Part 8

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.

VII

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:

MY DEAR MARSE HENRY:—

I can’t tell you how much delight and pleasure your reminiscences in the Saturday Evening Post have given me, as well as the many others who have followed them, and I suppose you will put them in a volume when they are finished, so that we may have the pleasure of reading them in connected order.

As you know, I live in Raleigh and I was very much interested in your article in the issue of April 5, 1919, with reference to Andrew Johnson, in which you quote a story that “used to be current in Raleigh, that he was the son of William Ruffin, an eminent jurist of the ninetenth century.” I had never heard this story, but the story that was gossiped there was that he was the son of a certain Senator Haywood. I ran that story down and found that it had no foundation whatever, because if he had been the son of the Senator reputed to be his father, the Senator was of the age of twelve years when Andrew Johnson was born.

My own information is, for I have made some investigation of it, that the story about Andrew Johnson’s having a father other than the husband of his mother, is as wanting in foundation as the story about Abraham Lincoln. You did a great service in running that down and exposing it, and I trust before you finish your book that you will make further investigation and be able to do a like service in repudiating the unjust, idle gossip with reference to Andrew Johnson. In your article you say that persons who claim to have been present when Johnson came to Raleigh and erected a monument over the grave of his father, declare that Johnson said he placed this stone over the last earthly abode of “my alleged father.” That is one phase of the gossip, and the other is that he said “my reputed father,” both equally false.

The late Mr. Pulaski Cowper, who was private secretary to Governor Bragg, of our State, just prior to the war, and who was afterwards president of our leading life insurance company, a gentleman of high character, and of the best memory, was present at the time that Johnson made the address from which you quote the rumor. Mr. Cowper wrote an article for The News and Observer, giving the story and relating that Johnson said that “he was glad to come to Raleigh to erect a tablet to his father.” The truth is that while his father was a man of little or no education, he held the position of janitor at the State Capitol, and he was not wanting in qualities which made him superior to his humble position. If he had been living in this day he would have been given a lifesaving medal, for upon the occasion of a picnic near Raleigh when the cry came that children were drowning he was the first to leap in and endanger his life to save them.

Andrew Johnson’s mother was related to the Chappell family, of which there are a number of citizens of standing and character near Raleigh, several of them having been ministers of the Gospel, and one at least having gained distinction as a missionary in China.

I am writing you because I know that your story will be read and accepted and I thought you would be glad to have this story, based upon a study and investigation and personal knowledge of Mr. Cowper, whose character and competency are well known in North Carolina.

Chapter the Seventh

An Old Newspaper Rookery—Reactionary Sectionalism in Cincinnati and Louisville—_The Courier-Journal_

I

My dream of wealth through my commission on the Confederate cotton I was to sell to English buyers was quickly shattered. The cotton was burned and I found myself in the early spring of 1865 in the little village of Glendale, a suburb of Cincinnati, where the future Justice Stanley Matthews had his home. His wife was a younger sister of my mother. My grandmother was still alive and lived with her daughter and son-in-law.

I was received with open arms. A few days later the dear old lady said to me: “I suppose, my son, you are rather a picked bird after your adventures in the South. You certainly need better clothing. I have some money in bank and it is freely yours.”

I knew that my Uncle Stanley had put her up to this, and out of sheer curiosity I asked her how much she could let me have. She named what seemed to me a stupendous sum. I thanked her, told her I had quite a sufficiency for the time being, slipped into town and pawned my watch; that is, as I made light of it afterward in order to escape the humiliation of borrowing from an uncle whose politics I did not approve, I went with my collateral to an uncle who had no politics at all and got fifty dollars on it! Before the money was gone I had found, through Judge Matthews, congenial work.

There was in Cincinnati but one afternoon newspaper—the Evening Times—owned by Calvin W. Starbuck. He had been a practical printer but was grown very rich. He received me kindly, said the editorial force was quite full—must always be, on a daily newspaper—“but,” he added, “my brother, Alexander Starbuck, who has been running the amusements, wants to go a-fishing in Canada—to be gone a month—and, if you wish, you can during his absence sub for him.”

It was just to my hand and liking. Before Alexander Starbuck returned the leading editor of the paper fell from a ferryboat crossing the Ohio River and was drowned. The next day General Starbuck sent for me and offered me the vacant place.

“Why, general,” I said, “I am an outlawed man: I do not agree with your politics. I do not see how I can undertake a place so conspicuous and responsible.”

He replied: “I propose to engage you as an editorial manager. It is as if building a house you should be head carpenter, I the architect. The difference in salary will be seventy-five dollars a week against fifteen dollars a week.”

I took the place.

