Marse Henry Part 10

A convention of Border State men, over which ex-President John Tyler presided, was held in Washington. It might as well have been held at the North Pole. Moderate men were brushed aside, their counsels whistled down the wind. There was a group of Senators, headed by Wigfall of Texas, who meant disunion and war, and another group, headed by Seward, Hale and Chase, who had been goaded up to this. Reading contemporary history and, seeing the high-mightiness with which the Germans began what we conceive their raid upon humanity, we are wont to regard it as evidence of incredible stupidity, whereas it was, in point of fact, rather a miscalculation of forces. That was the error of the secession leaders. They refused to count the cost. Yancey firmly believed that England would be forced to intervene. The mills of Lancashire he thought could not get on without Southern cotton. He was sent abroad. He found Europe solid against slavery and therefore set against the Confederacy.

He came home with what is called a broken heart--the dreams of a lifetime shattered--and, in a kind of dazed stupor, laid himself down to die. With Richmond in flames and the exultant shouts of the detested yet victorious Yankees in his ears, he did die.

Wigfall survived but a few years. He was less a dreamer than Yancey.

A man big of brain and warm of heart he had gone from the ironclad provincialism of South Carolina to the windswept vagaries of Texas. He believed wholly the Yancey confession of faith; that secession was a const.i.tutional right; that African slavery was ordained of G.o.d; that the South was paramount, the North inferior. Yet in worldly knowledge he had learned more than Yancey--was an abler man than Jefferson Davis--and but for his affections and generous habits he would have made a larger figure in the war, having led the South's exit from the Senate.

VI

I do not think that either Hammond or Chestnut, the Senators from South Carolina, both men of parts, had at bottom much belief in the practicability of the Confederate movement. Neither had the Senators from Arkansas and Alabama, nor Brown, of Mississippi, the colleague of Jefferson Davis. Mason, of Virginia, a dogged old donkey, and Iverson, of Georgia, another, were the kind of men whom Wigfall dominated.

One of the least confident of those who looked on and afterward fell in line was the Vice President, John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky. He was the Beau Sabreur among statesmen as Albert Sidney Johnston, among soldiers. Never man handsomer in person or more winning in manners.

Sprung from a race of political aristocrats, he was born to early and shining success in public life. Of moderate opinions, winning and prudent, wherever he appeared he carried his audience with him. He had been elected on the ticket with Buchanan to the second office under the Government, when he was but five and thirty years of age. There was nothing for him to gain from a division of the Union; the Presidency, perhaps, if the Union continued undivided. But he could not resist the onrush of disunionism, went with the South, which he served first in the field and later as Confederate Secretary of War, and after a few years of self-imposed exile in Europe returned to Kentucky to die at four and fifty, a defeated and disappointed old man.

The adjoining state of Tennessee was represented in the Senate by one of the most problematic characters in American history. With my father, who remained his friend through life, he had entered the state legislature in 1835, and having served ten years in the lower House of Congress, and four years as governor of Tennessee he came back in 1857 to the National Capital, a member of the Upper House. He was Andrew Johnson.

I knew him from my childhood. Thrice that I can recall I saw him weep; never did I see him laugh. Life had been very serious, albeit very successful, to him. Of unknown parentage, the wife he had married before he was one and twenty had taught him to read. Yet at six and twenty he was in the Tennessee General a.s.sembly and at four and thirty in Congress.

There was from first to last not a little about him to baffle conjecture. I should call him a cross between Jack Cade and Aaron Burr.

His sympathies were easily stirred by rags in distress. But he was uncompromising in his detestation of the rich. It was said that he hated "a biled shirt." He would have nothing to do "with people who wore broadcloth," though he carefully dressed himself. When, as governor of Tennessee, he came to Nashville he refused many invitations to take his first New Year's dinner with a party of toughs at the house of a river roustabout.

There was nothing of the tough about him, however. His language was careful and exact. I never heard him utter an oath or tell a risque story. He pa.s.sed quite fifteen years in Washington, a total abstainer from the use of intoxicants. He fell into the occasional-drink habit during the dark days of the War. But after some costly experience he dropped it and continued a total abstainer to the end of his days.

He had, indeed, admirable self-control. I do not believe a more conscientious man ever lived. His judgments were sometimes peculiar, but they were upright and sincere, having reasons, which he could give with power and effect, behind them. Yet was he a born politician, crafty to a degree, and always successful, relying upon a popular following which never failed him.

