered, they might well be considered as extraordinary. 
 I did not think that his perceptive faculties were very 
 quick, but he possessed great natural power of elabora- 
 tion, and he worked out his conclusions by serious and 
 laborious thinking. He made the impression on me of a 
 great thinker, and was willing to do a great deal of hard 
 work in this way. When his mind was fully made up he 
 was as firm as a rock, and nothing on earth could shake 
 him. It may be that he indeed carried this too far, and 
 he was in consequence of this considered by some as head- 
 strong and stubborn. His moral courage was great; was, 
 indeed, sublime. I well remember that during the darkest 
 period of his life, when he appeared to be abandoned by 
 all, he never expressed a doubt of his final triumph; and 
 that this was not assumed but was really felt was shown 
 by his deportment and bearing. I have reason to believe 
 that his physical courage was as great as his moral. Hence 
 he was- truly and essentially a brave man, willing and 
 ready to risk his life and political fortunes to carry out his 
 object; and in my opinion this had much to do in securing 
 his long life of success. 
 
 It is said that he never was at school, not even for a day, 
 and that his wife, who survives him, was his first instructor. 
 
34 ADDRESS OF MR. BOGY ON THE 
 
 If this be true, his long and successful career must have 
 been a source of great happiness to her, and she must 
 have shared his great and long-continued honors with most 
 sing-ular satisfaction. That his education was under the 
 circumstances imperfect is easily nnderstood; yet he did 
 much to repair this by very general reading. I had occa- 
 sion to spend many evenings with him, and 1 then observed 
 that his reading was pretty extensive, although desultory. 
 To say that his memory was good is not enough. At the 
 time I speak of it was truly remarkable, and, as he had 
 served many years in Congress during the days of Calhoun, 
 Clay, Webster, Benton, Grundy, and many others of the 
 distinguished men of that most brilliant period of our his- 
 tory, he could relate many very interesting events con- 
 nected with them, some of a political nature, some social, 
 and others anecdotical. On such occasions he was ex- 
 tremely genial and amiable, enjoying a hearty laugh as 
 much as any one I ever knew. He possessed good 
 powers of relating past events or anecdotes. I observed 
 one thing, that in speaking of those great men with 
 whom he had become acquainted in this city during his 
 long congressional career, he did so kindly and respect- 
 fully, doing full justice to their abilities and to their 
 motives. 
 
 Mr. President, it is singular, but it is true, that he filled 
 every office which a man can fill in this country, munici- 
 pal. State, and Federal, civil and military, judicial, (as 
 mayor,) legislative, and executive, from the lowest to the 
 
LIFE ANT) CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 35 
 
 highest, from alderman of a small village to the governor- 
 ship of his State, major-general in the Army during the 
 war, and finally Vice-President and President of the 
 United States. The last two offices, however, were not 
 the result, like the others, of his own individual labors. 
 Circumstances growing out of the war had no doubt much 
 to do with his selection as a candidate for the Vice-Presi- 
 dency, and we all know that a circumstance with which he 
 was in no way connected made him President. But his 
 last election to a seat on this floor as Senator was the work 
 of own hands, brought about by his own indomitable will 
 and pluck, the reward of a long and terrible contest, con- 
 tinuing for some years, unsuccessful for a time, and appear- 
 ing to all the world besides himself as utterly hopeless; 
 nevertheless, finally he was triumphant. From what I 
 have learned from those who are familiar with this his last 
 contest, he exhibited more openly his true and peculiar 
 nature than at any other period of his life — which was to 
 fight with all his might and all his ability, asking for no 
 quarter and grantingnone; and although, like bloody Rich- 
 ard, now and then unhorsed, still to fight and never sur- 
 render until victory perched on his banner. Under all the 
 circumstances connected with his previous life — particu- 
 larly while he was the Chief Executive of this country — 
 this last triumph must have given him more sincere and 
 deeply-felt gratification than any other of his life. He is 
 the only one of the number of distinguished men who 
 have held the office of President who afterward became a 
 
36 ADDRESS OF MR. BOGY ON THE 
 
 member of this body. Even in this his fortune appeared 
 to be singular. 
 
 I have thus, Mr. President, in a brief and imperfect man- 
 ner given an outline of the character of this remarkable 
 man. On an occasion like this, and in this body, criticism 
 would be out of place. One of his acts I condemned; 
 but, I repeat, this is neither the occasion nor the place to 
 indulge in criticism. This belongs to history; and his 
 name will be written on its pages and be transmitted to 
 posterity as one of the remarkable characters of our epoch, 
 and as the most perfect type of our republican institutions. 
 His death at this time I consider a public misfortune, as he 
 occupied a position to render great service to his section 
 of our common county. 
 
 Distinguished as he was, great as he was, too, his career 
 is ended, and forever; and we again are reminded of the 
 solemn truth that — 
 
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 37 
 
 Address of Mr. Jones, of Florida. 
 
 Mr. President, when the minister of God on the last 
 day of the previous session of this body invoked the 
 Divine protection over each of its assembled members, 
 I well remember, as I looked over this Chamber, how the 
 thought suggested by the prayer of the holy man came 
 to my mind— shall we all ever meet again on this floor! 
 That mental interrogatory has been answered in the nega- 
 tive, for since our last meeting in this Chamber at the pre- 
 vious session it has pleased Divine Providence to remove 
 from his earthly sphere, from his family, his country, and 
 his usefulness, our distinguished brother-member Andrew 
 
 Johnson. 
 
 It would not be proper for me, Mr. President, an inex- 
 perienced member of this body and a comparative stranger 
 to the deceased, to attempt anything like an encomium 
 upon his character and services, or to enlarge upon the 
 just tributes of honor and praise which have been be- 
 stowed upon him by those Senators around me who are 
 so well qualified by their talents and their knowledge of 
 his worth and achievements to pei-form that sad service. 
 Nor is it from a vain desire to have it said that my hum- 
 ble voice has been raised in these most melancholy serv- 
 ices to genius and integrity, that I presume to address 
 
ADDRESS OF MK. JONES ON THE 
 
 you now. But, sii', I feel that to be silent on this occasion 
 would be to refuse to the heart the agency of the tongue 
 to relieve it from the emotions of sadness and regret with 
 which the loss of our honored companion has filled me. 
 Not that that loss is to me so personal as to create the 
 pangs of common grief or affliction. There was no ten- 
 der personal tie between us to be broken. There is noth- 
 ing in my feelings of regret on this occasion to mark them 
 from those ordinary emotions which the loss of any good 
 man would produce, except, sir, the uncommon fervency 
 and depth which the public character of the misfortune has 
 occasioned. I feel, sir, that, situated as the country is and 
 as this Senate is, the loss of Mr. Johnson is great, if not 
 irreparable, and that if he could have lived through the 
 period for which he was elected to this body, the country 
 would have derived great benefit from his services. 
 
 In a country like ours, sir, there is no safer or surer 
 way to measure the usefulness or value of a public man 
 than by a consideration of the influence and power which 
 he wields over the minds and hearts of the people Under 
 other systems this influence and power do not produce 
 the same results which they do here. The mysterious 
 councils of despotism seldom consider the temper or the 
 afiections of the people ; and where the latter take no part 
 in the business of government, except to toil to support 
 its aggressions, there is no field for popular leadership or 
 the operation of that sympathy and influence which we 
 have seen binding the people of this countr}^ to their 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 39 
 
 rulers with more than despotic force. It has fallen to the 
 lot, sir, of but few men even in this country to command 
 for any great length of time the pure and unselfish love of 
 the people. Great talents and attainments have always 
 exercised, as they should do, a proper influence over the 
 minds of our citizens, and have ever received the highest 
 favors that the people could bestow. But, sir, in all the 
 tributes and honors bestowed upon the many great intel- 
 lects of the country, there was very little evidence of 
 affectionate attachment or heartfelt devotion on the part of 
 the people. 
 
 But it was not the only merit of Mr. Johnson that his 
 mind was distinguished for those qualities which ranked 
 him with men of eminence. Gifted as he was in this re- 
 spect, he had also that which all men of eminence aim to 
 acquire and but few possess, the power to command and 
 the virtue to merit the love and respect of the people. 
 When we contemplate the career of tliis wonderful man, 
 commencing at the lowest and rising to the highest stra- 
 tum of society, by means, and by means only, of his own 
 untiring will and talents, it should afford us great satisfac- 
 tion and pride to have even this example (if it were all, 
 which it is not) of the good effect of our system of govern- 
 ment in opening up to the whole people all the honors 
 and emoluments of the State. 
 
 In reviewing the tedious and slow progress of govern- 
 mental reform, with its relapses and conflicts, sometimes 
 attended with tears and blood and at others breakinnf 
 
40 ADDRESS OF MR. JONES ON THE 
 
 down the bamers of time and prejudice with the force of 
 truth and reason, there are no facts which appear more 
 striking- in the long march of improvement than the te- 
 nacity, the mistrust, and jealousy which were ever exhibited 
 by the enemies of the people in their efforts to withhold 
 from society all interest and influence in its own govern- 
 ment. 
 
 You cannot but remember the terrible conflict so long 
 maintained at Rome for exclusive privileges by the patri- 
 cians, and the despair and apprehension with which they 
 ultimately yielded to their fellow- citizens a voice in the 
 management of public affairs. It seems to have been 
 claimed at the very dawn of civilization that the imperfect 
 constitution of man would never be made to harmonize 
 with the principles of regular government, unless the per- 
 sons who administered it could succeed in deluding- the 
 people by a show of authority emanating from some mys- 
 terious or divine source. And those grand epochs in the 
 history of human liberty, so often pointed to with pride, 
 only attest the slavery and degradation which surrounded 
 those champions of freedom who looked for the foundation 
 of their rights and privileges in the concessions and char- 
 ters of king's. 
 
 Melancholy and sad as this occasion is, it brings to our 
 minds in the most vivid light the true genius of our own 
 free institutions. The grand figure which surmounts this 
 Capitol may be the work of some man whose conceptions 
 of liberty were inspired by the surroundings of despotism. 
 
LIFE AND CIIARAOTER OF ANDREAV JOHNSON. 41 
 
 Nothing attests the purity and correctness of imagination 
 more than those pictures of art which are drawn with 
 fidehty by one who has never seen the originals. But 
 still they are only pictures. In the life and character and 
 services of him we mourn to-day we have more than a 
 picture. We see reflected before us not the ''watery," 
 but the full and living " image" of a free constitution. 
 
 It was quite natural for Mr. Johnson to feel more than 
 an ordinary attachment for the Union and Constitution 
 of these States. That he did entertain the most sincere 
 devotion for the principles of this Government no one the 
 least disposed to fairness can deny. He felt too strongly 
 the benefits it conferred to be willing to risk its advantages 
 for anv other system, and with an honesty and sincerity 
 which commanded even the respect of his foes he clung to 
 it throug-h all its fortunes. If he favored those measures 
 of war which were adopted by the North when war was 
 a real issue, he also favored the cultivation of kindly 
 sentiments toward the South, when it was not popular to 
 sympathize with that war- wasted section. In the unhappy 
 condition of the southern people, this man of bitter preju- 
 dices and strong hatred found abundant opportunity to 
 display the bad passions which were said to have possessed 
 him. But, sir, history does not show. Christian charity 
 and meekness the world over do not exhibit, an instance 
 of greater fidelity to principle, a more sublime example of 
 self-abnegation, or a more complete disregard of all selfish 
 interests, than were made manifest in the humane policy 
 
42 ADDRESS OF MR. JONES ON THE 
 
 of Andrew Johnson toward the South at a time when he 
 had it in his power to oppress her people. 
 
