WHITE HOUSE GALLERY VINTAGE PHOTOGRAVURE OF PRESIDENT ANDREW JOHNSON

OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE GALLERY VINTAGE PHOTOGRAVURE OF PRESIDENT ANDREW JOHNSON

WITH WRITTEN DEDICATION TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON BY CHAMP CLARK, Congressman from Missouri

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1X TITLE PAGE AND DEDICATION TEXT

1X TISSUE PAPER WITH PRINTED NUMBER OF PRESIDENCY AND RELATED YEARS OF PRESIDENCY

Full Text of Dedication

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Jonson

HE three facts which will forever keep Andrew Johnson's name alive are that he rose from a tailor's bench to be Chief Magistrate of the Republic; that he was the only Senator of the United States from any seceding State that remained faithful to the Union, and that he although bills of impeachment were prepared against John fact not generally known. Not only is there great prejudice against Andrew Johnson in the public mind, but his talents are also greatly underrated.

In integrity of purpose, in personal and moral courage,

in intensity of patriotism he has had no superior among our Presidents.

That his impeachment marks one ot the most dangerous epochs of

American history there can now be no question among people whose opinion is at all worthy of

respect.

Even intelligent Republicans now take this view of the matter.

Not long since in a lecture delivered before a college in this city, Mr. Justice John M.

Harlan, of the Supreme Court of the United States, stated that as his opinion. He is certainly a competent witness.

The people of the North have never realized, and, perhaps, never will realize, the courage

thai was required for a man to stand for the Union in 1861 in Tennessee, Kentucky, ' Virginia, or Maryland. It was as easy as falling off a log, a slippery log at that, for a man to be for the Union in Massachusetts.

It was unprofitable to be anything else.

It was easv to be

a Confederate in South Carolina.

It was dangerous to be otherwise.

But in what are known

as the

" border States," including Tennessee, it was extremely hazardous to be one or the other.

The truth is, that there really was no Civil war anywhere to any considerable extent outside of these

"border States."

So far as the extreme Northern States or the extreme Southern States

were concerned what we term Civil war was to all intents and purposes a war between two countries foreign to each other.

But in the " border States" it was not only neighborhood against

neighborhood, but family against family, father against son, husband against wife, slave against

master.

That lohnson or any other man had the moral and physical courage to stand up

axallist

overwhelming sentiment in his own State in

that ( critical era is one of the

marvels of history.

At the time of the firing on Fort

Sumter he was not only one of the ablest men in the

Senate from the South, but was also one of the most popular.

At that time it appeared that by

going with the South there was no station beyond his reach, and that by going with the North he had absolutely nothing to hope for in the way of political preferment.

But

man oroDoses

and God disposes, and by adhering to the Union he became President of the United States.

It is a fact known of all men who have turned their minds to a contemplation of the subject that for a man to sever his political relations or to run counter on any great question to the sentiments of the community or State in which he lived was, is, and must always be a most painful periormance.

That Johnson felt this there can be no question; but his love of the

outweighed all other considerations, and he gave it courageous, consistent and powerfal support.

His position probably fixed the position of thousands of

Tennesseeans, for

that State furnished nearly 40,000 white soldiers for the Union armies, most of them recruited from that portion of the State in which Johnson resided, and in which he had always had his greatest political influence.

His love of the Union was supreme.

He always said in his stump

speeches that when he died he wanted to be buried with the Stars and Stripes for a winding sheet, and his wishes in this regard were gratified.

My own opinion about the matter is that he was impeached for undertaking to carry out the policy of reconciliation which Abraham Lincoln would have successfully carried out if he had lived. Lincoln would not have been impeached for doing what Ohnson tried to do, because he was too strong in the hearts of what he affectionately called the plain people of

a true history of the United States is ever written, while Andrew Johnson will not stand in the front rank of American statesmen, he will unquestionably stand in the front rank of American patriots.

He did more, and risked more, to preserve the Union than was done by

all the men combined who voted for his conviction. I love to remember that General John B.

Henderson, of Missouri, a Republican Senator, saved the Republic from that stupendous calamity and burning shame.

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