ANDREW JOHNSON,

OF TENNESSEE.

ANDREW JOHNSON was born at Raleigh, North Carolina, on the 29th of December, 1808. His father died from exhaustion after saving Colonel Thomas Henderson, editor of the “Raleigh Gazette," from drowning, leaving his son on the world while yet under the age of five years. The want of pecuniary means on the part of his parents prevented him from receiving the benefit of even the rudiments of an English education. At the time of his father's death he could neither read nor write, and the necessity of bread then put it out of his power to go to school. All his energies were needed, and a trade was his only resource. The boy was therefore apprenticed to a tailor in Raleigh, with whom he worked until the term of his indentures expired. We next find him as a journeyman at work in the vicinity of Lawrence Courthouse, South Carolina. Several romantic stories are afloat of his falling in love here with an estimable young lady. The cause of his non-success and passionate flight from the town— away from cold hearts and the pitying smiles which his sensitiveness could brook less patiently than open sneers-was his being a stranger, and the want of pecuniary means. He returned to Raleigh in the spring of 1826; and in the fall of that year, taking his mother and stepfather with him, he bent his steps toward Greenville, Tennessee, where he stopped and counted his eighteenth year.

His good star had led him thither. In Greenville the youth found a wife who became his Egeria. What material for the romancist might be found in the history of those days of the future Senator, when his wife, fondly leaning by the side of the youth who was earning bread for her, taught him to read, and decked with the fair flowers of a healthy education the hitherto neglected garden of his brain! What a group! what a study!—

the youth's fingers mechanically plying the needle, his brain alive, following the instructions of his wife-teacher, or with a bright, almost childish, satisfaction meeting her approval of his correct answers! After work-hours she taught him to write. What a living, ennobling romance was there being enacted in the wilds of Tennessee thirty years ago! But we must hurry over this chapter of our hero's history with a mere suggestive sentence. Young Johnson and his wife started "out West to seek their fortune," but at the earnest solicitation of a good friend-still living, I believe he was induced to return. He worked at his trade with great industry and attention, extending, meanwhile, the advantages which his capacity for knowledge presented. The shop-board was the school where he received the rudiments of his education, which he afterwards, in leisure moments and in the deep silence of the midnight hours, applied to the attainment of a more perfect system.

The disadvantages of his position would have discouraged almost any other man, certainly with any other kind of a wife. But, cheered by his excellent companion and prompted by his own desire for self-improvement, young Johnson brought an energy to the difficulties before him which nothing could repress or conquer. It is not a matter of surprise that he was hostile to every proposition that would give power to the few at the expense of the many; that his hard and yet bright experiences made him the exponent of the wants and power of the working-class. He soon gave voice to the feelings of the working-men in Greenville. He made them conscious of their strength and feel proud of it, in opposition to the aristocratic coterie which had until then ruled the community, so that no man who worked for his livelihood could be elected even an alderman. Johnson, with the dawning vision of intellect and self-reliance, saw that all this was wrong, and he determined, with the aid of his fellow-workers, to right it. Meetings were held in every part of the town, and the result was the election of the young tailor to the office of alderman by a triumphant majority. How proud must the good wife have felt!

His triumph over the aristocracy took place in 1830. From time to time Mr. Johnson was re-elected, and, whenever he would consent to act, was chosen by the board as mayor. Invi

gorated by success, the working-men became a power, and the old parties, wearying of the strife, admitted the representatives of the mechanics to their proper share of influence in the Councils. The reforms thus initiated by Mr. Johnson are apparent in admirable results in Greenville to this day. Office now waited upon him. He was soon elected by the County Court a trustee of Rhea Academy, and held the office until he entered the lower House of the State Legislature. In 1834, Mr. Johnson exerted himself influentially to secure the adoption of the new Constitution,—an instrument which greatly enlarged the liberties of the masses and guaranteed the freedom of speech and of the press. In 1835, he was elected to the Legislature from Washington and Greene Counties, and at once became prominent by his op position to a vast scheme of internal improvements, which was projected and carried into a law without the knowledge or approbation of the people. Before the evil results of the measure were manifest, Mr. Johnson was defeated for the next Legislature; but, his prognostications having been fulfilled, he was returned in 1839, after a fierce and bitter contest. Mr. Johnson is no enemy to internal improvement upon a fair basis; but the law he so energetically opposed he regarded as a system of wholesale fraud.