 What motives, think you, prompted him to rise, as he 
 did rise, far above the current of sectional hate and preju- 
 dice which for years had carried upon their surface the 
 biightest minds and purest hearts in the country 1 As a 
 Southern man, he was true to the Union ; as a lover of 
 the Union, he was true to the Constitution. In maintain- 
 ing his consistency, he was frequently misrepresented and 
 oftener misunderstood. While supporting the Govern- 
 ment, he was accused of having deserted his section ; 
 while supporting the Constitution, he was charged with 
 infidelity to the Union and partiality toward the South. 
 He received alternately the praises and condemnation of 
 both sections, and his efforts to serve the country were 
 applauded or denounced as they met the views or crossed 
 the purposes of contending parties. But, regardless of 
 what was thought or said of him, he followed his own 
 stern convictions of duty, and clung to his opinions with 
 more than an Eastern devotion. Among the mountains of 
 Tennessee, imperiled by dangers, he proclaimed his adhe- 
 sion to the Union. From his high position as President 
 of the United States, he had the courage to speak a kind 
 word for the South and recommend moderation toward 
 her people. If he sought popularity, as it is said he did, 
 he could say with Lord Mansfield that it was not the pop- 
 ularity which is run after, but that which follows in the 
 train of duty fearlessly performed. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 43 
 
 For a time he seemed to be lost in the obscurity of pop- 
 ular neglect. The great party which had elevated him to 
 the first position in the Government pursued him with a 
 bitterness and hatred not often exhibited toward political 
 foes. 
 
 Who would have supposed that the State whose inter- 
 ests and fortunes he was said to have deserted would again 
 honor him with the highest position in her gift? This was 
 indeed a victory; but it was a victory of fairness and 
 candor over prejudice ; of truth over error ; of intelligence 
 over ignorance; and of principle over policy. The re- 
 entry of Mr. Johnson into this body was a triumph seldom 
 seen in these degenerate days. I speak not now of Xhe 
 eclat and popular applause which accompanied it ; but I 
 speak of the moral grandeur exhibited in the return to 
 public service of a worthy servant of the people, who, 
 because he would not follow his party when he thought it 
 was in error, was saved by the justice of his former ene- 
 mies from the condemnation of his friends. A very emi- 
 nent member of this body, who also, to the great loss of 
 the country, lies cold in death, once said on this floor, 
 while speaking on an occasion like this, that in a celebrated 
 town of Italy there was a fine collection of paintings open 
 to public view. Between two of the most attractive pic- 
 tures in the room was a large vacant space, evidently in- 
 tended for some noble work of art, but which was shrouded 
 in deep mourning, which none could penetrate. This 
 veiled mystery attracted more attention than all the paint- 
 
44 ADDRESS OF MR. JONES ON THE 
 
 ings in view. So let it be with that part of the history of 
 the ilhistrious deceased which, for his own and the sake of 
 his country, we could wish should never be written. 
 
 Let us hope, sir, that while his example of patience, 
 industry, and success may continue forever to illustrate the 
 greatness of his own virtues and encourage the youth of 
 our country to emulate his fame, his, as it is the first, may 
 remain the last case in our annals in which a President of 
 this great Republic ever appeared as a defendant at your 
 bar. 
 
 If any additional sanction were needed to bind us to the 
 strict performance of our high duties here, surely the un- 
 ceKtainty of life and the certainty of death, as shown by 
 the sudden departure of our deceased friend, ought to be 
 sufficient warning to us all to profit well by the hours at 
 our command ere we are overtaken by that night wherein 
 no man can labor. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOUNSON. 45 
 
 Address of Mr. Bayard, of Delaware. 
 
 Mr. President, with the exception of the few weeks of 
 the hist special session of the Senate, I had personally 
 no public service in connection with our late associate, 
 Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee ; nor had there been at 
 any time intimacy between us, nor had our habits of 
 life been sympathetic. Yet, feeling that his career must 
 be of interest to every American, and his personal 
 qualities and public conduct so full of what was use- 
 ful to the country and honorable to himself, I have 
 to-day a sad pleasure in bearing testimony above his 
 bier to his worth, and in recalling to his surviving 
 countrymen some of the true lessons of his life, although, 
 perhaps, the full and interesting remarks to which we have 
 listened may make mine supei-fluous. His career notably 
 illustrated a just and generous feature in our institutions. 
 I mean that very essence of freedom, ''freedom of opportu- 
 nities,^' that ''fair field and no favor," upon which every 
 . American youth starts in the race of life for success in any 
 profession, for wealth, for fame, for political position and 
 power. In other and less favored lands, of "just and old 
 renown" there is what the poet has well termed the "in- 
 vidious bar" of humble and obscure birth, which obstructs 
 the timid and inexperienced youth as with unpracticed 
 
46 ADDRESS OF MR. BAYARD ON THE 
 
 step he enters upon the rough path of Hfe, and sometimes 
 embarrasses him sadly even to his journey's end. Hap- 
 pily in America this does not exist. Nay, may it not rather 
 be doubted whether the repute of superior fortune and 
 social position is not a weight in the race for popular favor, 
 subjecting their possessor to detraction at the hands of the 
 inconsiderate many f 
 
 The man of whom we now speak in his youth was poor, 
 unlettered, and obscure. He had native vigor of mind and 
 body, and the unfettered opportunity afforded by our in- 
 stitutions of government to test freely his capacities in any 
 direction he saw fit. His necessities compelled him to seek 
 employment as a mechanic, and by the labor of his hands 
 he earned his bread; but in all those years of toil he 
 omitted no opportunity or eff'oii; to supply the deficiencies 
 in his early education and mental culture. He presented 
 himself as a candidate for public station, and by the suf- 
 frages of his fellow-citizens he rose step by step until he 
 became a member of the co-ordinate House of Congress, 
 then of this body, and afterward its presiding officer ; then, 
 by an event whose dreadful tragedy shocked the whole 
 country, he became President of the United States. 
 
 We live too near the times in which his official action 
 became so important in its influences upon the country to 
 attempt its history. He came to power and place in a 
 stormy period, the excitements of which have not yet en- 
 tirely subsided, and the serenity and judicial calmness 
 that should mark the page of history will be those of a 
 
LIFE AND CHAHAOTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 47 
 
 future generation, whose pulses never thrilled on one side 
 or the other with the passions of the times in which he 
 lived and died. 
 
 But part of his life and example may now be properly- 
 examined, and examined only to be approved. Friend 
 and foe alike must admit his steady, unshaken love of 
 country ; his constant industry ; his simple integrity and 
 honesty ; his courage of conviction, that never faltered. 
 All these are worthy examples for the emulation of Amer- 
 ican youth and the youth of all lands. These home-bred 
 virtues induced a life of simplicity and thoughtful econ- 
 omy ; kept his hand clean from even a suspicion of im- 
 proper gain, and in a long public career preserved him 
 from the many temptations that so often warp men of 
 strong passions and vigorous character like his from the 
 path of duty. He possessed and cherished the fine old- 
 fashioned sense of propriety that prevented his accept- 
 ance of gifts from any source or of any nature during his 
 tenure of high official power and pati-onage, even though 
 proffered in the guise of warm personal and patriotic 
 friendship. His performance of public and official duties 
 was marked by industry and constant care. 
 
 Qualities and habits such as these surely are entitled 
 to thankful recognition, and being admirable and whole- 
 some, are always examples needed by a people ; by none 
 more than those living under a republican form of govern- 
 ment ; never more than in the times in which we live. 
 
 Andrew Johnson's rise and success in life will ever be 
 
48 ADDRESS OF MB. BAYARD ON THE 
 
 an encouragement and incentive to the poor and friend- 
 less among his countrymen to cultivate their intellectual 
 faculties ; to neglect no opportunity for the best and most 
 important education — self-education ; to be industrious and 
 frugal, that they may be, and continue to be, honest men ; 
 to avoid those extravagant modes of living which create 
 temptations so difficult to resist ; to be steadfast in adver- 
 sity, and ever faithful to the. Government which protects 
 them. 
 
 Such habits and quahties will almost certainly bring 
 success ; but if not success, then something far better and 
 higher than success — self-respect and the respect and 
 esteem of their fellow-men, the consciousness of duty ful- 
 filled to themselves and their country, whose best hopes 
 largely depend upon the fomiation of such habits and in 
 the exercise of such virtues by its public men. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSOiN. 1!) 
 
 Address of Mr. Key, of Tennessee. 
 
 Mr. President, Andrew Johnson was a very remark- 
 able man. The qualities of his mind and disposition were 
 so unique and peculiar as to lead those acquainted with 
 him to entertain different opinions as to their composition 
 and tendencies. 
 
 As is well known, Mr. Johnson's birth was in the midst 
 of poverty and obscurity. His father died when Andrew 
 was but four years old. The son never passed a day in 
 school. At the age of ten years he was apprenticed to a 
 tailor. This species of servitude galled the spirit of the 
 proud boy, and he escaped from it by flight. Unable 
 subsequently to come to terms with his master, he left 
 North Carolina, the State of his nativity, and, crossing 
 its mountains, came to East Tennessee, then a sort of 
 terra incognita. In September, 1826, in his eighteenth 
 year, Mr. Johnson arrived at Greene ville, Tenn., accom- 
 panied by his mother. An old wooden cart, drawn by a 
 worthless horse, carried all their worldly goods. He could 
 scarcely read, and could not write. Unpromising as the 
 prospect appeared, this youth was destined to address list- 
 ening Senates, to preside over the destinies of the grandest 
 and greatest republic the world has ever seen, at a most 
 critical period of its history, and to send his name and 
 fame to the farthest limits of civilization. 
 
50 ADDRESS OF MR. KEY ON THE 
 
 Born and reared under the most adverse circumstances, 
 it was not possible that the features and general contom* 
 of liis mind should be shaped in complete harmony or 
 perfect regularity. Something of ruggedness and angu- 
 larity of mental, moral, and social characteristics must 
 result from such surroundings as encompassed his early 
 life. His poverty and want of education fettered a bold 
 and ambitious spirit, capable of the highest aspirations. 
 The very unequal distribution of advantages doubtless 
 appeared to him in the aspect of a wrong. A restless and 
 longing mind, shackled and imprisoned, is not apt to be 
 always reasonable and just when it discovers, in the path- 
 way through which its aspirations lead, obstacles which 
 seem to be insurmountable, and beholds beyond them 
 those who have been favored by fortune. 
 
 Mr. Johnson's associations from his birth to his man- 
 hood were with the poor and unlearned. Rising thence 
 by his unaided exertions, he was under no obligation to 
 those who had moved in a sphere superior to his own, 
 and felt none. His sympathies were and they remained 
 with the class of society in which he had been trained. 
 He had not in youth fallen under the refining influences 
 which do so much to soften, enlarge, and diversify man's 
 habitudes and tendencies. His prejudices in favor of the 
 feebler ranks of population became a mental habit before 
 he was able to raise himself into more liberal and enlight- 
 ened companionship. Of this kinship with the humble he 
 was never ashamed, but it produced, in him a distrust of 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 51 
 
 the leaders of society and parties, and led him to the utter- 
 ance of sentiments on some occasions which were charged 
 to be agrarian in tendency, and caused many to allege 
 that he was a demagogue. Mr. Johnson was neither an 
 agrarian nor a demagogue. He never put his trust in 
 princes or courted the favor of party leaders, nor was he 
 loved by them. His whole life was a scene of conflict, 
 and his triumphs were in spite of leaders. His faith was 
 in the people. Them he loved and trusted. He reposed 
 upon their honor, honesty, patriotism, and virtue. His 
 tribunal of last resort was the people, and to them he ap- 
 pealed. When parties and platforms displeased him he 
 turned his back upon them and rallied his countrymen 
 around him. They loved him, and whether he followed 
 party or not they followed him in multitudes. 
 
