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764 honest convictions, as determined chiefly by his peculiar experience, that the real ques- tion opens. Mr. Johnson was a Southern "poor white." He became the ornament, then the champion, of his class ; rescued it from political subjection in Tennessee, and, in his own election to the Governor's chair, and then to the United States Senate, gave it a first feast of supremacy. In this long strug- gle, the peculiar opinion and sentiment of his class that is, of its best portion became with him, though in an enlarged form, im- passioned convictions, deeply incorporated with his character, and held with somewhat of religious fervor. In the first speech contained in the present collection, dating so lately as 1858, he is found still resting upon this experience. His sympathy is wholly with the simpler forms of country life, with mechanics and small landholders, "the middle class," as he calls them. He hates cities ; he cannot help showing some mild jealousy of the commercial and manufacturing interests ; literature and science he does not wish to undervalue, but his whole heart is with the class who live a well-to-do, honest life, by manual labor in their own shops or on their own acres. Like his class, he dislikes the cotton lords, but likes Slavery, and has no faith in the negro ; it has not occurred to him to think of the negro as a man, and he wishes that every white man in the country had a slave to do his " menial " labor. In the next speech, made two years later, he is confronting the immediate probability of Secession. He grapples with it sturdily, but still regards it from a strictly Southern point of view, that of his class. The South, he thinks, has real grievances ; it has, indeed, been wronged by the election of a "sectional President and Vice-President"; it is entitled to redress ; only it should seek redress in the Union, not out of it Even when what he feared and fought against was become overt and bloody war, when his own life was vengefully sought, when his own friends were hunted down, and either murdered without mercy or drag- ged mercilessly away to fight an alien battle with a sword behind and cannon in front, even then he finds great difficulty in changing his point of view. He speaks no more of wrongs which the South has suffered ; but it is be- cause his feeling of that is overwhelmed by his sense of the horrible wrong it is commit- ting. He declares, at length, that, if Slavery or the Union must go down, he will stand by the Union ; but he evidently accepts the alternative with reluctance, though with res- olution. When it becomes apparent that this possible alternative is indeed actual, he is true to his pledge ; but it is a new charge in his mind against the Secessionists, that they have forced him to such election. They will have it so, he says, and since they will have it so, be it so ; the necessity is not of his making ; the retribution is real, but it is deserved. His final proclamation of free- dom in Tennessee, in advance of executive warrant, was an intrepid and memorable act, worthy of his resolute spirit, but was an act rather directed against the Rebels than prompted by sympathy with the slaves. His career in Tennessee was already far advanced before he fairly held forth his hand to the negroes as men, with the rights and interests of human beings ; and it needed all the rous- ed passion of his soul, all the touching trust of this people in him as their " Moses," all his intensity of recoil from treason, and all his sense of personal outrage, to nerve him for that triumph over his traditional preju- dices. The impression of Andrew Johnson which this book gives us is that of a deep, power- ful, impassioned nature, inflexible, but in- flexible rather by definite determination of character and fixity of conviction than by obstinacy of will. A man of large ability, he is, so to speak, deeply immersed in his own past, limited by the bonds of his ear- nest, but, until lately, narrow experience. His power to change his point of view up- on theoretical considerations is small, for he does little but expand his experience into theory. Facts alone can instruct him ; and if these run counter to his intellectual predi- lection, they must be impressive to be effec- tual. He follows the law of his mind in proceeding to make an "experiment" in dealing with the South, and in making it as nearly as possible in accordance with the ancient customs of his thought. There is danger, we think, that he will look at facts too much with a traditional eye ; but there is no danger that he will not act upon them with vigor, courage, and honest patriotism, so far as he shall see them in their true light It should be said, that, to learn the latest modifications of his opinions, the reader must consult the Introduction.