[1] Ira Remsen was born in New York City on the 10th of February
1846, graduated at the college of the City of New York in 1865,
studied at the New York college of physicians and surgeons and at the
university of Göttingen, was professor of chemistry at Williams
College in 1872-1876, and in 1876 became professor cf chemistry at
Johns Hopkins University. He published many textbooks of chemistry,
organic and inorganic, which were republished in England and were
translated abroad. In 1879 he founded the _American Chemical
Journal_.
JOHNSON, ANDREW (1808-1875), seventeenth president of the United States,
was born at Raleigh, North Carolina, on the 29th of December 1808. His
parents were poor, and his father died when Andrew was four years old.
At the age of ten he was apprenticed to a tailor, his spare hours being
spent in acquiring the rudiments of an education. He learned to read
from a book which contained selected orations of great British and
American statesmen. The young tailor went to Laurens Court House, South
Carolina, in 1824, to work at his trade, but returned to Raleigh in 1826
and soon afterward removed to Greeneville in the eastern part of
Tennessee. He married during the same year Eliza McCardle (1810-1876),
much his superior by birth and education, who taught him the common
school branches of learning and was of great assistance in his later
career. In East Tennessee most of the people were small farmers, while
West Tennessee was a land of great slave plantations. Johnson began in
politics to oppose the aristocratic element and became the spokesman and
champion of the poorer and labouring classes. In 1828 he was elected an
alderman of Greeneville and in 1830-1834 was mayor. In 1834, in the
Tennessee constitutional convention he endeavoured to limit the
influence of the slaveholders by basing representation in the state
legislature on the white population alone. In 1835-1837 and 1839-1841
Johnson was a Democratic member of the state House of Representatives,
and in 1841-1843 of the state Senate; in both houses he uniformly upheld
the cause of the "common people," and, in addition, opposed legislation
for "internal improvements." He soon was recognized as the political
champion of East Tennessee. Though his favourite leaders became Whigs,
Johnson remained a Democrat, and in 1840 canvassed the state for Van
Buren for president.
In 1843 he was elected to the national House of Representatives and
there remained for ten years until his district was gerrymandered by the
Whigs and he lost his seat. But he at once offered himself as a
candidate for governor and was elected and re-elected, and was then sent
to the United States Senate, serving from 1857 to 1862. As governor
(1853-1857) he proved to be able and non-partisan. He championed popular
education and recommended the homestead policy to the national
government, and from his sympathy with the working classes and his
oft-avowed pride in his former calling he became known as the "mechanic
governor." In Congress he proved to be a tireless advocate of the claims
of the poorer whites and an opponent of the aristocracy. He favoured the
annexation of Texas, supported the Polk administration on the issues of
the Mexican War and the Oregon boundary controversy, and though voting
for the admission of free California demanded national protection for
slavery. He also advocated the homestead law and low tariffs, opposed
the policy of "internal improvements," and was a zealous worker for
budget economies. Though opposed to a monopoly of political power in the
South by the great slaveholders, he deprecated anti-slavery agitation
(even favouring denial of the right of petition on that subject) as
threatening abolition or the dissolution of the Union, and went with his
sectional leaders so far as to demand freedom of choice for the
Territories, and protection for slavery where it existed--this even so
late as 1860. He supported in 1860 the ultra-Democratic ticket of
Breckinridge and Lane, but he did not identify the election of Lincoln
with the ruin of the South, though he thought the North should give
renewed guarantees to slavery. But he followed Jackson rather than
Calhoun, and above everything else set his love of the Union, though
believing the South to be grievously wronged. He was the only Southern
member of Congress who opposed secession and refused to "go with his
state" when it withdrew from the Union in 1861. In the judgment of a
leading opponent (O. P. Morton) "perhaps no man in Congress exerted the
same influence on the public sentiment of the North at the beginning of
the war" as Johnson. During the war he suffered much for his loyalty to
the Union. In March 1862 Lincoln made him military governor of the part
of Tennessee captured from the Confederates, and after two years of
autocratic rule (with much danger to himself) he succeeded in organizing
a Union government for the state. In 1864, to secure the votes of the
war Democrats and to please the border states that had remained in the
Union, Johnson was nominated for vice-president on the ticket with
Lincoln.