 On the day of his funeral, if one had stood by the grave 
 of our late President, and had seen the procession which 
 came to it with the body of the dead statesman, among 
 the thousands there he would have discovered not many 
 of earth's great ones ; not many in office ; no display of 
 "pomp and circumstance." A plain hearse carried the 
 remains of the great dead. Two or three carriages held 
 the members of his family. In that vast procession there 
 was no other vehicle. But the people whom Mr. John- 
 son had loved were there. They had gathered from the 
 fields and workshops, from the mountains and the valleys, 
 their faces browned by the sun and their hands hardened 
 by toil. They had all come ; the old, those of middle age. 
 
52 ADDRESS OF MR. KEY ON THE 
 
 the youthful, and the children. There was none of the 
 pageantry and display which usually follow earth's great 
 ones to sepulture, but in their stead were sad faces and 
 tears, such as go only with loved ones to the tomb. In 
 the solemnity of that hour the mountains, which had stood 
 the sentinels of Mr. Johnson's home and now look down 
 upon his sepulcher, seemed to join in the general sorrow. 
 
 In the beginning of our recent civil struggle Mr. John- 
 son's influence, courage, and activity contributed most 
 powerfully to carry with him a majority of the people of 
 his section of the State in favor of the Federal Union. 
 The authorities of his State, with armies to enforce obe- 
 dience, were against him, and he had no support at hand 
 but his unarmed and undisciplined multitude; still, unin- 
 timidated by threats and unawed by danger, he held aloft 
 the banner of the Union and appealed to the people to 
 uphold it. We know something of the fearful animosities 
 engendered in a community divided in civil war; how the 
 passions are turned loose to deeds of horror at which the 
 blood freezes. Power is used with a remorseless hand, 
 and he who stands in its way is in constant peril. 
 
 It was from such a condition of affairs as this, with its 
 hate, revenge, and scenes of blood fresh in his mind, that 
 Mr. Johnson entered the presidential chair. I remember 
 well the alarm of the people of the South when the sad 
 news was borne to them of President Lincoln's assassina- 
 tion. Mr. Johnson's denunciations of those who had op- 
 posed the Federal Government, and the punishment and 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OP ANDREW JOHNSON. 53 
 
 penalties he had invoked and threatened, justified the 
 gravest apprehensions. But when he came to be Presi- 
 dent; when his enemies had laid down their arms and furled 
 their flag-, and after the power to pardon as well as to punish 
 had passed into his hands, satisfied, as he must have been, 
 that the great mass of the Southern people had been honest, 
 though mistaken, as he believed, in the motives which had 
 impelled their action, all his bitterness and acrimony toward 
 them were dissipated. The man sank himself out of sight, 
 and the President of a powerful nation shielded his late 
 foes by his clemency, though the liberal policy he exer- 
 cised toward them contributed powerfully to lose him the 
 support of the party which had placed him in office. He 
 who could exercise such magnanimity under such circum- 
 stances had a great heart and unflinching fortitude. Those 
 who think Mr. Johnson was cold and very selfish never 
 understood his inner nature. 
 
 In many respects he was strange and peculiar, so that 
 it is no matter of surprise that many who did not fully 
 comprehend him had an unfavorable estimate of some of 
 the qualities of his mind and heart. He was combative, 
 and always armed and equipped for the fray. He did 
 not wait to be assailed, but was usually the first to enter 
 the lists, and no matter how great the odds against him, 
 or how formidable the antagonist, he was eager for the 
 contest. He was also aggressive. He chose to carry the 
 war into the enemy's territory, and it was hard to drive 
 him to a defensive attitude ; nor would he leave the field 
 
54 ADDRESS OF MR. KKY ON THE 
 
 until he had won a complete victory or had suffered a 
 decisive defeat. His life was a contest, and his love of 
 fight sometimes precipitated him into controversies which 
 had been better avoided. He was fearless, self-reliant, 
 and bold, and never bent "the pregnant hinges of the 
 knee where thrift may follow fawning." 
 
 Mr. Johnson was an honest man. He was never ac- 
 cused of duplicity or unfair dealing. His errors resulted 
 from his convictions of right. Though for forty years he 
 Avas in the public service, and often in situations in which 
 gratuities and bribes might have been accepted or public 
 funds appropriated with little fear of detection, yet no 
 stain of official corruption had soiled his hands or life. 
 Frugality was a habit with him, and yet out of his sala- 
 ries in public life he saved only a fau^ competence. 
 
 There were two central ideas around which all his po- 
 litical views revolved, and to which his actions were sub- 
 ordinated. He regarded the Constitution, State and Fed- 
 eral, with a veneration and devotion of kin to fanaticism. 
 He appealed to the Constitution on all occasions and 
 under all circumstances, was constantly in apprehension 
 of its violation, and everywhere held it up before the as- 
 semblies and tribunals of the nation, and demanded that 
 every jot and tittle of it be observed. With him it was 
 the ark of our safety, as sacred and privileged as was that 
 ark of Israel which could not be touched by profane hands. 
 No measure, howsoever great in its expediency or utility, 
 could receive his support or sanction unless it had certain 
 
LIFE AND DHARAOTETl OF ANDREW JOHNSON, 55 
 
 warrant in the Constitution. His other grand idea was 
 confidence in the people and a strict regard for the pro- 
 tection and security of their interests and the preservation 
 of their liberties. Amplify his theory as he might, these 
 ideas composed its substance. He feared the encroach- 
 ments of the Government upon the rights of the people. 
 The times of the Caesars, when the republic of Rome was 
 transformed into an empire, and of the Charleses of Eng- 
 land, when the prerogatives of the crown were extended 
 and enlarged at the expense of the liberties of the people, 
 were with him favorite fields of history, which he care- 
 fully explored and often referred to as exhibiting the dan- 
 gers which threaten a civilized free government. 
 
 Mr. Johnson's skill was not so much in construction as 
 in resistance to the schemes and measures of others. His 
 great desire and aim were to maintain and preserve what 
 our fathers had handed down to us. He was afraid that 
 change might mar their work. 
 
 Mr. Johnson will be a marvel in history. His ascent 
 from the lowest station in society, without adventitious aids 
 or fortunate accidents, and with surroundings the most 
 unpromising, to the grand elevation he attained, cannot 
 be understood and appreciated in any land but ours, and 
 it is an astonishing consummation in it, furnishing splendid 
 evidence of the value, power, and glory of our institutions. 
 He will be held up to the ages to come as an illustrious 
 example of what the poorest and obscurest boy may ac- 
 complish if he but have perseverance, pluck, and capacity. 
 
0<) LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDKEW JOHNSON. 
 
 Anotlier shining example of this class is found in him who 
 so lately, Mr. President, filled with so much distinction the 
 chair in which you sit to-day. 
 
 Mr. Johnson has gone from this presence and this 
 Chamber, and will return no more. The "insatiate archer" 
 has no respect for persons, station, or rank. The king and 
 the peasant, the president and the beggar alike become 
 his victims; but, among all the country's dead, this Gov- 
 ernment has never lost, and never will lose, a more loyal 
 and fearless defender or its people a more devoted friend 
 than Andrew Johnson. 
 
 The resolutions were adopted unanimously, and the 
 Senate (at 2 o'clock and 38 minutes p. m.) adjourned. 
 
PROCEEDINGS 
 
 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 
 
ANNOUNCEMENT. 
 
 A message was received from the Senate, by Mr. Mc- 
 Donald, its Chief Clerk, which informed the House of the 
 proceedings in that body upon the announcement of the 
 death of Hon. Andrew Johnson, late a Senator from the 
 State of Tennessee. 
 
 The Speaker. The Clerk will read the resolutions just 
 received from the Senate. 
 The Clerk read as follows : 
 
 Resolved, unanimously, That the Senate has received with profound sorrow 
 the announcement of the death of Hon. Andrew Johnson, late a Senator of the 
 United States from the State of Tennessee. 
 
 Resolved, unanimously, That as a mark of respect for the memory of Mr. John- 
 son, the members of the Senate will go into mourning by wearing crape upon the 
 left arm for thirty days. 
 
 Resolved, unanimously. That as an additional mark of respect for the memory 
 of Mr. Johnson, the Senate do now adjourn. 
 
 Resolved, That the Secretary communicate these resolutions to the House of 
 Representatives. 
 
ADDRESSES. 
 
 Address of Mr. McFarland, of Tennessee. 
 
 Mr, Speaker, the duty devolves on me, as the Repre- 
 sentative of the first congressional district of Tennessee, 
 to announce to the House the death of a distinguished 
 citizen of Tennessee, whose home, from his first appear- 
 ance in that State in 1826 to the day of his death, was in 
 the congressional district I have the honor to represent 
 in this House. I allude to the death of Hon. Andrew 
 Johnson, late a Senator from Tennessee, Ex-President of 
 the United States, and for ten years a member of this 
 House, which occurred at the residence of his daughter, 
 Mrs. Brown, in Carter County, Tennessee, on the morn- 
 ing of the 31st of July last. 
 
 Mr. Johnson was called to his final account and 
 closed his connection with time and earthly things with- 
 out that protracted sickness and suffering which gives 
 premonition of approaching dissolution. He was stricken 
 with paralysis a day or two previous to his death, and 
 almost as soon as his sickness was known the melancholy 
 tidings were flashed to the most distant parts of our 
 country that Andrew Johnson was dead. Not to our 
 country only, but 'to the whole civilized world abroad, 
 
62 ADD HESS OF MR. M'FAKLAND ON THE 
 
 was the sad intelligence carried with lightning- speed that 
 the ''Great Commoner" was no more. 
 
 His remains were interred on a lofty eminence west of 
 the town of Greeneville, a spot selected by himself, com- 
 manding an extended view of the surrounding country, 
 and there, amid those mountain heights, all that is mortal 
 of Andrew Johnson is crumbling into dust. The voice 
 that has been so often heard in this Chamber is silenced 
 forever. The form that was so familiar in these halls has 
 disappeared, and will be seen no more. Shrouded in ^he 
 flag of his country, beneath the shadow of which he 
 fought the great political battles of his life, and whose 
 triumphant folds were ever to him an object of adoration 
 which he worshiped with an unswerving devotion, far 
 from the din and strife and turmoil of the outer world, he 
 quietly sleeps that last, long, peaceful sleep which knows 
 no waking. 
 
 Andrew Johnson's career as a public man is the most 
 remarkable and wonderful in all our history, and is per- 
 haps unprecedented in modern times. It cannot be ex- 
 pected in the few brief remarks we are to submit to the 
 House now that justice can be done to Mr. Johnson's 
 public life, or that we can take more than a glance at a 
 few of the prominent facts in his history. 
 
 Mr. Johnson was born in Raleigh, N. C, on the 29th 
 day of December, 1808. His father died when he was 
 a child, leaving the future statesman to the care of a 
 widowed mother in poverty and obscurity. At ten 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 03 
 
 years of age he was apprenticed to a tailor in his native 
 town. He was then unable to read, and his first efforts 
 to learn were made during this apprenticeship. A gentle- 
 man read to him some sketches from an old book known 
 as "The American Speaker," These extracts aroused the 
 attention of the poor apprentice and first fired his ambi- 
 tion. He determined and did learn to read them for him- 
 self. That book was presented to him, and is still pre- 
 served in the library of Mr. Johnson. 
 
