Part 10 (1/2)

A convention of Border State men, over which ex-President John Tyler presided, was held in Washi+ngton It ht as well have been held at the North Pole Moderate men were brushed aside, their counsels whistled down the wind There was a group of Senators, headed by Wigfall of Texas, who roup, headed by Seward, Hale and Chase, who had been goaded up to this Reading contehtiness hich the Geran e conceive their raid upon huard it as evidence of incredible stupidity, whereas it was, in point of fact, rather a miscalculation of forces That was the error of the secession leaders They refused to count the cost Yancey firland would be forced to intervene The et on without Southern cotton He was sent abroad He found Europe solid against slavery and therefore set against the Confederacy

He came home hat is called a broken heart--the dreams of a lifetime shattered--and, in a kind of dazed stupor, laid himself down to die With Richmond in flames and the exultant shouts of the detested yet victorious Yankees in his ears, he did die

Wigfall survived but a few years He was less a drea of brain and warone from the ironclad provincialisaries of Texas He believed wholly the Yancey confession of faith; that secession was a constitutional right; that African slavery was ordained of God; that the South was parae he had learned more than Yancey--was an abler enerous habits he would haveled the South's exit from the Senate

VI

I do not think that either Hammond or Chestnut, the Senators from South Carolina, both men of parts, had at bottom much belief in the practicability of the Confederate movement Neither had the Senators froue of Jefferson Davis Mason, of Virginia, a dogged old donkey, and Iverson, of Georgia, another, were the kind of fall dominated

One of the least confident of those who looked on and afterward fell in line was the Vice President, John C Breckenridge, of Kentucky He was the Beau Sabreur a soldiers Neverinfrom a race of political aristocrats, he was born to early and shi+ning success in public life Ofand prudent, wherever he appeared he carried his audience with him He had been elected on the ticket with Buchanan to the second office under the Governe There was nothing for hiain from a division of the Union; the Presidency, perhaps, if the Union continued undivided But he could not resist the onrush of disunionism, ith the South, which he served first in the field and later as Confederate Secretary of War, and after a few years of self-imposed exile in Europe returned to Kentucky to die at four and fifty, a defeated and disappointed oldstate of Tennessee was represented in the Senate by one of the most problematic characters in American history With h life, he had entered the state legislature in 1835, and having served ten years in the lower House of Congress, and four years as governor of Tennessee he came back in 1857 to the National Capital, a member of the Upper House He was Andrew Johnson

I knew him from my childhood Thrice that I can recall I saw hih Life had been very serious, albeit very successful, to hie, the wife he had ht him to read Yet at six and twenty he was in the Tennessee General asseress

There was from first to last not a little about him to baffle conjecture I should call him a cross between Jack Cade and Aaron Burr

His sys in distress But he was unco in his detestation of the rich It was said that he hated ”a biled shi+rt” He would have nothing to do ”with people ore broadcloth,” though he carefully dressed hiovernor of Tennessee, he came to Nashville he refused many invitations to take his first New Year's dinner with a party of toughs at the house of a river roustabout

There was nothing of the tough about hie was careful and exact I never heard him utter an oath or tell a risque story He passed quite fifteen years in Washi+ngton, a total abstainer from the use of intoxicants He fell into the occasional-drink habit during the dark days of the War But after some costly experience he dropped it and continued a total abstainer to the end of his days

He had, indeed, admirable self-control I do not believe a ht and sincere, having reasons, which he could give with power and effect, behind theree, and always successful, relying upon a popular follohich never failed hie and Lane Presidential ticket, but in 1861 he stood true to the Union, retaining his seat in the Senate until he was appointed overnor of Tennessee Nominated for Vice President on the ticket with Lincoln, in 1864, he was elected, and upon the assassination of Lincoln succeeded to the Presidency Having served out his tere in the hottest kind of politics, and though at the outset defeated finally regained his seat in the Senate of the United States

He hated Grant with a holy hate His first act on reentering the Senate was to deliver an iainst the President It was his last public appearance He went thence to his horatified and happy, to die in a feeeks

VII

There used to be a story about Raleigh, in North Carolina, where Andrew Johnson was born, which whispered that he was a natural son of William Ruffin, an eminent jurist in the earlier years of the nineteenth century It was analogous to the story that Lincoln was the natural son of various paternities fro that calu whatever to support or excuse it I reached the bottom of it to discover proof of its baselessness abundant and conclusive In Johnson's case I take it that the story had nothing other to rest on than the obscurity of his birth and the quality of his talents Late in life Johnson went to Raleigh and caused to be erected a rave of his progenitor, saying, I was told by persons clai to have been present, ”I place this stone over the last earthly abode ofof the countryside, ”out-ood faend ran, she saw passing through the Greenville street in which her people lived, a wo a pack over his shoulder They were obviously weary and hungry Extreme poverty could present no sadder picture ”Mother,” cried the girl, ”there goes the ht to be in jest

But a few years later she ood and lived to see her husband President of the United States and with hiton

Much has been written of the humble birth and iron fortune of Abraham Lincoln He had no such obstacles to overcome as either Andrew Jackson or Andrew Johnson Jackson, a prisoner of as liberated, a lad of sixteen, from the British pen at Charleston, without a relative, a friend or a dollar in the world, having to h the most aristocratic community of the country and the time Johnson, equally friendless and penniless, started as a poor tailor in a rustic village Lincolnour self-made Presidents The Hanks family were not paupers He had a wise and helpful step fellows of his neighborhood, first in Indiana and then in Illinois On this side justice has never been rendered to Jackson and Johnson In the case of Jackson the circuotten, while Johnson too often dwelt upon it and made capital out of it

Under date of the 23rd of May, 1919, the Hon Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, writesletter, which I violate no confidence in reproducing in this connection: