grace the good lessons of their wives, while he gladly and teachably learned of his really wiser and "better half." She was a fair scholar and taught him writing and arithmetic, and stimulated him to the acquisition of further knowledge.

EARLY MANHOOD.

He had

Mr. Johnson's studious habits soon gave him information and mental activity above his associates, and began to make him conspicuous as a leader of opinions and in conversation. began to be a center around which clustered his class. a turn for politics in a local way, and organized a workingmen's party in opposition to the aristocratic element which, in the main, managed the politics in those parts. His new party elected him an alderman. He was re-elected for two successive years; and the next year was elected mayor. During these years he was active in a debating society composed of the young men of the place and college. One of the students of the college at that time later in life described his house as being in the outskirts of the village, about ten feet square, with a tailor's bench in one corner, and with but little furniture. The students often called to see him, because he welcomed them with heartiness and entertained them with his spirited conversation. Probably on account of his influence with the students he was appointed by the court a trustee of the Rhea academy. About this time he was active in behalf of a new constitution for the state.

In the summer of 1835 he offered himself a candidate for the lower house of the legislature, and took the field for his own election, claiming to be a democrat. At first he was coolly received by the leaders, but he made his canvass so intelligent and vigorous that he not only won his way to their confidence, but to an election. At ten he could not read; at twenty could read only; at twenty-one he married and began to learn writing and arithmetic; at twenty-seven he was a member of the state legislature, and yet earned his living all this time on the tailor's bench.

JOHNSON A LEGISLATOR.

Mr. Johnson took his seat as a legislator and very soon made himself conspicuous as a resolute opponent of the principal measure of the session, which was a plan to institute a system of internal improvement in the way of road making and macadamizing, which was to involve the state in a debt of four millions of dollars. He predicted disaster to the scheme if it was attempted. The plan was adopted and all the disasters came, with but little benefit. In 1839, he was re-elected to the legislature. In 1840, he took an active part in the canvass for Van Buren, making speeches in all parts of the state. He was made elector at large and voted for Van Buren. In 1841, he was elected to the State Senate, into which he introduced measures for a number of moderate improvements in the eastern part of the state.

In 1843, he was elected to the Lower House of Congress, and held his place by successive re-elections for ten years. He was elected as a democrat, and sustained in the main, the measures of the democrats during that time. He at length became a slave holder, though he thought slavery would ultimately be abolished. Though reared in poverty, he seemed to have no strong repugnance to slavery, or strong convictions against it. When the rebellion broke out and he took the Union side, the confederates confiscated his seven or eight slaves. He had but a superficial view of slavery, as he had of politics generally. He was essentially a southern man, with southern principles, till he declared for the Union. He had gratitude enough to realize what the Union had done for him, and to be faithful to it.

In 1848, he made an elaborate argument in favor of the veto power.

In 1853, he was elected governor of Tennessee; and at the next election re-elected. The excitement at these elections was great, and his life was threatened. He spoke sometimes with a revolver on the table and his hand on it. On one occasion he proposed that those who had threatened should do the shooting first. As nobody shot, he proceeded.

In December, 1857, he took his seat in the Senate of the United States, to which he had been elected by his state legislature. In the Senate his course was much as it had been in the House-democratic, southern. In the House he had made himself conspicuous by advocating a homestead bill giving one hundred and sixty acres of the public lands to actual settlers thereon. He took up this again in the Senate and carried it through, only to have it defeated by President Buchanan. In this he acted out of his better nature, and not in sympathy with the pro-slavery policy of his party.

He fought vigorously for economy in the management of the national finances, and opposed the Pacific railroad scheme. He opposed the compromise measures of 1850, yet voted for them in the end.