 In the fall of the year 1826, on the evening of a dark, 
 gloomy day, a two-wheeled cart, drawn by a blind pony, 
 was driven into the village of Greeneville, East Tennessee, 
 from the direction of the mountains of North Carolina. 
 With it were two men and a woman. The younger of 
 the two, who drove the pony, stopped at the house of a 
 citizen whose sons are now living in that town, and asked 
 for forage to feed his horse, which he procured, and then 
 inquired for suitable camping -ground for the night, to 
 which he drove and encamped, near where now stands 
 the mansion of the Johnson family. In a little less than 
 forty years from that night that homeless wanderer, then 
 about eighteen years of age, shi'ouded in obscurity and 
 poverty, a stranger in a strange land, without the rudi- 
 ments of a common education, camping out under the 
 broad canopy of the heavens in the village of Greeneville, 
 became the occupant of the building at the far end of this 
 avenue, and the chief executive officer of a great confed- 
 eracy of States numbering forty million people! That 
 
64 ADDRESS OF ME. M'FARLAND ON THE 
 
 youth was Andrew Johnson. Such was his first appear- 
 ance in Tennessee, and thus the first night Andrew John- 
 son passed in Greeneville, which became liis future home. 
 
 Mr. Johnson estabhshed himself in business as a tailor. 
 By his industry, energy, unswerving integrity, and 
 promptness he was successful. As a mechanic, that fidel- 
 ity to duty and unquestioned honesty which character- 
 ized him in every period of his history won for him the 
 confidence and respect of the people, and made him, even 
 then, a power in the community. He was married shortly 
 after he settled in Greeneville, where his widow survives 
 him. She taught him to write; she aided him by her 
 intelligence and instruction in his efforts to acquire the 
 rudiments of an education, and thus laid the foundation 
 of his future greatness. Conscious of his powers and with 
 unfaltering confidence in himself, identified in interest 
 and sympathy with the laboring masses, he applied him- 
 self with untiring industry, under disadvantages of a most 
 extraordinary character, to the acquisition of an education 
 and to preparation for his future wonderful career. 
 
 In 1828 he was elected an alderman of the village ; was 
 re-elected in 1829 and 1830; and was elected to the office 
 of mayor in 1830. He was appointed a trustee of Rhea 
 Academy about 1831; was a member of the lower house 
 of the Tennessee Legislature in 1835. Being defeated in 
 1837, he was re-elected in 1839. He was elected State 
 senator in 1841, and a member of this House in 1843, to 
 which position he was re-elected for the four succeeding 
 
LIFE AND CHAEACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. Go 
 
 terms. He was elected governor of Tennessee in 1853, 
 re-elected in 1855, and in 1857 was chosen as a Senator 
 in Congress from the State of Tennessee for the terai end- 
 ing March 3, 1863; was appointed military governor of 
 Tennessee during the late civil war in 18G2; was a candi- 
 date for Vice-President on the ticket with Mr. Lincoln in 
 18G4, to which office he was elected, and by an event 
 never to be forgiotten in the history of the country, Mr. 
 Johnson, on the 15th of April, 18G5, became President of 
 the United States. 
 
 Of the events of Mr. Johnson's administration I shall 
 not speak. The history of his administration is now part 
 of the history of the country. Posterity will do him jus- 
 tice. The great statesmen of the past have been called 
 to the administration of public affairs in times of peace, 
 when the sh' i of state was sailing over a calm, unruffled 
 sea. Mr. Johnson took the helm in the midst of a storm 
 lashed into fury unprecedented in the history of our 
 country by the angry passions, the bitterness, and strife 
 of a long and bloody civil conflict. To say that he com- 
 mitted no errors would be to say that he was more than 
 human. Now that he has passed away none can gainsay 
 the honesty and integrity of Andrew Johnson, or doubt 
 his unfaltering fidelity to the great principle of constitu- 
 tional liberty. 
 
 After the close of his term as President, in 18G9, Mr. 
 Johnson retm-ned to his home in Tennessee. He became 
 a candidate for Senator, but was defeated. In 1872, at 
 
 9 
 
06 ADDRESS OF MR. M'FARLAND ON THE 
 
 the demand of a large number of his people, he became 
 a candidate for Congress from the State at large, but was 
 for the third time in the whole course of his public life 
 again defeated. In January, 1875, at the demand of the 
 people, he was elected by the Legislature of Tennessee a 
 Senator in Congress for six years. His last and only 
 appearance in that body after his election was at the extra 
 session in March, 1875, and with the cloee of that session 
 terminated Andrew Johnson's public services. 
 
 Such is a brief statement of the public positions held 
 by Mr. Johnson. He was continuously in the public serv- 
 ice for almost forty years. 
 
 It may be well said that his career was the most won- 
 ful in our history. Who, indeed, was . ever like him *? 
 Who ever, as he did, proved his honesty, his aims, and 
 his ambitions by conquering for them their indisputable 
 vindication? Taking the history of the three-score and 
 seven years of Andrew Johnson, the poverty of his child- 
 hood, the neglect of his youth, his humble origin, his 
 growth to manhood without even the rudiments of edu- 
 cation, his humble mechanical pursuit, and then looking 
 to his subsequent remarkable career, and we have the 
 outlines of a great man struggling against misfortune, 
 battling against fate, with bitter opposition at every step 
 of his progress, finally conquering every adverse element, 
 and at last elevating himself to the highest position in the 
 Republic. 
 
 The poor, uneducated youth became a Senator in Con- 
 
LTFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 07 
 
 gress, the governor of a great State, and the chief exec- 
 utive of a proud nation; and, dying, has embahned his 
 memory in the grateful hearts of milHons of his country- 
 men ; and, tliough his form has disappeared, Andrew 
 Johnson lives and will ever live in the affections of the 
 people while the principles of constitutional liberty are 
 feberished, and honesty, integrity, and patriotism, and 
 abilities of the highest order, are venerated by men. Of 
 him it may be said — 
 
 These shall resist the empire of decay 
 When time is o'er and worlds have passed away : 
 Cold in the dust the perished heart may lie, 
 But that which warmed it once can never die. 
 
 Andrew Johnson was but a man ; he had his faults ; 
 he committed errors ; but, looking to the unfavorable 
 circumstances by which his youth was surrounded, the 
 bitter and continuous political battles in which he was 
 engaged from early life down to his death, the wonder is 
 that he committed so few. 
 
 He had his enemies, and his life and history furnish 
 most striking evidence of the truth of the poet's sentiment : 
 
 He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find 
 
 The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow : 
 He who 8urt>as8es or subdues mankind 
 
 Must look down on the hate of those below. 
 Thoufjh high above the sun of glory glow, 
 
 And far beneath the earth and ocean spread, 
 Round liim are icy rocks, and loudly blow 
 
 Contending tempests on his naked head, 
 And thus reward the toils which to those summits led. 
 
 But Mr. Johnson had his friends and admirers, who 
 adhered to him through every vicissitude of his political 
 
G8 ADDRESS OP MR. M'FARLAND ON THE 
 
 fortunes, and with the laboring masses of the people of 
 the country perhaps no public man of his day had more 
 influence and power than did he. He was one of them ; 
 knew their wants, and sympathized with their struggles. 
 
 The life of Andrew Johnson is an example of the last- 
 ing fame that surely awaits the honest statesman. His 
 unswerving integrity ; his bold, independent, and candid 
 declaration of his opinion on public questions ; his confi- 
 dence in the people, and the absence of disguise in all his 
 acts, were his master-key to the popular heart. The 
 country was never in doubt as to his opinions and pur- 
 poses, and victorious or defeated, he remained firm in his 
 belief. In all the contests of his time his position on 
 great public questions was as clear as the sun in a cloud- 
 less sky. 
 
 Sirs, standing by the grave of Andrew Johnson, and 
 looking back over the history of his life and considering 
 these things, how insignificant and contemptible appear 
 the labor and ambition of the mere politician ! What a 
 reproach is his life on that false policy which would trifle 
 with a great people ! If I were to write the epitaph of 
 Andrew Johnson I would inscribe on the stone which 
 shall mark his resting-place, as the highest eulogy, ''Here 
 lies the man who was in the public service for forty 
 years, who never tried to deceive his countrymen, and 
 died, as he lived, ' an honest man, the noblest work of 
 God.' " While the youth of America should imitate his 
 noble qualities, they may take courage from his example, 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. G9 
 
 and note the high proof it caffords that under our equal 
 institutions the avenues to the highest position are open 
 aUke to all. 
 
 Mr. Johnson rose by the force of his own genius, indom- 
 itable will, and untiring energy, unaided by power, pres- 
 tige, or wealth. At an age when our young men are 
 usually in pursuit of education at institutions of learning, 
 he, in ignorance and poverty, made his way from the 
 " Old North State " toward the West, and, amid the rude 
 collisions incident to East Tennessee at that day, com- 
 menced his early struggle, and in less than fifty years 
 matured a character the highest exhibitions of which were 
 destined to mark eras in his country's history. Beginning 
 in the mountains of East Tennessee in 1826, brought into 
 antagonism with the power, influence, and wealth of old 
 citizens of the country, supported by the consciousness of 
 his own powers and by the confidence of the people, he 
 surmounted all the barriers of adverse fortune and won a 
 glorious name in the annals of his country. 
 
 Let the generous youth fired with an honorable ambi- 
 tion remember that our American system of government 
 offers on every hand and opens wide the doors to the most 
 exalted position and the grandest reward to merit. If, 
 like Andrew Johnson, orphanage, obscurity, and poverty 
 shall oppress him ; yet, if, like him, he feels the Prome- 
 thean spark within, let him remember that his country, 
 like a generous mother, opens wide her arms to welcome 
 every one of her children whose genius may promote her 
 
70 ADDRESS OF MR. M'FARLAND ON THE 
 
 prosperity or add to her renown. Mr. Speaker, I offer 
 the following" resolutions : 
 The Clerk read as follows : 
 
 Resolved, That the House of Representatives of the United States has received 
 -with the deepest sensibility and profound sorrow the intelligence of the death 
 of Hon. Andrew Johnson, late a Senator from the State of Tennessee, Ex- Presi- 
 dent of the United States and long a member of this House. 
 
 Resolved, That the proceedings of this House in relation to the death of Hon. 
 Andrew Johnson be communicated to the widow and family of the deceased by 
 the Clerk of this House. 
 
 Resolved, That as a further mark of respect for the memory of the deceased 
 this House do now adjourn. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 71 
 
 Address of Mr. Waddell, of North Carolina. 
 
 Mr. Speaker : I have been struck since these proceed- 
 ings commenced with the pecuhar circumstances of this 
 occasion. There is to a man who beHeves in special 
 providences food for reflection in the fact that just as 
 we have reached the cHmacteric of a debate upon the 
 question whether the American people shall live together 
 as brothers, whether there shall be a government of love 
 or hate, we are suddenly arrested by the remembrance 
 that there is a time appointed for all men once to die. 
 Mr. Speaker, when that supreme hour comes for you and 
 me and for each of us, I know nothing will give us more 
 consolation than the memory of deeds of charity and 
 good-will. 
 
 The very remarkable man whose death has just been 
 formally announced to this House was, like many other 
 men who obtained eminence in other States, a native and, 
 until his early manhood, a resident of North Carolina. It 
 is therefore meet, sir, that in this hour dedicated to his 
 memory the voice of that State should be heard, and the 
 duty of uttering it has been assigned to me. 
 
 My personal acquaintance with Mr. Johnson was very 
 limited and merely formal. I will not therefore under- 
 take to portray his character as a private citizen, nor shall 
 I attempt any sketch of his public life and his varied 
 
72 ADDRESS OF MR. WADDELL ON THE 
 
 and distinguished public services, because that has been 
 ah-eady done by my friend who has just taken his seat, 
 and is familiar to all more or less. 
 
