ANDREW JOHNSON.* Amex the lapse of half -a-century, Americans have
agreed to regard the Civil War as an historical drama. Mr. Oberholtzer's book, learned and impartial though lacking the graces of style, seems to show that the time is coming when the piofoundly critical period of Reconstruction after the Civil War will also be regarded
• A History of the United Stales eines Mt Civil War. By E. I'. Obernoltzer. vols. Vol. 1..1805-08. London: Macmillan and Co. [5.Y50.]
with dispassionate interest by most of his .countrymen. It is true that the wounds inflicted on the South by the revengeful policy of a majority in the North after all the fighting was done have not yet healed. The attempt to find a speedy solution of the negro problem on the basis of the Rights of Man, while deliberately punishing and humiliating the beaten Confederates, has clearly failed, and the solid Democratic South is still a standing proof of the futility of trying to coerce a proud people by laws repugnant to its instincts. The friends of the negro and those who used negro enfranchisement as a rod for Southern backs went to great lengths in their partisanship. They involved Congress in a violent quarrel with the President, ending in his impeachment. They went far to destroy the Constitutional powers of both the President and the Supreme Court, and to concentrate all authority in the Republican caucus controlling Congress, thus throwing the Constitution out of gear. They subjected ten States to a military dictatorship, and denied the white population the ordinary rights of American citizens. But their policy is now admitted by all sober men to have been mistaken, and their course of action deserves to be studied as a warning rather than an example.
The history of Andrew Johnson's Presidency gives a measure of the loss that America sustained by the murder of Lincoln. That great man, who had steered his country through four years of civil war and had then been re-elected President, was loved and trusted by the North as no man had been since Washington, and it is probable, though not certain, that his patience, tact, and courage would have sufficed to keep party passion within bounds while the South was being brought once more into normal relations with the rest of the Union. But Johnson had none of Lincoln's supreme qualities. Like Lincoln he came of very humble parents, but unlike Lincoln he could not overcome the defects of his lack of early training. No one could have objected to the fact that he was a" poor white" from North Carolina and began life as a village tailor in Tennessee if Johnson had not continually boasted of his origin and made unseemly jests about the tailor's craft taking its rise in the Garden of Eden. No one could have complained with reason of his want of education if, when the fit seized him, the President had not gone about making scurrilous speeches, worthy of what the Americans call a soap-box orator, against his opponents. It may or may not be true that when he took the oath as Vice- President he was intoxicated, and it is not true that he was given to indulgence in drink. But he was intemperate in his language and careless of the proprieties, and thus was his own worst enemy. He had been chosen as Republican candidate for the Vice-Presi- dency because he was one of the few Southern Senators who remained loyal to the Union in 1861, and because he had acted as Military Governor of reconquered Tennessee. Six weeks after he had been installed in his unimportant office he found himself, at Lincoln's death on April 15th, 1865, President of the United States, with the responsibility of restoring peace and order to a distracted nation. To be thrust into such a position by fate would have been a trying experience for any ordinary mortal, and in fairness to Johnson we must never forget his difficulties. The shock at first sobered him. For a few weeks all parties, from the extreme Abolitionists to the defeated Southerners, spoke well of Johnson. But this ominous unanimity soon disappeared. Directly it became apparent that Johnson, in all good faith and honesty of purpose, meant to pursue a policy of reconciliation in the South, his troubles began. On May 29th, 1865, when he issued a proclamation of amnesty for the vanquished, except the well-to-do, Confederate officers and others, he announced the appointment of a Provisional Governor for North Carolina, who should summon a Convention of delegates to reform the State Constitution. He told negro visitors to the White House that the liberated blacks must work and prove that they deserved their freedom. At once the Northern Radicals began to show uneasiness. They demanded nothing less than full political rights for the negro, and insisted that the blacks, who could not vote in the Northern States, should be enfranchised forthwith in the South. Sumner, their leader, had felt assured of Johnson's sympathy, and in a letter of May 1st had ventured to compare Johnson with Lincoln, to Lincoln's detriment. "Our late President accepted the principle but hesitated in the application," Sumner wrote. "Our new President accepts the principle and the application." He was soon undeceived, and with Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, the shrewd politician who "was now the voice of the unthinking Northern populace, arousing their vindictive pre- judices and crying for retribution," Sumner began to organize for the next Session of Congress. For the moment Northern public opinion seemed to favour the President's moderate and sensible policy.
