wounded in an attempt to seize the murderer—and Miss Harris, daughter of Senator Harris, of New York, were also with him. There was nothing for surgical skill to do. The President was carried to a private house near by, and here he died on the morning of April 15th, 1865.

The world has never witnessed a more touching exhibition than at once was given of the heartfelt grief of a great nation, and all the world sent earnest tokens of sincere sympathy. There were days of mourning, during which business was all but suspended, and the people seemed to stand, mute and stunned by their calamity, waiting to see the funeral train go by. It passed, from Washington City to Springfield, Ill., in a slow and solemn pageant of honor to the memory of a great and faithful public servant. The wonderful career, so full of noble lessons and of mighty usefulness, which began in a frontier log cabin and ended among the great kings and rulers whose memories cannot perish from the earth, was closed before the bowed heads of an untellable multitude.

28460

Lives of the Presidents of the United States.

ANDREW JOHNSON.

SEVENTEENTH PRESIDENT.

BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.

CHAPTER I.

Birth and Parentage-The Poor Whites of the Old Southern Time-A very Young Tailor's Apprentice -A First Suggestion of Learning—A Start in Life -Emigrating to Tennessee-An Early Marriage— Aristocracy, Politics, and Parties-Alderman and Mayor-Member of the State Legislature-State Senator-Member of Congress.

IN the Winter of 1808-1809, in very humble homes, widely separated from each other, two boys were born whose names were to become inseparable from the history of their country. Both were born to utter poverty, but with innate strength of character to force their way upward, breaking through all barriers, to the attainment of usefulness, of leadership, and of the highest rank and power which their fellow-citizens could confer upon them.

Andrew Johnson was born of poor white parents

in Raleigh, N. C., December 29th, 1808, about six weeks before Abraham Lincoln was born in a Kentucky log cabin.

The mental and moral and social condition of the poor whites of the slaveholding States was at that time deplorable. Their lot was one of almost hopeless ignorance and degradation. Labor was a badge of servitude, but the black bondsmen of rich. landowners were accustomed to speak with contempt of the "poor white trash," whose color prevented them from having aristocratic masters. Pride of race responded to that contempt by making the low-caste white men blind and bigoted supporters of the institution of human slavery. This peculiar result became of tremendous political importance in the course of that generation. It was a trained and hardened narrowing of the mind, which ought not to be lost sight of in any study of the course pursued by this class of men or by its individual members.

If Andrew Johnson's father had any regular trade or occupation, the fact is not preserved. He died of injuries received while bravely rescuing another man from drowning, when his little son was about four years old. During the six years following, Mrs. Johnson struggled on as best she might, and there is no current record of the date at which she married again.

Andrew was a bright, sturdy, hardy little fellow, but the children of North Carolina poor whites were not expected to go to school. He did not, and at ten years of age he was apprenticed to a tailor. He