 But he exhibited throughout his public career some 
 qualities upon which brief comment may justly be made, 
 and perhaps not unprofitably at this time. His education, 
 socially and politically, differed in almost every respect 
 from my own. Indeed I might say they were almost 
 antipodal, and never until his memorable struggle, when 
 President, for the preservation of constitutional liberty, 
 as I believe, had any portion of his career attracted my 
 sympathy. But aside from the characteristics which he 
 developed in that struggle he exhibited certain virtues as 
 a public man which must always command respect and 
 admiration — virtues which, if they are not rare nowadays, 
 are certainly not the commonest attributes of those who 
 occupy distinguished station. 
 
 Mr. Johnson was an honest man, a truthful man, and 
 incon-uptiblo. He obstinately adhered to the opinion 
 which ought to be, but is not, universally accepted and 
 acted upon, that personal integrity and political dishon- 
 esty are absolutely irreconcilable in the same person. In 
 all the bitter contests through which he passed, (and his 
 career in this respect is almost without a parallel,) his 
 worst enemy, so far as I know, never attempted to prove, 
 if he ever charged, that Andrew Johnson was a coiTupt 
 man. 
 
 Whatever his faults, or vices if you please — and, I pre- 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 73 
 
 Slime, like all other men, he had his full share of them — 
 he unquestionably had intense convictions, to which he 
 clung with fearless devotion and for which he battled 
 with manly courage. Among these, sir, none were more 
 conspicuous than his faith in the doctrines of the fathers 
 touching the limitations of the Constitution nnd his firm 
 belief in the maxim that purity of administration is essen- 
 tial to the life of free government. 
 
 If his almost fanatical love of the Union caused him at 
 times to assent to the use of arbitrary power, he still 
 always proclaimed the supremacy of the Constitution. If 
 con-uption in administration occurred during his Presi- 
 dency, no one ever accused him of being even remotely 
 connected with it. He at least understood the principles 
 and sympathized with the spirit of repubhcan institutions. 
 He did not think that personal comfort and pecuniary 
 benefit were the chief ends to be aimed at in seeking pub- 
 lic offices. He did not accept them at the hands of his 
 countrymen as a debt due to him, and did not administer 
 them, as small men always do, in accordance with his 
 personal feelings and interests. He considered himself 
 the servant of the people, bound by his oath to be careful 
 and diligent in looking out, not for his own, but for their 
 interests. He never was one of those who were called, 
 and aptly called in the civil-service-commission report, 
 "the banditti of politics and the pawnbrokers of patron- 
 age." 
 
 He may not have been a broad-minded statesman, in 
 
 10 
 
74 ADDRESS OF MR. WADDELL ON THE 
 
 the ordinary acceptation of that term, but it is to be re- 
 membered that in his youth there was no opportunity 
 afforded him for broad culture, and that he did not even 
 have a patron to secure for him education at the pubhc 
 expense. He certainly was not a classical scholar. It 
 would seem that he did not even know what nepos meant, 
 and was utterly insensible to the charm that lies hidden 
 behind the words dona ferentes. But in practical ability, 
 in power as a debater, whether before popular assemblies 
 or legislative assemblies, and in extensive information in 
 the domain of politics, he was by no means deficient. His 
 long and active public service in association with some of 
 the wisest and ablest statesmen of this land, improved, 
 enlarged, and liberalized his naturally powerful intellect 
 to a degree which may perhaps justify his assignment to 
 a place among the ablest of our Chief Magistrates, and 
 certainly to one very far above some of them. 
 
 After his death some pious investigator, I believe, 
 claimed to have discovered that he was an infidel. I have 
 ver}^ good evidence to disprove that ; but while person- 
 ally I know not how that may have been, I do know that 
 while he was alive and in office he was too ^od a patriot 
 to seek to excite a refigious persecution against any por- 
 tion of his fellow-citizens. If he had religious views of 
 any kind, it is safe to say that they were his own, and 
 were arrived at after mature deliberation and reflection ; 
 but whatever they were, sir, he never sought to make 
 political capital out of them. 
 
LIFE AND OHARACTEK, OF ANDREW JOHNSON. <5 
 
 Mr. Speaker, Andrew Johnson has gone to hia long rest, 
 as sooner or later each and all of us must go. After a 
 long and laborious career, begun in poverty, ignorance, 
 and friendlessn^ss, but crowned throughout its course with 
 earthly honors, he now confronts the mysteries of eter- 
 nity. It may possibly be some consolation to his friends 
 to believe that if for his deeds done in the body he be im- 
 peached in his new state of existence, he will at least have 
 angels for his prosecutors and the Merciful One for his 
 judge. That is the only consolation that is left to any of 
 us in contemplating the events of a future life. 
 
 I do not hold up Mr. Johnson as an exemplar either in 
 morals or in politics. Very few are the men to whom I 
 could pay that tribute. But, sir, the qualities which I 
 have ascribed to him, and which he possessed, may well 
 be emulated by some of his contemporaries upon whom 
 fortune or an inscrutable Providence has devolved the 
 duties and responsibilities of pi\blic office. Upon many 
 of them have more brilliant gifts been bestowed. They 
 have been more learned, more eloquent, more popular 
 than he. But not of every one of them can it be said, as 
 of him, he was honest, he was truthful, he was incorrupt- 
 ible. These are traits, sir, which his native State of 
 North Carolina will never cease to honor in any American 
 statesman, whether born within her borders or not. And 
 therefore, as a tribute to them, as developed in Andrew 
 Johnson, she now lays her wreath upon his tomb. 
 
76 ADDRESS OF MR. THORNBURGH ON THE 
 
 Address of Mr. Thornburgh, of Tennessee. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, representing in part that section of the 
 State of Tennessee which was the home of Andrew John- 
 son, 1 desire to express my respect for his character and 
 veneration for his memory. My colleague has mentioned 
 the incidents of the early life and the long public career 
 of Andrew Johnson with an interesting completeness that 
 renders unnecessary further recital. Yet an expression 
 of sorrow for his loss, and appreciation for the great vir- 
 tues he, as a man and a statesman, possessed, cannot be 
 inappropriate, coming from one who, though differing 
 upon political questions, enjoyed his friendship from 
 childhood. 
 
 My earliest recollections of political contests and public 
 discussions is connected with the conflicts and triumphs 
 which so characterized his history. There was a period 
 of his life when I had almost daily opportunities to study 
 his character and observe the manner in which he per- 
 formed important and arduous duties that devolved upon 
 him. This was when Mr. Johnson was military governor 
 of Tennessee. It was the stormiest day of our national 
 history. The country was in the midst of civil war, and 
 there are few of us here wlio have forgotton what civil 
 war means. In this important and responsible position 
 
LIFE AND CHAKACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 77 
 
 he exhibited many of those great quahties which made 
 him a fit ruler in times of disorder and turbulence. He 
 was fertile in resources, zealous, earnest, and faithful. 
 There were no precedents to guide him in the arduous 
 duties of his ofiice. His vigorous mind, resolute purpose, 
 strong will, were necessary in the work required, while 
 that work itself illustrated his love of justice, his courage, 
 energy, and patriotism. War had almost obliterated all 
 traces of government in Tennessee. The State was a 
 chaos, out of which he was to bring order. The desola- 
 tion of contending araiies made it necessary for him to 
 create supphes, house the homeless, clothe the naked, 
 feed the poor. The courts were closed to the redress of 
 grievances, and justice was to be administered by him. 
 Thousands of Union people flocked to him, begging for 
 supplies and arms. And yet he proved equal to the task 
 before him. He was civil chief magistrate, a general, 
 judge, and quartermaster, and a benefactor of the poor. 
 He worked with constant, tireless energy, bringing order 
 out of confusion, re-instating the coui'ts of justice, re- 
 dressed grievances, and fed, sheltered, and clothed the 
 homeless poor, without regard to the Army in which their 
 natural protectors might be found. From the Union men 
 around him he raised an army and sent them to the field, 
 where they did gallant service for the Government; and 
 when the capture of his capital was threatened, he refused 
 to abandon it with our retreating Army, but, stem and 
 unfaltering, stood a bulwark for its defense. 
 
 
78 ADDRESS OF MR. THORNBURGH ON THE 
 
 But all this has become a part of the history of the 
 country. Andrew Johnson never faltered in his devo- 
 tion to the Union. With unsurpassed earnestness he 
 devoted every faculty of body and mind to a successful 
 re-establishment of a united republic, looking forward 
 anxiously to the hour when he could bring his State 
 back into the Union and could see her star once more 
 emblazoned on his country's banner. The most notable 
 features in Andrew Johnson's life and character were his 
 humble origin, his utter want of early education, his faith- 
 ful devotion to the principles he espoused, his great 
 courage and indomitable will. To these circumstances in 
 his history and these traits in his character can be traced, 
 in my opinion, the two most important events in his life. 
 Without these characteristics he might not have stood on 
 the floor of the Senate the solitary representative from 
 the seceding States, and have made that memorable 
 speech on the 27th of July, 1861, which was so full of 
 the deepest political reseach and the most thorough and 
 unselfish patriotism. Starting with the maxim that ^^Sahis 
 respiihliccD suprema /ex," he said : 
 
 Tlie time has come when the Government should put forth its entire power 
 and sustain the supremacy of the Constitutiou and laws made in pursuance 
 thereof. If we have uo government, let the delusion be dispelled, let the dreaui 
 pass away, and let the people of the United States and the nations of the earth 
 know at once we have uo government. If we have a government based on the 
 intelligence and virtue of the American people, let that great fact be now estab- 
 lished ; and when once established, this Government will be on a more enduring 
 and perma ent basis than it ever was before. I still have confidence in the 
 integrity, the virtue, the intelligence, and the patriotism of the great mass of 
 the people; and so believing, I intend to stand by the Government of my fathers 
 to the last extremity. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 79 
 
 Sentiments like these, coming' at that peculiar crisis in 
 the country's history from a Southern Senator, re-echoed 
 through the land, and gave rebuke to those who could 
 find no power in the Constitution for national self-preser- 
 vation, and infused new confidence and courage to those 
 preparing for the great conflict that was so soon to follow. 
 But while Andrew Johnson was resolute in war, no 
 sooner had the echoes of the last battle died away than he 
 became an earnest advocate of a reunited people. lie 
 sought to bury all past animosities, and to cultivate the 
 nobler feelings of kindness, forgiveness, and fraternal love. 
 Few men in history could have held the reins of govern- 
 ment as its chief executive at that time, when human pas- 
 sions had become inflamed by the memories of tliis recent 
 terrible war, and have determined the novel and anoma- 
 lous questions presented without encountering the antago- 
 nism of some leading statesmen, and inviting that bitter 
 denunciation of calumny and vilification which now seems 
 to be visited upon all who have attained to exalted posi- 
 tion, and who have rendered great services to their country 
 and to mankind. His marked individuality, great tenacity 
 of purpose, and iron will, brought him his full measure of 
 honest opposition and malignant aspersion. But even the 
 genius of slander itself had not the audacity to charge 
 Andrew Johnson wath dishonesty in any act of his long 
 and eventful public life. 
 
 I shall leave it for others, his contemporaries and asso- 
 ciates, to speak more in detail of his career while in the 
 
80 ADDEESS OF MR. THORNBUKGH ON THE 
 
 two Houses of Congress and while President of the na- 
 tion. 
 
