Don't worry 'cause Andy ain't a drunkard

Chapter 1 Andy’s President?

Knock!!! Andrew Johnson’s peaceful slumber would have to end soon. Preferably before Father Abraham’s violent slumber ends, as somebody must be ready at the helm of our ship of state when it does. Mind you, Seward might have a steadier hand, but what’s the use? Seward’s deader than our dying President. Even if he survives, he’s two places below Johnson in the line of succession. “Governor Johnson, I have to speak with you!” That must have done the trick; one could hear quick movement from the other side of the door.

“Farwell, is that you?”

“Yes.”

As the door creaked open, the bleary eyed Vice President looked Leonard J. Farwell in the face; perhaps he was wondering what in tarnation this commotion could be about.

“The President has been shot!”

“Where was he wounded?”

“In the head!”

Jesus, I thought I was just bringing some unity to the ticket; If it’s as bad as it seems for Abe, it’ll be the country next. I hope there still is a country to unite. It’s hard news, but it’s a good thing he woke me up.

Two former Governors held each other, the one from Wisconsin had taken up a nice sinecure job at the Post Office; the other from Tennessee will find out that he’ll have a couple weeks to move into the White House. Mary Todd won’t be too quick to leave.

In the meantime, Guards in their dark blue uniforms began arriving at the door of Johnson’s room in Kirkwood House. Johnson’s new reality began dawning on him sometime after 10:15 PM, Good Friday April 14th, 1865.

“What do you mean? I was at Ford’s Theater. I saw it happen. My account of it should be on tomorrow’s front page.”

“Now listen here Pete. You weren’t the only New York Tribune boy who happened to be watching Our American Cousin. Bam, knife fight, a maniac’s spur gets caught in the drapes, Booth lands on the stage and shouts Sic Semper Tyrannis. This will be covered from page to page of every newspaper, including ours. What I want to know is what everyone in Washington and New York and hell, and heaven and the whole reading public needs to know. Who is Andrew Johnson? What can we expect from him?”

“Please let me cover the Assassination story. Please?”

“You seem to desire a morbid article..”

“No sir, I don’t desire morbid stories about where the country could be in four years. I want to cover the assassination, the funeral, the memorials. I want to say goodbye.”

“I know. It’s harder to anticipate the future than to see things to their bitter end, and even after their end. I understand that. But you’ve got to figure out what to anticipate, whether we should panic about, politely oppose or openly embrace our new President. You’ll need to tell me. Talk to everyone who ever knew, loved or hated Andrew Johnson.”

“Loved. Hated. You speak in the past tense -- why it almost sounds like an obituary.”

“It might even be an obituary. Andrew Johnson won’t be Andrew Johnson anymore.”

“You mean that his office is going to transcend his personality or vice versa?”

“That’ll be one thing which you will need to find out. Or help us predict as best as you can by giving us the facts as you gather them.”

7:00 AM, Peterson House, April 15th 1865

It’s been raining for an hour now. A full hour of incessant rain as Abraham Lincoln’s right eye grows increasingly swollen, and he is drawing air into his body less and less frequently; how unconscious is he, really, as he continues to fade further and further towards his grave? Mary Todd Lincoln is not fading into widowhood though, she is ready to combust into a World where she’ll be even more utterly alone than she had been for the last twenty three years. More maddeningly alone, infinitely more misunderstood, but perhaps her dear love could wake up, just one last time. Tell me something to remember you by. Maybe, just one last time.

She is back in the parlor now, at her husband’s side telling him, “Love, live but one moment to speak to me once - to speak to our children.” Mary let out a frightful cry, and collapsed, half fainting.

Another person at Lincoln’s bedside is Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War or Mars, as Lincoln so often calls him, and he is also combusting. An era is ending, a glorious tragic era of war and emancipation, which isn’t even being allowed to die peacefully or quietly. We have accommodated her enough, he may have thought, she’s only been here for nine hours, he may have reasoned, before cruelly barking out the last decree of the dying Administration: “Take that woman out and do not let her in again!”

Perhaps, by the same token, it would’ve been cruel to subject Abraham to more hysterics, he did only have another twenty two unconscious minutes to bear them. Mary had years; desolate decades. Her son would commit her to an insane asylum, but nobody could have known that as a shocked Robert Todd sobs into his handkerchief. This is an impossible world to adjust to for everybody. Especially, though not only, for the Lincoln family.

Senator Charles Sumner turns to Mars, saying, “It’s so dreadful. So ignominious, so bloody and so gory. Added to that, my peace of mind about the future of the country is eluding me. If only Hannibal were still next in line. He was such a fine Vice President. So much more dependable. He was one of us.”

“Yes,” Stanton enjoins, although he himself began as a War Democrat before completely committing to Lincoln’s policies. “There is no knowing what will happen after Andrew Johnson is sworn in.”

“Oh, I don’t know if it’s all that bleak.” Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, interjects. Lincoln’s nickname for Welles is Neptune. Or could one still say that it is Neptune, as Lincoln’s breath grows shorter, as the clock approaches 7:22 AM? Or perhaps a world where this conversation happens before Lincoln dies is too cold to even believe in, colder than the icy waters encountered by the ironclad ships in Neptune’s Navy.

“Do you remember his swearing in ceremony? By God you must remember it Welles, you were there! It’s only been a month.”

“Johnson was sick. He inoculated himself with some whisky the night before.”