A month after the inauguration the murder of Lincoln left him president,
with the great problem to solve of reconstruction of the Union. All his
past career and utterances seemed to indicate that he would favour the
harshest measures toward ex-Confederates, hence his acceptability to the
most radical republicans. But, whether because he drew a distinction
between the treason of individuals and of states, or was influenced by
Seward, or simply, once in responsible position, separated Republican
party politics from the question of constitutional interpretation, at
least he speedily showed that he would be influenced by no acrimony, and
adopted the lenient reconstruction policy of Lincoln. In this he had for
some time the cordial support of his cabinet. During the summer of 1865
he set up provisional civil governments in all the seceded states except
Texas, and within a few months all those states were reorganized and
applying for readmission to the Union. The radical congress (Republican
by a large majority) sharply opposed this plan of restoration, as they
had opposed Lincoln's plan: first, because the members of Congress from
the Southern States (when readmitted) would almost certainly vote with
the Democrats; secondly, because relatively few of the Confederates were
punished; and thirdly, because the newly organized Southern States did
not give political rights to the negroes. The question of the status of
the negro proved the crux of the issue. Johnson was opposed to general
or immediate negro suffrage. A bitter contest began in Feb. 1866,
between the president and the Congress, which refused to admit
representatives from the South and during 1866 passed over his veto a
number of important measures, such as the Freedmen's Bureau Act and the
Civil Rights Act, and submitted to the States the Fourteenth Amendment
to the Constitution. Johnson took a prominent and undignified part in
the congressional campaign of 1866, in which his policies were voted
down by the North. In 1867 Congress threw aside his work of restoration
and proceeded with its own plan, the main features of which were the
disfranchisement of ex-Confederates and the enfranchisement of negroes.
On the 2nd of March 1867 Congress passed over the president's veto the
Tenure of Office Act, prohibiting the president from dismissing from
office without the consent of the Senate any officer appointed by and
with the advice and consent of that body, and in addition a section was
inserted in the army appropriation bill of this session designed to
subordinate the president to the Senate and the general-in-chief of the
army in military matters. The president was thus deprived of practically
all power. Stanton and other members of his cabinet and General Grant
became hostile to him, the president attempted to remove Stanton without
regard to the Tenure of Office Act, and, finally, to get rid of the
president, Congress in 1868(February-May) made an attempt to impeach and
remove him, his disregard of the Tenure of Office Act being the
principal charge against him. The charges[1] were in part quite trivial,
and the evidence was ridiculously inadequate for the graver charges. A
two-thirds majority was necessary for conviction; and the votes being 35
to 19 (7 Republicans and 12 Democrats voting in his favour on the
crucial clauses) he was acquitted. The misguided animus of the
impeachment as a piece of partisan politics was soon very generally
admitted; and the importance of its failure, in securing the continued
power and independence of the presidential element in the constitutional
system, can hardly be over-estimated. The rest of his term as president
was comparatively quiet and uneventful. In 1869 he retired into private
life in Tennessee, and after several unsuccessful efforts was elected to
the United States Senate, free of party trammels, in 1875, but died at
Carter's Station, Tenn., on the 31st of July 1875. The only speech he
made was a skilful and temperate arraignment of President Grant's policy
towards the South.
President Johnson's leading political principles were a reverence of
Andrew Jackson, unlimited confidence in the people, and an intense
veneration for the constitution. Throughout his life he remained in some
respects a "backwoodsman." He lacked the finish of systematic education.
But his whole career sufficiently proves him to have been a man of
extraordinary qualities. He did not rise above untoward circumstances by
favour, nor--until after his election as senator--by fortunate and
fortuitous connexion with great events, but by strength of native
talents, persistent purpose, and an iron will. He had strong, rugged
powers, was a close reasoner and a forcible speaker. Unfortunately his
extemporaneous speeches were commonplace, in very bad taste, fervently
intemperate and denunciatory; and though this was probably due largely
to temperament and habits of stump-speaking formed in early life, it was
attributed by his enemies to drink. Resorting to stimulants after
illness, his marked excess in this respect on the occasion of his
inauguration as vice-president undoubtedly did him harm with the public.
Faults of personality were his great handicap. Though approachable and
not without kindliness of manner, he seemed hard and inflexible; and
while president, physical pain and domestic anxieties, added to the
struggles of public life, combined to accentuate a naturally somewhat
severe temperament. A lifelong Southern Democrat, he was forced to lead
(nominally at least) a party of Northern Republicans, with whom he had
no bond of sympathy save a common opposition to secession; and his
ardent, aggressive convictions and character, above all his complete
lack of tact, unfitted him to deal successfully with the passionate
partisanship of Congress. The absolute integrity and unflinching courage
that marked his career were always ungrudgingly admitted by his greatest
enemies.
See L. Foster, _The Life and Speeches of Andrew Johnson_ (1866); D. M.
De Witt, _The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson_ (1903); C. E.
Chadsey, _The Struggle between President Johnson and Congress over
Reconstruction_ (1896); and W. A. Dunning, _Essays on the Civil War
and Reconstruction_ (1898). Also see W. A. Dunning's paper "More Light
on Andrew Johnson" (in the _American Historical Review_, April 1906),
in which apparently conclusive evidence is presented to prove that
Johnson's first inaugural, a notable state paper, was written by the
historian George Bancroft.