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 analogous to the story that Lincoln was the natural son
of various paternities from time to time assigned 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 passing 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 circumstance 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: