active group of Washington politicians believed in the necessity of a
stern accounting with the "rebels." Lincoln's gentleness seemed to these
bitter northerners like a calamity; Johnson's vindictiveness like a
Godsend to the country. In the conflict between the policy of clemency
and the policy of severity is to be found the beginning of the period of
reconstruction.

Andrew Johnson was a compact, sturdy figure, his eyes black, his
complexion swarthy. In politics he had always been a Democrat. So
diverse were his characteristics that one is tempted to ascribe two
personalities to him. He was a tenacious man, possessed of a rude
intellectual force, a rough-and-ready stump speaker, intensely loyal,
industrious, sincere, self-reliant. His courage was put to the test
again and again, and nobody ever said that it failed. His loyalty held
him in the Union in 1861, although he was a senator from Tennessee and
his state as well as his southern colleagues were withdrawing. His
public and private integrity withstood a hostile investigation that
included the testimony of all strata of society, from cabinet officers
to felons in prison. Later, at the most critical moment of his whole
career, when he had hardly a friend on whom to lean, he was unflurried,
dignified, undismayed.

Although Johnson was born in North Carolina, the greater part of his
life was spent in eastern Tennessee. His education was of the slightest.
His wife taught him to write, and while he plied his tailor's trade she
read books to him that appealed to his eager intellect. When scarcely of
voting age he became mayor of the town in which he lived and by sheer
force of character made his way up into the state legislature, the
federal House of Representatives and the Senate. President Lincoln made
him military governor of Tennessee in 1862. In 1864 many Democrats and