Year: 1875

There has been a general tribute to the
sincerity and the force of will of Andrew
Johnson, and an equally general express
sion of feeling that he died at a happy
moment for himself. The former is
praise which is subject to very serious
qualifications, and the truth of the latter
remark would have been more striking
had he died before Mr.. Lincoln. That
Mr.. johnson was honest in the sense
that he made no money illicitly from his
connection with politics is unquestiona-
BILE. But the practical value of sincerity
is to be determined by the nature of the
conviction which is sincerely held 1t
makes great difference whether we
think a man sincerely right or sincerely
wrong. Torquemada was probably as
sincere as Fenelon, and Queen Mary as
sincere as Hooper and Ridley. Mr.
johnson was as sincere in vetoing the
Civil Rights Bill as he would have been
in going to Ohio, as he is said to have in
tended, to advocate imitation 1t is a Sc
rious wrong to accustom ourselves to
speak of every public man when he dies
as if he were an admirable historic char
acter. Mr.. johnson was not-a man of
lofty life or of high intelligence or abili-
ty. That he became President is no evil
dence that he was in any sense great





greatness of Tyler, Polk, Fillmore.
Pierce, land Buchanan, some of whom
were elected President, as Mr. johnson
was not. His opposition to the secession
movement was courageous, like that of
Brownlow and other Union men of the
Border States, and it was the more effec-
tive because he was Democrat. But he
had never been recognized as leader by
the Democratic slave lords who control
led the party, and his hostility had,
therefore, some taint of personal feeling.


Mr. johnson was nominated with Mr.
Lincoln in 1864, not because he was
man of great ability, or high character,
or illustrious public service, or of COM
manding reputation-for very little was
personally known of him-but because
he was conspicuous Border State man,
Democratic Senator who had not be-
trayed his country, and an old supporter
of slavery The Republicans had become
a Union party, and his nomination was
intended to be the proof of it. 1t was
mistake, as such expedients at such
times usually are. The election turned
wholly upon the question of national ex-
istence, and it would have had precisely
the same result had Mr.. Hamlin been
renominated. The death of Mr.. Lincoln
threw Mr. johnson into position in
which the Republican national party
would never have thought of placing
him, and he more than any person or
thing was the cause of the confusion and
perplexity that have attended. recon
struction. As soon as he had ceased ter
rifying the country with an apprehension
of kind of Oriental vengeance upon the
late rebels, he began to betray the victo-
rious cause of which he was the represen-
tative; and an ignorant, narrow, con-
ceited, stubborn politician, who had no
comprehension of the scope and signifi-
canoe of the contest which had acciden-
tally given him power, and no sympathy
with the principles and spirit which had
triumphed, set himself fiercely against
the intelligent will of the people who
had fought and conquered, and for three
years he strove obstinately to undo what
they had done. By most happy for
tune he was confronted by q man of the
same indomitable will, of unshrinklng
courage, of unswerving conviction; a
man as sincerely right as he was sincere
fit for the time: and that Andrew John
son did not succeed in doing the mis-
chief which with undoubted sincerity he
intended, we owe to the sagacity the
skill, the nerve, and the tenacity of
Thaddeus Stevens, who embodied the
conviction and the determination with
which the American people came out of
the war.


The decentralization of the public ser
vice under the johnson Administration
was enormous. 1t was computed that a
fourth of the revenue due the country
was lost in the collection, and Mr., Ran
dali, the Postmaster-General,a announced
to the army of officers in that depart
ment that they must not forget to whom
they owed their bread and butter. Since
the days of Andrew jackson, to whom
johnson very much liked to be compar-
ed, there had been no such prostitution
of the service to selfish personal ends.
The tenure of office was servility to my
policy" And when toward the close of
this administration, which had so obsti-
nately imperiled the results of the war,
the Democrats in their National Conven-
ton formally declared reconstruction un-
constitutional, revolutionary, and void,
as they had four years before declared
the war failure, the country saw that
everything was in danger, and by move
ment as truly patriotic as the uprising
of 1861 the fatal reaction of johnson and
the Democracy was stayed, and the vic
tory of the war was re-asserted in the
election of its most illustrious soldier.


These facts are not changed because
Mr.. johnson is dead, and it is much