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.