Unhappily for Johnson, and for America, the Southern States profited by his moderation to hold Conventions of a somewhat defiant type, and to elect to Congress Senators and Representatives most of whom had been prominent " rebels, ' including Alexander Stephens, the Confederate Vice-President. The Northern Radical Press naturally made the most of these tactless proceedings, and gradually worked up a violent popular agitation. When Congress met, its first act was to ignore the presence of the Southern Representatives. The
President's Message, written by Bancroft the historian, did not specifically recommend their admission, but argued very conclusively that the question whether the Southern negroes should be enfran- chised must be determined by the States and not by Congress. The Radicals at once began to attack Johnson. "If you are not ready to be the Moses of an oppressed people," said Sumner, "do not become its Pharaoh." Stevens maintained that the Southern States must be treated as eonqnered provinces, and that they should never be readmitted until their Constitutions had been amended so as" to secure perpetual ascendancy to the party of the Union." Philan- thropy and sheer revenge were mingled in their pleas. The conflict between President and Congress began with his vetoing of a Bill to perpetuate the Freedmen's Bureau, established during the war to provide land for negroes, and to extend military protection to all negroes who were denied civil rights enjoyed by white men. Demon- strations and counter-demonstrations were hold, and Johnson at a public meeting in February, 1866, unluckily let his temper get the better of him :— " He forgot for the time that he was not on the hustings in East Tennessee, and he was led into a wild, incoherent harangue of more than an hour in length. As he proceeded his choler rose, he gnashed his teeth, his voice grew loud and boisterous, and at times, when he was interrupted by cries of' Give it to them, Andy,' 'Hit them again,' etc., and rowdies asked him questions, he seemed to be entirely beside himself. His words were reported differently by different persons, but in all forms they were so little in keeping with the dignity of the Presidential office that, after they were 'put upon the wires' for the newspapers, some censor forbade their going out. It was late at night before the prohibitory order was revoked and the transmission of the speech was resumed."
Congress then passed a Bill to confer full civil rights, but not the franchise, on negroes. Johnson vetoed this on the ground that citizens of the United States must acquire their citizenship through he separate States. Here, the author thinks, he made his fatal error, for he alienated many moderate men, who would have gladly supported him, by adhering to a somewhat pedantic theory that seemed to be all in favour of the unrepentant South. After this, Johnson was exposed to a long series of humiliations. Whatever Bills he vetoed were immediately passed again over his veto and became law. Tennessee was readmitted to the Union before the Session ended, but the ten other States were to wait for years. In the recess Northern feeling was inflamed by race riots in Memphis and in New Orleans, where a Negro Suffrage Convention was dispersed by violence. The President added fuel to the flame by a speech-making tour—" a swing around the circle," he called it— in the course of which he abused without stint "the foul whelps of sin" who were attacking him. He took General Grant and Admiral Farragut in his train, and hostile crowds showed their contempt for the President by persistently cheering for Grant while Johnson was speaking. Excited partisans feared the outbreak of a new civil war. When Congress met, it renewed its duel with the President. It abolished the temporary Southern Governments and replaced them by Federal Military Administrations under Brigadiers who, as Johnson said, would be absolute despots. Congress went on to deprive the President of the power to dismiss office-holders and Army officers. It ordered the Military Governors to register all the black and white voters in each district, and to hold Constitu- tional Conventions. The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court was restricted. Repeated efforts were made by individual Radicals to impeach the President, but this final step was not taken by the Party till December, 1867, while Congress was disputing Johnson's right to dismiss his Secretary for War. At this point Mr. Ober- holtter's first volume ends. It contains two long and instructive chapters on the pitiful condition of the South after the war, and on the great movement of population to the West during the late "sixties," besides an account of the Indian question and a chapter on Mexico and Alaska. We shall look with interest for further volumes of this important work.
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