In 1860 he supported the quasi-secession Breckenridge and Lane Presidential ticket, but in 1861 he stood true to the Union, retaining his seat in the Senate until he was appointed military governor of Tennessee. Nominated for Vice President on the ticket with Lincoln, in 1864, he was elected, and upon the a.s.sa.s.sination of Lincoln succeeded to the Presidency. Having served out his term as President he returned to Tennessee to engage in the hottest kind of politics, and though at the outset defeated finally regained his seat in the Senate of the United States.

He hated Grant with a holy hate. His first act on reentering the Senate was to deliver an implacably bitter speech against the President. It was his last public appearance. He went thence to his home in East Tennessee, gratified and happy, to die in a few weeks.

VII

There used to be a story about Raleigh, in North Carolina, where Andrew Johnson was born, which whispered that he was a natural son of William Ruffin, an eminent jurist in the earlier years of the nineteenth century. It was a.n.a.logous to the story that Lincoln was the natural son of various paternities from time to time a.s.signed to him. I had my share in running that calumny to cover. It was a lie out of whole cloth with nothing whatever to support or excuse it. I reached the bottom of it to discover proof of its baselessness abundant and conclusive. In Johnson's case I take it that the story had nothing other to rest on than the obscurity of his birth and the quality of his talents. Late in life Johnson went to Raleigh and caused to be erected a modest tablet over the spot pointed out as the grave of his progenitor, saying, I was told by persons claiming to have been present, "I place this stone over the last earthly abode of my alleged father."

Johnson, in the saying of the countryside, "out-married himself." His wife was a plain woman, but came of good family. One day, when a child, so the legend ran, she saw pa.s.sing through the Greenville street in which her people lived, a woman, a boy and a cow, the boy carrying a pack over his shoulder. They were obviously weary and hungry. Extreme poverty could present no sadder picture. "Mother," cried the girl, "there goes the man I am going to marry." She was thought to be in jest.

But a few years later she made her banter good and lived to see her husband President of the United States and with him to occupy the White House at Washington.

Much has been written of the humble birth and iron fortune of Abraham Lincoln. He had no such obstacles to overcome as either Andrew Jackson or Andrew Johnson. Jackson, a prisoner of war, was liberated, a lad of sixteen, from the British pen at Charleston, without a relative, a friend or a dollar in the world, having to make his way upward through the most aristocratic community of the country and the time. Johnson, equally friendless and penniless, started as a poor tailor in a rustic village. Lincoln must therefore, take third place among our self-made Presidents. The Hanks family were not paupers. He had a wise and helpful stepmother. He was scarcely worse off than most young fellows of his neighborhood, first in Indiana and then in Illinois. On this side justice has never been rendered to Jackson and Johnson. In the case of Jackson the circ.u.mstance was forgotten, while Johnson too often dwelt upon it and made capital out of it.

Under date of the 23rd of May, 1919, the Hon. Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, writes me the following letter, which I violate no confidence in reproducing in this connection:

MY DEAR Ma.r.s.e HENRY:--

I can't tell you how much delight and pleasure your reminiscences in the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post have given me, as well as the many others who have followed them, and I suppose you will put them in a volume when they are finished, so that we may have the pleasure of reading them in connected order.

As you know, I live in Raleigh and I was very much interested in your article in the issue of April 5, 1919, with reference to Andrew Johnson, in which you quote a story that "used to be current in Raleigh, that he was the son of William Ruffin, an eminent jurist of the ninetenth century." I had never heard this story, but the story that was gossiped there was that he was the son of a certain Senator Haywood. I ran that story down and found that it had no foundation whatever, because if he had been the son of the Senator reputed to be his father, the Senator was of the age of twelve years when Andrew Johnson was born.

My own information is, for I have made some investigation of it, that the story about Andrew Johnson's having a father other than the husband of his mother, is as wanting in foundation as the story about Abraham Lincoln. You did a great service in running that down and exposing it, and I trust before you finish your book that you will make further investigation and be able to do a like service in repudiating the unjust, idle gossip with reference to Andrew Johnson. In your article you say that persons who claim to have been present when Johnson came to Raleigh and erected a monument over the grave of his father, declare that Johnson said he placed this stone over the last earthly abode of "my alleged father." That is one phase of the gossip, and the other is that he said "my reputed father," both equally false.