 A great leader of the people, an orator possessing pecu- 
 liar power to inspire, persuade, convince, and control the 
 honest masses of the country, has passed the opening 
 portals of the grave, and none feel his loss more keenly 
 or lament his death more sincerely than the humbler classes, 
 from whose ranks he sprang and whose peculiar champion 
 he never ceased to be. His dust now mingles with that of 
 Jackson and Polk in the bosom of Tennessee. Peace to 
 his ashes, honor to his memory. 
 
 Let him rest ; it is not often 
 
 That bis soul hath known repose. 
 Let him lest ; they rest but seldom 
 
 Whose snecesses challenge foes. 
 Ho was weary, worn with watching; 
 
 His life-crown of power hath i)resse<l 
 Oft on temples sadly aching; 
 
 He was weary, let him rest. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 81 
 
 Address of Mr. Conger, of Michigan. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, in this age of the world the development 
 and character of the individual man is the result of 
 generations of human growth. The victories of the war- 
 rior, the achievements of the statesman, and the fanciful 
 creations of the poet are made possible by the existing 
 conditions of society, and are so evoked from and com- 
 mingled with the innumerable circumstances of human 
 progress as to render it uncertain to what extent they origi- 
 nate in the individual intellect and will, and how far they 
 are the result of myriad unseen agencies. 
 
 In the dawn of human existence man, himself a new- 
 wrought miracle, without revelation or tradition, wandered 
 amid the marvels of a new creation to wonder, admire, 
 and adore. We can scarcely realize through what cen- 
 turies he must have passed from that primitive period of 
 child-like simplicity and instinctive adoration, tlu-ough 
 the slow development of the idea of the heroic, the beau- 
 tiful, the rehgious, and the practical, until he could com- 
 prehend the laws of the physical and intellectual world, 
 and tower among millions of the human race the type 
 and representative of the marvelous civilization of the 
 nineteenth century ! Every age has marked man's prog- 
 ress, and every great advance in mental and moral cul- 
 
 11 
 
82 
 
 ADDRESS OP MR. CONGER ON THE 
 
 ture has had some typical representative of the aggregate' 
 development of his social and moral attributes. 
 
 On this occasion we pause for a moment in the busy 
 avocations of life to pay the tribute of our respect to the 
 memory of one of our distinguished compeers, who, hav- 
 ing exemplified almost every vicissitude of earthly fortune, 
 having attained the highest place of power, and having 
 afterward entered upon a pathway untrodden by any pre- 
 decessor, has obeyed the inexorable mandate — to rest from 
 his labors on earth. 
 
 I have thought, sir, while other gentlemen portrayed his 
 life and character more accurately and eloquently than I 
 have the ability to do, it might not be inappropriate for me 
 to refer to some peculiarities in the life and character of 
 this distinguished citizen which illustrate conditions of for- 
 tune that could only exist in American civilization and 
 under American institutions. 
 
 Sir, I have believed from early youth, with emotions of 
 pride and gratitude which I have no language to express, 
 that we live in an age and are citizens of a country whose 
 laws, policy, and free institutions, in their true intention 
 and result, opened to every child of the Republic alike the 
 royal road to education, culture, distinction, and honor — 
 the royal highway that leads to everything and all things 
 that are garnered in our grand inheritance of freedom to 
 which the immortal soul might honorably aspire, across 
 which arrogance should build no barricade and ignorance 
 no trench ; where wealth should never jostle the poor nor 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 83 
 
 pride ovemde the humble; where vhi;ue might pass with 
 fearless step and devotion might worship at every way- 
 side shrine! 
 
 With such reflections, Mr. Speaker, I commend to my 
 countrymen the study of the life and character of Andrew 
 Johnson as illustrating more distinctly than any other 
 example which now occurs to my memory the spirit, the 
 tendencies, and the possibilities of American institutions. 
 
 Neither the occasion nor my own inclination will permit 
 more than a brief reference ; but the American citizen may 
 inquire with pride. Where else could the child of poverty 
 and ignorance, under like circumstances, have risen to the 
 highest honors of the State ? In what other land and 
 under what other civilization could woman have become 
 at once the wife and the teacher of the wandering me- 
 chanic, and, accompanying and encouraging his upward 
 progress to honor and power, could have imparted to her 
 daughters such delicate culture and gentle training that, 
 even amid the splendors of the Capital and the throngs of 
 beauty, they could disarm envy by their virtues and excite 
 admiration by their simplicity ? 
 
 Under what other division of power between the Gen- 
 eral Government, the States, and the people, could the 
 subject of an impeachment and prosecution the most re- 
 markable and determined ever witnessed in our land have 
 undergone so fiery an ordeal, and afterward so far com- 
 manded the respect of political friends and foes that his 
 return to the Senate should meet with general approval ? 
 
84 ADDRESS OF MR. CONGER ON THE 
 
 That he was gifted with remarkable powers none will 
 deny. With a strong intellect, untiring industry, an 
 indomitable will, and an ambition that gathered intensity 
 alike from defeat and success; with little of that personal 
 sympathy which could control the multitude by its electric 
 influence, and with a directness and obstinacy arising in 
 part from physical organization, but more from the mental 
 habitudes peculiar to the varied circumstances of his con- 
 dition, his life exhibits a greater variety of the phases of 
 character that spread all the way from unworthy littleness 
 to moral grandeur than that of any other statesman whose 
 name illustrates American history. 
 
 He was considerate in his friendships, vindictive in his 
 enmities, unforgiving of injury, but moderate in victory. 
 With a blunt honesty of purpose and acknowledged integ- 
 rity of character, he marshaled his forces, and controlled 
 the situation more through an involuntary respect and an 
 undefined fear than from personal favor and affection. 
 
 Remembering his early life, he was ever the friend of 
 the poor, from whose ranks he had risen, yet lacked the 
 loftiness of soul which would have prevented his taking an 
 unworthy pride in humbling the pretensions of wealth and 
 the ostentation of birth. 
 
 His zeal for the homeless and landless poor never flagged, 
 and his indomitable love of the Union and struggles for 
 the perpetuity of free institutions challenge the admira- 
 tion of the world ; and even his ceaseless reiterations of 
 his love of the Constitution, although exciting the ridicule 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 85 
 
 of political opponents, were in harmony with his life-long 
 actions and professions. 
 
 Sir, there were occasions in his life, rendered sublime by 
 his heroic courage and indomitable zeal for the honor, the 
 Union, and the Constitution of his country, which history 
 will emblazon upon its pages ; and when the prejudices 
 and passions of the hour shall have passed away, posterity 
 will inscribe them upon his monument. 
 
 Even-handed justice will attribute his foibles and faults 
 to his early struggles with poverty and toil, the im- 
 perfection of early culture and education, and to the 
 anomalous condition of the social organization in the midst 
 of which he lived ; while the memory of his countrymen 
 will linger around those nobler manifestations of his cour- 
 age and patriotism in preserving those glorious institu- 
 tions that invited him from the depths of ignorance and 
 want to the high places of usefulness and honor. 
 
 His illustrious example will quicken the genius and 
 stimulate the energy of ten thousand children of poverty 
 and toil to strive for higher culture and search for nobler 
 fields of usefulness and honor, and it may admonish the 
 patriot and statesman with renewed emphasis, that in the 
 more perfect education and virtue of all the people lies the 
 only safe reliance for the perpetuity of our free institu- 
 tions and the future glory of our country. 
 
 Sir, there are nobler things in life than wealth and 
 power ; there are far richer treasures for the citizens than 
 lie hidden in the mine, for neither the vast outlines of our 
 
86 ADDRESS OF MR. CONGER ON THE 
 
 domain nor the illimitable wealth within its borders, 
 neither the grandeur of our encircling" mountains nor the 
 beauty of our silver streams, neither rapidly-multiplying 
 States, populous cities, nor the unrivaled expanse of rural 
 cultivation can awaken in the breast such emotions of 
 pride and patriotism as the unfaltering belief that through 
 all and over all this glorious land are established such laws 
 and such institutions as will preserve forever, as the irre- 
 versible inheritance of the American people, "the absolute 
 equality of manhood and the universal enjoyment of equal 
 rights." 
 
LIFE AND CnARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 87 
 
 Address of Mr. Young, of Georgia. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, in the hour of grief, in the ministrations 
 of affliction, when the sable drapery of mourning is drawn 
 in heavy folds around us, and the mind is overshadowed 
 with gloom, silence is sometimes more eloquent and im- 
 pressive than the chaste rhetoric of the scholar or the 
 flowing declamation of the orator. 
 
 In the ceremonies of sorrow, in the expressions of regret 
 and honor to the dead, the downcast face and drooping 
 eye sometimes speak the emotions of the heart in language 
 more touching and truthful than the studied and polished 
 utterances of the eulogist or the glowing phrases clothed 
 in the beautiful imagery of the poet. 
 
 After what has been so fittingly and eloquently said by 
 my colleagues who have just spoken, I might with pro- 
 priety keep my place among the silent spectators of these 
 solemn and impressive ceremonies without by speaking in- 
 cuiTing the risk of detracting aught from the beauty of the 
 tributes which they have offered to the memory and public 
 services of the distinguished citizen of our State whose 
 death has just been formally announced to this body; 
 and, indeed, I should have stood reverently, sadly, but in 
 silence before the altar of the people's sorrow, this day un- 
 veiled in the council-chamber of the nation, but for the 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. YOUNa ON THE 
 
 reason that had I done so I should not have reflected the 
 wishes nor met the expectations of a large number of those 
 who clothed me with the honors of an American legislator 
 and sent me here to speak in their name. 
 
 But in the little which I shall say expressive of their and 
 my own estimate of the character of the distinguished man 
 whose fortunes they followed with equal courage in the 
 gloom of defeat and the brightness of success, I shall not 
 exaggerate his virtues by the extravagant laudations of 
 the friendly eulogist, nor unveil his faults with the hostile 
 hand of the carping critic. The one is the task of the 
 orator upon the rostrum, the poet in song, and the enthu- 
 siast in history, while the other is the congenial work of 
 those who forget the good and remember only the evil 
 that men do, and never learn to cast the mantle of charity 
 even over the graves of those with whom they have strug- 
 gled in life. 
 
 Of great men, whether living or dead, the truth may 
 be fitly spoken. The scales in which their character is 
 weighed may be held with an impartial hand, no matter 
 whether good or evil disturb the equal poise. 
 
 Andrew Johnson, when living, was not wont to shrink 
 from any combat nor quail before any foe; and now that 
 he is dead, and the story of his checkered life is passing 
 into history, there is perhaps but little cause to invoke the 
 eulogy of his friends or to supplicate the forbearance of 
 his enemies. To say that he was a perfect man, that no 
 fault marred the symmetry of his character, that no error 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 
 
 89 
 
 of action, no weakness or vice of nature dimmed the luster 
 of his fame, would be to raise him above the level of hu- 
 manity and clothe him with attributes not found in the 
 history of mankind. But as the purest gold is alloyed 
 with baser metal, as some ingrain flaw dims the sparkling 
 light of the rarest jewel, so the fame of the most exalted 
 human character is shadow by some human frailty. 
 
 The page upon which the future historian shall record 
 the career and achievements of Andrew Johnson will be 
 fraught with deeper interest to the thoughtful mind than 
 almost any other in the great volume of American history. 
 The story of his life, from the time he laid aside the imple- 
 ments of the humble artisan, through all the gradations of 
 political preferment until the day, only a little while ago, 
 when he was laid in the grave, is a record of bold concep- 
 tion, high aims, grand struggles, and marvelous triumphs. 
 
