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.
JOHNSON, BENJAMIN (c. 1665–1742), English actor, was first
a scene painter, then acted in the provinces, and appeared in
London in 1695 at Drury Lane after Betterton’s defection. He
was the original Captain Driver in Oronooko (1696), Captain
Fireball in Farquhar’s Sir Harry Wildair (1701), Sable in Steele’s
Funeral (1702), &c.; as the First Gravedigger in Hamlet and
in several characters in the plays of Ben Jonson he was particularly good. He succeeded, also, to Thomas Doggett’s rôles.
JOHNSON, EASTMAN (1824–1906), American artist, was born
at Lovell, Maine, on the 29th of July 1824. He studied at
Düsseldorf, Paris, Rome and The Hague, the last city being his
home for four years. In 1860 he was elected to the National
Academy of Design, New York. A distinguished portrait and
genre painter, he made distinctively American themes his own,
depicting the negro, fisherfolk and farm life with unusual interest. Such pictures as “Old Kentucky Home” (1867), “Husking
Bee” (1876), “Cranberry Harvest, Nantucket” (1880), and his
portrait group “The Funding Bill” (1881) achieved a national
reputation. Among his sitters were many prominent men,
including Daniel Webster; Presidents Hayes, Arthur, Cleveland
and Harrison; William M. Evarts, Charles J. Folger; Emerson,
Longfellow, Hawthorne, James McCosh, Noah Porter and Sir
Edward Archbald. He died in New York City on the 5th of
April 1906.
JOHNSON, REVERDY (1796–1876), American political leader and jurist, was born at Annapolis, Maryland, on the 21st of May 1796. His father, John Johnson (1770–1824), was a distinguished lawyer, who served in both houses of the Maryland General Assembly, as attorney-general of the state (1806–1811), as a judge
of the court of appeals (1811–1821), and as a chancellor of his state (1821–1824). Reverdy graduated from St John’s college in 1812. He then studied law in his father’s office, was admitted to the bar in 1815 and began to practise in Upper Marlborough,
- ↑ The charges centred in the president’s removal of Secretary Stanton, his ad interim appointment of Lorenzo Thomas, his campaign speeches in 1866, and the relation of these three things to the Tenure of Office Act. Of the eleven charges of impeachment the first was that Stanton’s removal was contrary to the Tenure of Office Act; the second, that the appointment of Thomas was a violation of the same law; the third, that the appointment violated the Constitution; the fourth, that Johnson conspired with Thomas “to hinder and prevent Edwin M. Stanton . . . from holding . . . office of secretary for the department of war”; the fifth, that Johnson had conspired with Thomas to “prevent and hinder the execution” of the Tenure of Office Act; the sixth, that he had conspired with Thomas “to seize, take and possess the property of the United States in the department of war,” in violation of the Tenure of Office Act; the seventh, that this action was “a high misdemeanour”; the eighth, that the appointment of Thomas was “with intent unlawfully to control the disbursements of the moneys appropriated for the military service and for the department of war”; the ninth, that he had instructed Major-General Emory, in command of the department of Washington, that an act of 1867 appropriating money for the army was unconstitutional; the tenth, that his speeches in 1866 constituted “a high misdemeanour in office”; and the eleventh, the “omnibus” article, that he had committed high misdemeanours in saying that the 39th Congress was not an authorized Congress, that its legislation was not binding upon him, and that it was incapable of proposing amendments. The actual trial began on the 30th of March (from the 5th of March it was adjourned to the 23rd, and on the 24th of March to the 30th). On the 16th of May, after sessions in which the Senate repeatedly reversed the rulings of the chief justice as to the admission of evidence, in which the president’s counsel showed that their case was excellently prepared and the prosecuting counsel appealed in general to political passions rather than to judicial impartiality, the eleventh article was voted on and impeachment failed by a single vote (35 to 19; 7 republicans and 12 democrats voting “Not guilty”) of the necessary two-thirds. After ten days’ interval, during which B. F. Butler of the prosecuting counsel attempted to prove that corruption had been practised on some of those voting “Not guilty,” on the 26th of May a vote was taken on the second and third articles with the same result as on the eleventh article. There was no vote on the other articles.
