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 Assembly 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 risqué
story. He passed 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 assassination 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 reëntering 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.