 To relate his struggles and his successes, his combats 
 and his victories, would fill the pages of many volumes ; 
 to even group together without comment the grander and 
 more dramatic events of his wonderful career, from the 
 humble workshop of the country village to the stately 
 mansion of the nation's rulers, would extend my remarks 
 beyond the limits fixed by the proprieties of this occa- 
 sion. ^ 
 
 Reaching the period of manhood and entenng upon the 
 journey of life without fortune or friends, unlearned in 
 the lore of books, not even acquainted with the simple 
 characters which make their silent pages speak the 
 
 12 
 
90 
 
 ADDRESS OF ME. YOUNG ON THE 
 
 thoughts of Others and reveal to the mind the rich treasures 
 of human learning, he grappled with and overcame these 
 obstacles to greatness with the same tireless energy and 
 persistent courage which he brought to the accomplish- 
 ment of every undertaking of his future life. 
 
 Endowed by nature with a manhood that knew no fear, 
 an energy that knew no rest, a mind original and unique 
 in its cast, which no system of ethics, no school of learn- 
 ing, could fetter or control, his character stands among the 
 figures of American history without a model, grand and 
 striking as the rugged mountains which girdle his beauti- 
 ful Tennessee home. 
 
 In no country on earth, save in this land of free speech, 
 free thought, and free institutions, could there have been 
 such a career as Andrew Johnson's. Making his first 
 appearance as a legislator and representative of the people 
 in the village council, and then as a delegate to the legis- 
 lature of his State, he evinced at that early period the 
 same inflexible integrity, stern devotion to duty, and strict 
 adherence to the delegated powers of a public servant 
 which governed him in his future political life. 
 
 Growing in public favor, and recognized by the people 
 as the champion of their rights, the fearless defender of 
 their interests, he was elected a member of the National 
 Congress, and then, scarcely known, save by the sturdy 
 yeomenry that dwelt among the mountains and in the 
 green valleys of East Tennessee, he entered this hall and 
 took his place among the counselors of the nation. Here 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 
 
 91 
 
 he found a fitting field for the exercise of those wonderful 
 powers with which nature had gifted him ; here he entered 
 an arena in which he could display all the prowess of the 
 mighty athlete which he was soon to become. 
 
 Elected chief magistrate of his State, he filled the seat 
 once held by a Sevier, a Carroll, and a Polk with an 
 ability equal to his illustrious predecessors, and reflected 
 renewed honor upon the great Commonwealth over which 
 he presided. 
 
 Fortune still smiling upon her chosen favorite, he was 
 elected by the legislature of Tennessee a Senator in the 
 Congress of the nation, where he grappled in equal combat 
 with the great orators and statesmen who then composed 
 that august body. 
 
 Still moving onward in the fulfillment of the high des- 
 tiny allotted him by nature, he was called by the voice of 
 the people to the second highest office in their gift; and 
 before its mantle had scarcely been adjusted, the provi- 
 dence of God placed in his hand the scepter wielded by 
 the chief ruler of our great Eepublic. 
 
 This brief sketch of a single character, this short story, 
 so plainly told, of a single life, covers events so strange 
 and developments so startling, one might well suppose that 
 the hand of the romancer had seized upon the pen of the 
 historian and written upon a page swept by ihe wand of 
 the magician. The unlettered youth, the country rustic, 
 becoming by his own unaided exertions a polished orator, 
 a learned legislator, a great leader of the people, and 
 
93 ADDRESS OF MR. YOUNG ON THE 
 
 finally the ruler of his nation, presents a picture seldom 
 drawn by the pen of the sober historian. 
 
 The name of Andrew Johnson will go into history 
 coupled with the great events which attracted the interest 
 and attention of mankind during the age in which he lived. 
 
 Many of his public acts, as well as the general tenor of 
 his life, endeared him in a peculiar manner to the hearts 
 of the people, the humble masses of his countrymen. They 
 followed and trusted him with a confidence and aftec- 
 tionrarely ever accorded before to an American poli- 
 tician, and in the strength of their devotion and exube- 
 rance of their enthusiasm they crowned him the people's 
 sovereign. 
 
 Early in his public career there sprang into existence, 
 as the off'ering and product of that restless spirit wliich has 
 always pervaded American politics, ever seeking changes 
 and innovations, a party organization teaching hostility to 
 a large class of our people, and making the character of 
 their religion and the place of their birth the test of politi- 
 cal preferment. Gathering strength by the novelty of its 
 teachings, and crossing the border of surrounding States, 
 it was spreading over Tennessee like a rushing wave 
 sweeping away all opposition, until it met in Andrew 
 Johnson a stern, relentless foe, under whose stalwart blows 
 it was shattered to atoms, and it now only lives in the his- 
 tory of the past. 
 
 No marvel, then, that every man of foreign birth, who 
 has found a home wpon American soil, shelter and protec- 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OP ANDREW JOnNSON. 93 
 
 tion under the broad banner of our free Government, 
 honors and reveres the name and memory of the enlight- 
 ened statesman, the bold and generous champion who bat- 
 tled so gallantly to maintain for them the rights of Ameri- 
 can citizenship. 
 
 Identified with the people in all their feelings and sym- 
 pathies, having an intuitive perception of their wants and 
 interests, he was ever active in the furtherance of those 
 measures of legislation peculiarly calculated for the pro- 
 tection of their rights and the advancement of their hap- 
 piness. 
 
 While his unbending will and strong combative nature 
 made him smite rudely and wrestle fiercely with rival 
 leaders whom he encountered, sometimes bringing upon 
 him the enmity of the great and the powerful, yet the 
 weak and defenseless were always his friends. 
 
 Studying profoundly our theory of government, so con- 
 genial to his nature and instinctive convictions, he became 
 one among the ablest expounders of that palladium of our 
 liberties, the safeguard of our rights, the Constitution of 
 our country. To this, as he construed it, he adhered with 
 unyielding firmness during all his long official life; by 
 this he was guided in all his public actions. That which 
 fell short of its requirements or went beyond its limits 
 received from him no mild rebuke, no gentle touch, but 
 was the signal of instant combat. 
 
 Once fixed in his convictions, he followed them with an 
 energy that never relaxed, an industry that never tired, a 
 
94 ADDRESS OF MR. YOUNG ON THE 
 
 vigilance that never slept, and a courage that never fal- 
 tered or deserted him. 
 
 In the great historical events which transpired during 
 his busy, eventful life his nature rose to the dignity; of the 
 occasion, and in all the changing vicissitudes of his career 
 he lost none of that fixedness of purpose and persistency 
 of will which carried him over so many obstacles, from 
 the obscurity of the village artisan to the world-wide fame 
 of the great commoner. 
 
 Whether basking in the sunshine of popular favor as 
 the idol of the hour or battling against the storm of party 
 proscription, he remained steadfast in his faith of the final 
 triumph of the principles for which he contended, the 
 measures which he advocated. 
 
 When the foll}^ and madness of the American people 
 had culminated in a fierce storm of civil war; when mill- 
 ions of armed men rushed to battle ; when our whole social 
 and political structure reeled and trembled in the terrible 
 convulsion, he had the firmness to resist the entreaties of his 
 friends, the allurements of the highest ambition which their 
 partiality could have gratified, and to pursue the convic- 
 tions which led him in a different direction. 
 
 When, in the heat of partisan zeal, before the quiet 
 dignity of the statesman and the calm reflection of the 
 patriot had taken the place of the frenzied passions and 
 vindictive enmities engendered by the war, he was arraigned 
 for trial before hostile judges, charged with a violation of 
 that instrument which he had made the study and guide 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 95 
 
 of his life, here he appalled his accusers and won the 
 plaudits of the world by a dignity and moral grandeur of 
 deportment that might have saved Charles of England from 
 the scaffold and a monarch of France from dying by the 
 guillotine. 
 
 Firm and unbending before the fickle storm of public 
 opinion, which was for the time beating against him, and 
 making no effort to change its current, he retired from his 
 high office with the dignity of a Roman senator and the 
 unpretending patriotism of a Cincinnatus, and returned to 
 the home in the mountains from which he had so often 
 been called by the voice of the people. 
 
 He presented the spectacle — all too rare in modern his- 
 tory — of a man spending an entire life-time in his coun- 
 try's service, filling the highest station in its gift, holding 
 in some measure both its purse and its sword, going back 
 in the evening of his days to private life poorer than most 
 of those who give only ordinary talents to the usual avo- 
 cations of life. 
 
 No bribe ever found its way into his hand; no corrup- 
 tion ever stained his record; and it was the pride of his 
 life, the boast of his friends, that even his enemies have 
 borne willing testimony to the purity of his private and 
 the honesty of his public life. 
 
 It is yet too soon to write impartially the history of this 
 remarkable man. His combats are too recent; too many 
 of the foemen with whom he contended are still living; 
 the blows he dealt are yet too keenly felt. The snows of 
 
96 ADDRESS OF MR. YOUNG ON THE 
 
 a single winter have not yet fallen upon his new-made 
 grave in the village church-yard. In it let him rest until 
 a future generation, unbiassed by the friendship or enmity 
 of the present, shall sit in judgment upon his actions and 
 accord him that place in history to which he shall be en- 
 titled. 
 
 The thoughts, feelings, and aspirations which have 
 occupied great minds in life have sometimes been the 
 burden of their last whisper as they were being forever 
 enveloped in the gathering shadows of death. 
 
 When the great Napoleon lay dying in exile, long after 
 his splendid career had closed, his mind wandered back to 
 the days of his glory, when he was the leader of those in- 
 vincible armies whose marches over Europe were lighted 
 with the constant blaze of victory: he whispered with fail- 
 ing breath the same martial words which had rung over 
 so many fields of battle. 
 
 When the great English admiral, the heroic Nelson, 
 had fought his last fight, had won his last great victory, 
 and was being borne bleeding, dying, from the bloody 
 deck, he uttered those words which have gone into his- 
 tory and been inscribed beside his name high up upon 
 the roll of naval heroes. 
 
 Andrew Johnson, when about to step across the nar- 
 row stream which divides us from the broad ocean of 
 eternity which spreads out beyond, when the sound of its 
 rushing waters was falling upon his ear, unmindful of tlie 
 terrors of the grim specter whose shadowy outline was 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOUNSON. 97 
 
 drawing near, said to those around him: ''Let my body 
 be shrouded in the flag of the nation and my head be pil- 
 lowed upon the Constitution of my country." What 
 grander thought, what higher aspiration, could fill the 
 mind of an American patriot and statesman in the hour of 
 death ! 
 
 No wonder, then, that those antagonisms growing out 
 of party differences and bitter political strifes should have 
 been softened or forever obliterated from the minds of his 
 most relentless enemies, and that all over the civilized 
 world men should feel that a great spirit had fallen when 
 the lightning's flash, flying over valleys, along mountains, 
 and under the billows of the ocean, brought the silent 
 message, "Andeew Johnson is dead!" 
 
 The aphorism that "republics are ungrateful" can no 
 longer hold a place in truthful history. What king or 
 potentate ever received higher honors from slaves and 
 courtiers than the American people have conferred upon 
 this untitled republican leader, making him the chief 
 ruler of their nation while living, and, now that he is dead, 
 the representatives of fifty millions of freemen pause in 
 the business of legislation to do honor to his memory? 
 
 Every people, since the day the Romans planted their 
 great empire upon the banks of the Tiber and the Greeks 
 spread their civilization along the shores of the Mediterra- 
 nean, have done honor to the fame and achievements of 
 the great and illustrious of their countrymen after they 
 were dead, whatever judgment they awarded them when 
 
 13 
 
98 
 
 ADDRESS OF MR. YOUNa ON THE 
 
 living, and they have filled their galleries with paintings 
 and studded their cities thick with monuments in com- 
 memoration of their deeds and in honor of their memory. 
 