II

The office of the Evening Times was a queer old curiosity shop. I set to and turned it inside out. I had very pronounced journalistic notions of my own and applied them in every department of the sleepy old money-maker. One afternoon a week later I put forth a paper whose oldest reader could not have recognized it. The next morning’s Cincinnati Commercial contained a flock of paragraphs to which the Chattanooga-Cincinnati-Rebel Evening Times furnished the keynote.

They made funny reading, but they threw a dangerous flare upon my “past” and put me at a serious disadvantage. It happened that when Artemus Ward had been in town a fortnight before he gave me a dinner and had some of his friends to meet me. Among these was a young fellow of the name of Halstead, who, I was told, was the coming man on the Commercial.

Round to the Commercial office I sped, and being conducted to this person, who received me very blandly, I said: “Mr. Halstead, I am a journeyman day laborer in your city—the merest bird of passage, with my watch at the pawnbroker’s. As soon as I am able to get out of town I mean to go—and I came to ask if you can think the personal allusions to me in to-day’s paper, which may lose me my job but can nowise hurt the Times, are quite fair—even—since I am without defense—quite manly.”

He looked at me with that quizzical, serio-comic stare which so became him, and with great heartiness replied: “No—they were damned mean—though I did not realize how mean. The mark was so obvious and tempting I could not resist, but—there shall be no more of them. Come, let us go and have a drink.”

That was the beginning of a friendship which brought happiness to both of us and lasted nearly half a century, to the hour of his death, when, going from Louisville to Cincinnati, I helped to lay him away in Spring Grove Cemetery.

I had no thought of remaining in Cincinnati. My objective was Nashville, where the young woman who was to become my wife, and whom I had not seen for nearly two years, was living with her family. During the summer Mr. Francisco, the business manager of the Evening Times, had a scheme to buy the Toledo Commercial, in conjunction with Mr. Comly, of Columbus, and to engage me as editor conjointly with Mr. Harrison Gray Otis as publisher. It looked very good. Toledo threatened Cleveland and Detroit as a lake port. But nothing could divert me. As soon as Parson Brownlow, who was governor of Tennessee and making things lively for the returning rebels, would allow, I was going to Nashville.

About the time the way was cleared my two pals, or bunkies, of the Confederacy, Albert Roberts and George Purvis, friends from boyhood, put in an appearance. They were on their way to the capital of Tennessee. The father of Albert Roberts was chief owner of the Republican Banner, an old and highly respectable newspaper, which had for nearly four years lain in a state of suspension. Their plan now was to revive its publication, Purvis to be business manager, and Albert and I to be editors. We had no cash. Nobody on our side of the line had any cash. But John Roberts owned a farm he could mortgage for money enough to start us. What had I to say?

Less than a week later saw us back at home winnowing the town for subscribers and advertising. We divided it into districts, each taking a specified territory. The way we boys hustled was a sight to see. But the way the community warmed to us was another. When the familiar headline, The Republican Banner, made its appearance there was a popular hallelujah, albeit there were five other dailies ahead of us. A year later there was only one, and it was nowise a competitor.

Albert Roberts had left his girl, Edith Scott, the niece of Huxley, whom I have before mentioned, in Montgomery, Alabama. Purvis’ girl, Sophie Searcy, was in Selma. Their hope was to have enough money by Christmas each to pay a visit to those distant places. My girl was on the spot, and we had resolved, money or no money, to be married without delay. Before New Year’s the three of us were wedded and comfortably settled, with funds galore, for the paper had thrived consumingly. It had thrived so consumingly that after a little I was able to achieve the wish of my heart and to go to London, taking my wife and my “great American novel” with me. I have related elsewhere what came of this and what happened to me.

III

That bread cast upon the waters—“‘dough’ put out at usance,” as Joseph Jefferson used to phrase it—shall return after many days has been I dare say discovered by most persons who have perpetrated acts of kindness, conscious or unconscious. There was a poor, broken-down English actor with a passion for Chaucer, whom I was wont to encounter in the Library of Congress. His voice was quite gone. Now and again I had him join me in a square meal. Once in a while I paid his room rent. I was loath to leave him when the break came in 1861, though he declared he had “expectations,” and made sure he would not starve.

I was passing through Regent Street in London, when a smart brougham drove up to the curb and a wheezy voice called after me. It was my old friend, Newton. His “expectations” had not failed him, he had come into a property and was living in affluence.

He knew London as only a Bohemian native and to the manner born could know it. His sense of bygone obligation knew no bounds. Between him and John Mahoney and Artemus Ward I was made at home in what might be called the mysteries and eccentricities of differing phases of life in the British metropolis not commonly accessible to the foreign casual. In many after visits this familiar knowledge has served me well. But Newton did not live to know of some good fortune that came to me and to feel my gratitude to him, as dear old John Mahoney did. When I was next in London he was gone.