In the famous Presidential campaign of 1840 between Harrison and Van Buren, Mr. Johnson took an active part, being chosen, in consequence of his telling power as a speaker, to canvass Eastern Tennessee in favor of the Democratic candidate. In 1841, he was elected to the State Senate from Hawkins and Greene Counties by a majority of two thousand, and, during his term of service, brought forward judicious measures of internal improvements in the eastern division of the State. In 1843, he was nominated for Congress from the First District, embracing seven counties. He was opposed by Colonel John A. Asken, a United States Bank Democrat, and a gentleman of talent and eloquence. Johnson was elected, and took his seat in the National House of Representatives in December, 1843.

His debut in Congress was a brief but forcible argument in support of the resolution to restore the fine imposed upon General Jackson for having placed New Orleans under martial law. He followed this up by a reply to John Quincy Adams on the right of petition, which was characterized as a highly creditable effort,

and by an argument on the Tariff, in which he enforced the Democratic doctrine that it was a departure from the principles of justice and equality to tax the many for the benefit of the few, under the plea of protecting American labor, as was done by the Tariff of 1842. He insisted upon it that, while Congress was consulting the interests of the manufacturer, it had no right to forget or neglect those of the farmer and planter, as high-protectionists were notoriously too apt to do, and replied to Mr. Andrew Stewart, of Pennsylvania, by a series of circumstantial details showing that so far as protection applies to protecting mechanics proper, there is no reality in it; for if all are protected alike, the protection paralyzes itself, and results in no protection at all. "Protection operates"-said he "beneficially to none, except those who can manufacture in large quantities, and vend their manufactured articles beyond the limits of the immediate manufacturing sphere."

At the second session of the Twenty-Eighth Congress, Mr. Johnson warmly co-operated with the friends of Texan Annexation, and on the 21st of January, 1845, delivered an able speech on the subject. One of the Ohio delegation having alluded to General Jackson in an uncalled-for manner, Mr. Johnson gallantly defended the character of Jackson-then living in retirement in the forests of Tennessee-from the unkind allusions, which seemed to him strange coming from the quarter whence they had emanated. In the course of the exciting debate upon the annexation of Texas, Mr. Clingman intimated that British gold had been used to carry the election of Polk. Mr. Johnson denounced the suggestion as a vile slander, without the shadow of a foundation, and called on the gentleman from North Carolina for his proof, relying on the fact that if there were no authority for the assertion, it was a slander. In the course of Mr. Clingman's remarks, he said that "had the foreign Catholics been divided in the late election, as other sects and classes generally were, Mr. Clay would have carried, by a large majority, the State of New York, as also the States of Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and probably some others in the Northwest." There were but few Catholics in Mr. Johnson's district, and he was not called upon to do battle with the prejudices that might or did exist against them; but he protested against the doctrine advanced by Mr. Clingman.

He wished to know if the latter desired to arouse a spirit of persecution, to sweep away or divide all those who dared to differ from the Whig party. "But, for the purpose of showing the country how ignorant the gentleman was of the fact, and how reckless he was in bold statements, he would read from a pamphlet he held in his hand, which was written by a Whig in the city of Nashville, Tennessee, and dedicated to the Hon. John Bell, a late member of General Harrison's Cabinet, which shows conclusively that the Whig party had the benefit of the Catholic influence in the late Presidential contest. The charge had been made, in his section of the country, that the Catholics were all Democrats; and he now availed himself (as the door had been opened) of the opportunity of setting this matter right upon good Whig authority."

Alluding to the great capabilities of Texas, he thought it probable that it would "prove to be the gateway out of which the sable sons of Africa are to pass from bondage to freedom and become merged in a population congenial with themselves." The annexation would give the Union all the valuable cotton soil, or nearly so, upon the habitable globe. Cotton was destined to clothe more human beings than any other article that had ever been discovered. The factories of England would be compelled to stand still, were it not for cotton. Without it, her operatives would starve in the street, and, if this Government had the command of the raw material, it was the same as putting Great Britain under bonds to keep the peace for all time to come. was willing-when he glanced at the historic page giving an account of their rise and progress, the privations they had undergone, the money and toil they had expended, the valor and patriotism they had displayed—to extend to the Texans the right hand of fellowship.

He

In the summer of 1845, Mr. Johnson was re-elected to the House of Representatives. The Twenty-Ninth Congress was for several reasons one of the most important in our political history. A bitter contention was going on between this country and Great Britain in regard to the line which divided the possessions of the two countries in Oregon. Upon this question, Mr. Johnson assumed a decided position, maintaining our right to the line of 54° 40′, yet insisting that the real contest was for the