In the Charleston-Baltimore convention of 1860 he was proposed by the Tennessee delegation as a candidate for the presidency. In the contest which followed with four candidates he sustained Breckenridge; the extreme southern candidate. His associates had, in the main, been with the radical proslavery men. He was trained in their school; bought slaves to be one of them; desired to nationalize slavery, and hated black republicanism. Such moral notions as he had were based in the pro-slavery code; and when the question of secession came, he maintained the Union, largely on the ground that the battle for slavery could best be fought, as he said, "under the battlements of the constitution." He presented strongly the right of the Union to New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and Florida and the great river courses of the west, by purchase and conquest. He said: "I am opposed to secession. I believe it no remedy for the evils complained of. Instead of acting with that division of my southern friends who take ground for secession, I shall take other grounds, while I try to accomplish the same end. I think that this battle ought to be fought, not outside, but inside, the Union." Being of them, and because he would not go out with them, the secessionists made war upon him, burned him in effigy, insulted him with mobs, threatened him with lynching, sacked his home, drove his sick wife and children into the

streets, stole his slaves, which he called property, and turned his house into a receptacle for secession soldiery. But all this only made him more resolute for the Union, and he took the high ground that secession was treason. He said in the Senate, March 2, 1861: "Were I the president of the United States, I would do as Thomas Jefferson did in 1806 with Aaron Burr: I would have them arrested and try them for treason, and if convicted, by the eternal God, they should suffer the penalty of the law at the hands of the executioner! Sir, treason must be punished. Its enormity and the extent and depth of the offense must be made known." In a speech at Cincinnati he said: "I repeat, this odious doctrine of secession should be crushed out, destroyed and totally annihilated. No government can stand, no religious, or moral, or social organization can stand, where this doctrine is tolerated. It is disintegration; it is universal dissolution."

MILITARY GOVERNOR.

In February, 1862, the Union forces got possession of the middle and western portion of Tennessee, and President Lincoln appointed Mr. Johnson military governor of the state. He had twice before been civil governor of the state, now he was governor by a northern appointment, the most offensive that could be, to the secession portion of the south. A great deal was said about a "solid south," but probably there never was a solid south. Many were always Union people, and were taken out against their wills. No doubt many loyal Tennesseeans welcomed their old governor, as a representative of the Union. He held a difficult post of duty with great resolution, often terribly tried by halting, and half Union men and fierce rebels. His headquarters were at Nashville, which was for a considerable time under seige and doubtful of the result. He had difficulties with the civil authorities, some of whom he had to displace and put in others; difficulties with Union generals, who seemed to him half-hearted in their work; difficulties with the rebel and half Union citizens: but they all tended to carry him in sympathy and opinion nearer to Mr. Lincoln, and separate him more and

more from his old opinions and life. Slavery began to look like an abominable thing.

In the Autumn of 1863, Mr. Johnson visited Washington to consult with the president about re-establishing a civil government in Tennessee. The visit-brought him nearer to Mr. Lincoln and his views. It soon became apparent to him that the active Union and the republican party were identical, and so far as the broken Union was to be restored it must be done by the party in power.

His prompt and decisive treatment of the difficulties in his state won him the admiration of the loyal north, and before Mr. Lincoln's first term closed he felt himself in close sympathy with the adminstration.

MR. JOHNSON VICE-PRESIDENT.

The republican convention of 1864, met in Baltimore, June 6, to nominate a president and vice-president. Mr. Lincoln was renominated without a thought of another, with Andrew Johnson for his vice-president. The sympathy which the loyal north felt for southern Unionists had much to do with this. The brave stand Mr. Johnson took for the Union and for the return of his state was regarded with great favor. His speeches, electric with patriotism, and stalwart with solid argument, were read all over the north with enthusiasm. His orders as military governor, his reorganization of a government in Tennessee, had prepared the way for his nomination. His past democracy was forgotten. By this time the Union cause. was nobly sustained by multitudes of northern democrats who welcomed this nomination.

Mr. Johnson welcomed at once the inevitable result of the war, the death of slavery. He foresaw it, and all the terrible consequences of the war to the south and tried to stay it, but could not. When he found that slavery was ended he was glad, though he sorrowed over the great cost of its death.

When the news of Mr. Johnson's nomination reached Nashville, a great mass meeting was called to ratify the nomination, and Mr. Johnson was invited to address it. The speech he then