It was not, however, the actor, Newton, whom I had in mind in offering a bread-upon-the-water moral, but a certain John Hatcher, the memory of whom in my case illustrates it much better. He was a wit and a poet. He had been State Librarian of Tennessee. Nothing could keep him out of the service, though he was a sad cripple and wholly unequal to its requirements. He fell ill. I had the opportunity to care for him. When the war was over his old friend, George D. Prentice, called him to Louisville to take an editorial place on the Journal.

About the same time Mr. Walter Haldeman returned from the South and resumed the suspended publication of the Louisville Courier. He was in the prime of life, a man of surpassing energy, enterprise and industry, and had with him the popular sympathy. Mr. Prentice was nearly three score and ten. The stream had passed him by. The Journal was not only beginning to feel the strain but was losing ground. In this emergency Hatcher came to the rescue. I was just back from London and was doing noticeable work on the Nashville Banner.

“Here is your man,” said Hatcher to Mr. Prentice and Mr. Henderson, the owners of the Journal; and I was invited to come to Louisville.

After I had looked over the field and inspected the Journal’s books I was satisfied that a union with the Courier was the wisest solution of the newspaper situation, and told them so. Meanwhile Mr. Haldeman, whom I had known in the Confederacy, sent for me. He offered me the same terms for part ownership and sole editorship of the Courier, which the Journal people had offered me. This I could not accept, but proposed as an alternative the consolidation of the two on an equal basis. He was willing enough for the consolidation, but not on equal terms. There was nothing for it but a fight. I took the Journal and began to hammer the Courier.

A dead summer was before us, but Mr. Henderson had plenty of money and was willing to spend it. During the contest not an unkind word was printed on either side. After stripping the Journal to its heels it had very little to go on or to show for what had once been a prosperous business. But circulation flowed in. From eighteen hundred daily it quickly mounted to ten thousand; from fifteen hundred weekly to fifty thousand. The middle of October it looked as if we had a straight road before us.

But I knew better. I had discovered that the field, no matter how worked, was not big enough to support two rival dailies. There was toward the last of October on the edge of town a real-estate sale which Mr. Haldeman and I attended. Here was my chance for a play. I must have bid up to a hundred thousand dollars and did actually buy nearly ten thousand dollars of the lots put up at auction, relying upon some money presently coming to my wife.

I could see that it made an impression on Mr. Haldeman. Returning in the carriage which had brought us out I said: “Mr. Haldeman, I am going to ruin you. But I am going to run up a money obligation to Isham Henderson I shall never be able to discharge. You need an editor. I need a publisher. Let us put these two newspapers together, buy the Democrat, and, instead of cutting one another’s throats, go after Cincinnati and St. Louis. You will recall that I proposed this to you in the beginning. What is the matter with it now?”

Nothing was the matter with it. He agreed at once. The details were soon adjusted. Ten days later there appeared upon the doorsteps of the city in place of the three familiar visitors, a double-headed stranger, calling itself the Courier-Journal. Our exclusive possession of the field thus acquired lasted two years. At the end of these we found that at least the appearance of competition was indispensable and willingly accepted an offer from a proposed Republican organ for a division of the Press dispatches which we controlled. Then and there the real prosperity of the Courier-Journal began, the paper having made no money out of its monopoly.

IV

Reconstruction, as it was called—ruin were a fitter name for it—had just begun. The South was imprisoned, awaiting the executioner. The Constitution of the United States hung in the balance. The Federal Union faced the threat of sectional despotism. The spirit of the time was martial law. The gospel of proscription ruled in Congress. Radicalism, vitalized by the murder of Abraham Lincoln and inflamed by the inadequate effort of Andrew Johnson to carry out the policies of Lincoln, was in the saddle riding furiously toward a carpetbag Poland and a negroized Ireland.

The Democratic Party, which, had it been stronger, might have interposed, lay helpless. It, too, was crushed to earth. Even the Border States, which had not been embraced by the military agencies and federalized machinery erected over the Gulf States, were seriously menaced. Never did newspaper enterprise set out under gloomier auspices.

There was a party of reaction in Kentucky, claiming to be Democratic, playing to the lead of the party of repression at the North. It refused to admit that the head of the South was in the lion’s mouth and that the first essential was to get it out. The Courier-Journal proposed to stroke the mane, not twist the tail of the lion. Thus it stood between two fires. There arose a not unnatural distrust of the journalistic monopoly created by the consolidation of the three former dailies into a single newspaper, carrying an unfamiliar hyphenated headline. Touching its policy of sectional conciliation it picked its way perilously through the cross currents of public opinion. There was scarcely a sinister purpose that was not alleged against it by its enemies; scarcely a hostile device that was not undertaken to put it down and drive it out.