 Nor have we been less generous to our illustrious dead 
 than other and older nations of the world. The canvas 
 upon which their features have been portrayed hangs 
 from the pillars and decorates the walls of the Capitol, 
 while their forms, cast in bronze or sculptured in marble, 
 stand in the alcoves of the Rotunda like silent sentinels 
 guarding the citadel of free institutions and American lib- 
 erty. And though the glowing canvas may fade, the 
 brass corrode, and the beautiful marble crumble into 
 dust, yet their memory will live in story and song as long 
 as tradition shall dwell in the human mind, and until the 
 stream of human history shall be lost in the waveless sea 
 of oblivion. Death has of a verity been hurling its shafts 
 at shining marks, and taking its victims from the circle of 
 the nation's great men. 
 
 Massachusetts has just buried Henry Wilson, her own 
 great commoner, who, like his distinguished compeer, rose 
 from the humblest origin to the highest stations and most 
 distinguished honors, and the emblems of mourning that 
 festoon this Hall and di'oop with the half-mast flag of our 
 country attest the nation's sympathy with the ancient 
 Commonwealth of the East 
 
 In the performance of these ceremonies, it would be 
 well if we would forever forget the differences, growing 
 as well out of the providence of God as the folly of men. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 99 
 
 which have so long and so unhappily divided those whom 
 the interest of civilization and the destiny of their race 
 require to be brothers not only in political relations but 
 in social feeling. 
 
 It were better if we could consecrate this hour to the 
 service of the living as well as to the honor of the dead 
 by burying in the graves of Andrew Johnson and Henry 
 Wilson the bitterness and hatreds which have so long 
 burned in the hearts of our people. Let Massachusetts 
 and Tennessee join hands over the tombs of their great 
 statesmen and renew that broken bond of political union 
 and fraternal affection which once bound them so nearly 
 together. 
 
 Though they have entered the valley of the shadow of 
 death, let us emerge from the shadow of our past misfor- 
 tunes into the full brightness of that day the coming dawn 
 of which already begins to gild with golden azure the 
 heavy clouds which have so long hung upon our political 
 horizon. 
 
 Now, in the opening of the centennial year of our na- 
 tional life, before the coming spring shall spread its ver- 
 nal robe over the graves of our illustrious dead, let the 
 yawning chasm rent by the throes of a horrid civil war 
 be forever closed, and the blessings of prosperity, good 
 government, and perpetual peace be vouchsafed to a 
 people who have made themselves worthy to receive 
 them. 
 
100 ADDRESS OF MR. THROCKMORTON ON THE 
 
 Address of Mr. Throckmorton, of Tennessee. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, being a native of Tennessee, and having 
 had official relations with Mr. Johnson, I feel it to be a 
 melancholy duty to join in seconding the resolutions now 
 being considered. In doing so I desire to say Mr. John- 
 son, by what he was and by what he did, by his quali- 
 ties, his fortunes, and his work, is entitled to prominent 
 mention among the great leaders of his age and his coun- 
 try. 
 
 He is notably a representative of the common people 
 of the land; of that class to whom the Republic must look 
 for defense against foreign foes, upon whose broad shoul- 
 ders the great industrial enterprises that minister so essen- 
 tially to the necessities, comforts, and civilization of the 
 nation rest; and who furnish the common sense from 
 which the overruling sober second thought, so necessary 
 to the preservation of om* political equipoise, comes, and 
 the sterling integrity that prompts all sacrifices and impels 
 all great endeavors for patriotic purposes against either 
 domestic or foreign foes. Without the advantages of 
 wealth, social or influential aids; embarrassed by abject 
 poverty; with the burdens of a dependent family, this 
 child of the people, by sturdy toil, won his honorable 
 success. He achieved competency, acquired knowledge, 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON, 101 
 
 gained public notice and confidence; and from the hum- 
 blest beginning arose step by step to the highest and 
 most influential positions attainable by the most gifted 
 and favored of the Republic, illustrating most fully in his 
 career the beneficent and elevating efi'ects of our free and 
 liberal institutions. His success in life is not more note- 
 worthy in the magnitude of difficulties surmounted and 
 the honorable ends it compassed than by the simple and 
 ordinary method by which it was accomplished. No 
 magician preceded or accompanied him, by wand or lamp, 
 to destroy his foes, build his palaces, or win his castles; 
 but, living under institutions that furnished equal facili- 
 ties for all, and gave equal motives to well-doing for 
 each, under the movings of a great nature he recognized 
 the dignity of labor and contemplated the victory as 
 much and as certainly as the resultant thereof as does the 
 farmer regard the harvest as the result of his toil. Not 
 by trick, nor by fortune, nor by favor, nor by fortuitous 
 circumstances, but by painstaking labor, he conquered 
 competency, knowledge, public confidence, influence, po- 
 sition, and all the distinguishing qualities and successes 
 that make up the record of his remarkable career; and he 
 leaves as a legacy, not the least valuable of those be- 
 queathed to his country in his example, that not only 
 may the humblest citizen aspire to a career as honorable 
 as that of Andrew Johnson, but that none are so poor as 
 not to possess the same homely appliances of success, the 
 diligent use of which rendered him so distinguished. 
 
102 ADDRESS OF MR. THROCKMORTON ON THE 
 
 He is a remarkable instance of that type of our great 
 men who have been distinguished for the persistency with 
 which they have adhered to their poHtical convictions. 
 Born in the State of North CaroHna, and resident in Ten- 
 nessee where the hero of New Orleans lived, and coming 
 into public life when this great leader was prominent in 
 the councils that governed the nation, his political views 
 belonged to the school of that great man rather than to 
 either those of Calhoun or Clay, antagonizing in some 
 sort the extremes of each on the question then vexing the 
 public mind relative to the supremacy of the State or na- 
 tional authority. He believed in the sanctity of the local 
 governments, because guaranteed in their functions by 
 the Constitution of the sisterhood of States; yet as to the 
 political relations of the States to each other he recog- 
 nized the Federal authority as supreme. When in 1861 
 his section embraced the Calhoun theory rather than the 
 Jacksonian view, he remained steadfast to his convictions, 
 notwithstanding the violent and overwhelming opposition 
 of his section. When his party, while he was President, 
 went to the other extreme, and so far pressed the national 
 idea into legislation as to substantially destroy the consti- 
 tutional rights and authority of the local governments, he 
 refused to follow then- leadership, and stood by his early 
 convictions. 
 
 Again, he recognized in his early public life the su- 
 premacy of the civil authority over the military, as guar- 
 anteed by the Constitution. In later life, amid the dis- 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 103 
 
 tempers and passions bred by civil war, no partisan con- 
 siderations, no persuasion of political friends, no provoca- 
 tion of political foes, could induce him to ignore or vio- 
 late this cardinal principle of our institutions. Still an- 
 other belief of his youth and of his mature years was one 
 taught him when he was poor and friendless, and which 
 he did not forget when he attained prosperity and dis- 
 tinction, that the people are not only the original deposi- 
 taries of all power, under our form of government, but 
 that they, in the exercise of the ballot and formation and 
 influence of an intelligent and wholesome public opinion, 
 are the conservators of free institutions. He was a man 
 emphatically of the people, feeling that his personal citi- 
 zenship exceeded in dignity any official position that he 
 might hold; and he retained through life a profound con- 
 fidence in the popular integrity and judgment. And 
 when any great exigency was upon the country he looked 
 not to cliques, nor to caucuses, nor to political conven- 
 tions for relief or a wise solution of pending problems, 
 but he always felt that, with free speech and a free press, 
 the popular reference was the wisest, and always awaited 
 the settlement by the people of the gravest questions with 
 perfect confidence. He believed that not only the patri- 
 otism but the common sense of the people would be equal 
 to any demand the country might make upon them, his 
 consistency appearing not in uniform affiliation with any 
 of the great parties, but in his persistent adherence to his 
 convictions, despite party changes and party considerations. 
 
104 ADDRESS OF ME. THROCKMORTON ON THE 
 
 Finally, Andrew Johnson deserved well of the whole 
 country, and especially so of the South; not only because 
 a citizen and an efficient representative of the interests of 
 that section in the highest councils of the nation, but par- 
 ticularly because of the policy pursued by him pending the 
 existence of the trying ordeal to which that section was 
 subjected in the process of political rehabilitation. 
 
 When the country, by the very crash of the conflict 
 through which its unity and integrity were preserved, 
 seemed to have been bewildered and cut loose from its 
 moorings, and constitutional methods of restoration were 
 deemed inadequate and were abandoned as insufficient, 
 and peace and restoration were sought by proscription, 
 he stood firm amid the general strife and wild confusion, 
 imbued with the generous spirit and proposing to carry 
 out the catholic and brave measures of his great and la- 
 mented predecessor. He, by counsel and message, by 
 act and deed, while appreciating the fact that we were 
 brethren separated from each other because of radically 
 varying conceptions of the Constitution, honestly enter- 
 tained, and not that either party was essentially vicious, 
 or recreant to the traditions of the country or the mem- 
 ory of the fathers, perceived that political restoration 
 brought privileges as broad as the duties that it imposed, 
 and that no re-adjustment could be real that did not pro- 
 ceed on the basis of mutual respect, and did not conclude 
 and culminate in mutual good-will; and that these great 
 ends could only be attained and secured by constitutional 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 
 
 105 
 
 methods. He abated nothing in his demand for obedi- 
 ence to law, yielded nothing of his love of country, but 
 made, or endeavored to make, reconstruction as little 
 humiliating to the defeated people of my section, and 
 as little onerous, as the facts and necessities of the great 
 occasion would permit. 
 
 A man of strong will, sometimes he seemed arbitrary; 
 of positive convictions, he seemed dogmatic; of compre- 
 hensive views, looking not only at the beginning but to 
 the end, he seemed impracticable; of profound convic- 
 tions, and not swayed by considerations of expediency, 
 he seemed unreasonable. With life's victory won by a 
 struggle so sternly earnest that the nature developed by 
 the very discipline that made it large and imposing be- 
 came somewhat indurated, yet in simple manliness, sturdy 
 integrity, and a personal fidelity to friend and country 
 that never wavered, his was a grand character; and, take 
 him all in all — his beginning, his work, and the end — he has 
 not left his peer, and we shall scarcely in this generation 
 look upon his like again. 
 
 His messages to Congress, in my judgment, rank among 
 the ablest of American state'papers, and will be regarded 
 in the future as among the strongest vindications of the 
 rights of the citizen and the States that have been pro- 
 duced by the statesmanship of our country. 
 
 When that auspicious day shall come, as I trust it will 
 at no distant period, that the passions and prejudices en- 
 gendered by the late sectional strife have been banished 
 
 14 
 
 soif-- 
 
 Micro^'':'nsd 
 
106 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 
 
 from the hearts of our people forever; when the American 
 mind, North and South, East and West, can regard the 
 prowess of the soldiery of both sections and the grand 
 achievements of the military leaders on both sides and do 
 justice alike to all, regardless of the cause or section rep- 
 resented, as representative types of American character 
 and American greatness; when that time comes, and the 
 popular heart is moved but by one impulse of devotion to 
 the Union and the Constitution, then will the memory of 
 Mr. Johnson live in the hearts of the masses of our coun- 
 trymen, and then his faults, from which none are exempt, 
 shall cease to be remembered. 
 
 The question being taken on the resolutions offered by 
 Mr. McFarland, they were agreed to unanimously. 
 
 And accordingly (at four o'clock and thirty minutes 
 p. m.) the House adjourned.