The late Mr. Pulaski Cowper, who was private secretary to Governor Bragg, of our State, just prior to the war, and who was afterwards president of our leading life insurance company, a gentleman of high character, and of the best memory, was present at the time that Johnson made the address from which you quote the rumor. Mr. Cowper wrote an article for The News and Observer, giving the story and relating that Johnson said that "he was glad to come to Raleigh to erect a tablet to his father." The truth is that while his father was a man of little or no education, he held the position of janitor at the State Capitol, and he was not wanting in qualities which made him superior to his humble position. If he had been living in this day he would have been given a lifesaving medal, for upon the occasion of a picnic near Raleigh when the cry came that children were drowning he was the first to leap in and endanger his life to save them.

Andrew Johnson's mother was related to the Chappell family, of which there are a number of citizens of standing and character near Raleigh, several of them having been ministers of the Gospel, and one at least having gained distinction as a missionary in China.

I am writing you because I know that your story will be read and accepted and I thought you would be glad to have this story, based upon a study and investigation and personal knowledge of Mr. Cowper, whose character and competency are well known in North Carolina.

Chapter the Seventh

An Old Newspaper Rookery--Reactionary Sectionalism in Cincinnati and Louisville--_The Courier-Journal_

I

My dream of wealth through my commission on the Confederate cotton I was to sell to English buyers was quickly shattered. The cotton was burned and I found myself in the early spring of 1865 in the little village of Glendale, a suburb of Cincinnati, where the future Justice Stanley Matthews had his home. His wife was a younger sister of my mother. My grandmother was still alive and lived with her daughter and son-in-law.

I was received with open arms. A few days later the dear old lady said to me: "I suppose, my son, you are rather a picked bird after your adventures in the South. You certainly need better clothing. I have some money in bank and it is freely yours."

I knew that my Uncle Stanley had put her up to this, and out of sheer curiosity I asked her how much she could let me have. She named what seemed to me a stupendous sum. I thanked her, told her I had quite a sufficiency for the time being, slipped into town and p.a.w.ned my watch; that is, as I made light of it afterward in order to escape the humiliation of borrowing from an uncle whose politics I did not approve, I went with my collateral to an uncle who had no politics at all and got fifty dollars on it! Before the money was gone I had found, through Judge Matthews, congenial work.

There was in Cincinnati but one afternoon newspaper--the Evening Times--owned by Calvin W. Starbuck. He had been a practical printer but was grown very rich. He received me kindly, said the editorial force was quite full--must always be, on a daily newspaper--"but," he added, "my brother, Alexander Starbuck, who has been running the amus.e.m.e.nts, wants to go a-fishing in Canada--to be gone a month--and, if you wish, you can during his absence sub for him."

It was just to my hand and liking. Before Alexander Starbuck returned the leading editor of the paper fell from a ferryboat crossing the Ohio River and was drowned. The next day General Starbuck sent for me and offered me the vacant place.

"Why, general," I said, "I am an outlawed man: I do not agree with your politics. I do not see how I can undertake a place so conspicuous and responsible."

He replied: "I propose to engage you as an editorial manager. It is as if building a house you should be head carpenter, I the architect. The difference in salary will be seventy-five dollars a week against fifteen dollars a week."

I took the place.

II

The office of the Evening Times was a queer old curiosity shop. I set to and turned it inside out. I had very p.r.o.nounced journalistic notions of my own and applied them in every department of the sleepy old money-maker. One afternoon a week later I put forth a paper whose oldest reader could not have recognized it. The next morning's Cincinnati Commercial contained a flock of paragraphs to which the Chattanooga-Cincinnati-Rebel Evening Times furnished the keynote.

They made funny reading, but they threw a dangerous flare upon my "past"

and put me at a serious disadvantage. It happened that when Artemus Ward had been in town a fortnight before he gave me a dinner and had some of his friends to meet me. Among these was a young fellow of the name of Halstead, who, I was told, was the coming man on the Commercial.

Round to the Commercial office I sped, and being conducted to this person, who received me very blandly, I said: "Mr. Halstead, I am a journeyman day laborer in your city--the merest bird of pa.s.sage, with my watch at the p.a.w.nbroker's. As soon as I am able to get out of town I mean to go--and I came to ask if you can think the personal allusions to me in to-day's paper, which may lose me my job but can nowise hurt the Times, are quite fair--even--since I am without defense--quite manly."