“I don’t care if he was at death’s door,” Senator Sumner coughed, and felt a punishing stab in his forehead, where he had been caned at his desk on the Senate floor so many years ago. “Oh dear, well perhaps it would’ve been different if he was. But Johnson disgraced himself, and his office on the day of this man’s second Inauguration.” Sumner is pointing to Father Abraham.

“Oh please, what office? The Vice Presidency? Don’t make me laugh,” says Welles.

“Before Lincoln was saying, ‘with malice towards none, with charity for all’ Johnson was in the Senate Chamber, explaining that he was a Plebian. How was it that he put it again? You have a sharper memory Edwin.”

“‘I am a-goin’ for to tell you here to-day; yes, I’m a-goin for to tell you all, that I’m a plebian! I glory in it; I am a plebian! The people—yes, the people of the United States have made me what I am; and I am a-goin’ for to tell you here to-day—yes, to-day, in this place—that the people are everything.’ Those were Johnson’s words, his first words in a seventeen minute long rant which was finally interrupted by Hannibal Hamlin, tapping him on the shoulder.”

There is no evidence that anyone impersonated Andrew Johnson in this manner, at Lincoln’s bedside. You must understand this, for any lack of decorum in such an address would have been far surpassed by an impersonation as Lincoln drew fewer and fewer breaths. (Then again, it may have been an entertaining memory for old Abe. What a funny fellow you’ve left us with.) And besides, who could have remembered the incoherent rant word for word? Nevertheless, we return to our unreliable narrative as if the impersonation did indeed happen as Abe lay dying.

“You’re exaggerating his Tennessean accent. That’s what it is. He isn’t one of us? He’s an American, and he was a Unionist in a time and place where you could scarce find any people ready to defend the Stars and Stripes. He stayed in the Senate, he stayed in the U.S. Senate after all the other Southern Congressmen and Senators left Washington. You can bet he’s one of us, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to be the next Andrew Jackson.”

“It’ll be an extraordinarily dangerous, drunk rendition of the Old Hickory Act.” says Stanton.

“Sounds like plenty of fun,” says an old Jacksonian Post-Master General (by the name of Montgomery Blair.)

“It’s just what I was always afraid of,” says Sumner in the most elegant, Brahmin style he could, “Another Andrew Jackson. I’ve adjusted to having Presidents born in log cabins; Lincoln’s humble backwood charms have at least been accompanied by the brilliant grace of a man willing to fight for Union and Freedom.”

“Preparing eulogies are we?”

“No. I’m just thinking that that was all well and good, but our next log cabin President could undo everything that we fought for. By Lincoln’s side!”

“Yes, by Lincoln’s side when it suited you radicals. By Chase’s side when it didn’t.” Blair says tersely.

“Now maybe we should all just calm down. Do you know what Lincoln told me after the swearing in ceremony?”

“What did he tell you?”

“He said, and I quote, ‘I have known Andy for many years…he made a bad slip the other day, but you need not be scared. Andy ain’t a drunkard.’ Those were the words of Abraham Lincoln.” The “words of Abraham Lincoln” have a new aura about them now that the Doctor informed everybody that the President had died.. (When, in this conversation, did the Doctor say that? It’s best if you don’t know when precisely it happened in this deep conversation; keeping the ship of state afloat requires a certain inattention to humanity, you see, but wouldn’t it be more jarring if you know when that inattention may have grown obnoxious?) With regards to the aura, nobody could check the words of Abraham Lincoln with their original source, and the haze of memory, eulogy; the waves of panic and subsequent waves of calm must be impossible to overcome.

Chapter 2: Treason must be made odious and Traitors Punished

There were, Andrew Johnson included, around a dozen people attending the Swearing in Ceremony at Kirkwood House. Radical Republican, former Treasury Secretary and current Chief Justice, Salmon P. Chase was administering the Oath of Office. A long oval mirror could be seen behind his head; the other people in the room, including the successor were all standing in front of heavily curtained windows on either side of the mirror.

“Repeat after me,” Chase probably said. “I Andrew Johnson,”

“I, Andrew Johnson,” Andy replies, his hand grabbing onto the bible in Chase’s hand.

“Do solemnly swear--”

“Do solemnly swear--”

“That I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States,” Chase says, feeling his stomach drop as he realizes the full magnitude of this transfer of power, which he is facilitating.

“That I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States,” Johnson says, his stomach also dropping, perhaps, for a heady mix of other reasons.

“And will to the best of my ability...”

“And will to the best of my ability...”

“Preserve, Protect and Defend the Constitution of the United States.”

“Preserve, Protect and Defend the Constitution of the United States,” the new President says, as the room wonders whether it is true that they needn’t worry, ‘cause Andy ain’t a Drunkard.

“Gentlemen,” well that is a start, the room thinks, “I must be permitted, to say that I have been almost overwhelmed by the announcement of the sad event which has so recently occurred. I feel incompetent to perform duties so important and responsible as those which have been so unexpectedly thrown upon me.” Uh oh, everyone including the President may be thinking. Some may even admire the candid modesty and worry for the country at the same time. “As to an indication of any policy which may be presented by me in the administration of the government, I have to say that that must be left for development as the Administration progresses. The message or declaration must be made by the acts as they transpire. The only assurance that I can now give of the future is by reference to the past.” Okay, good. Abe did select a reliable Union man. “The course which I have taken in the past in connection with this rebellion, must be regarded as a guarantee of the future.” Phew. Hang on, he isn’t talking much about Abe at all, is he? I mean given the circumstances... “My past public life, which has been long and laborious, has been founded as I, in good conscience believe, upon a great principle of right, which lies at the basis of all things. The best energies of my life have been spent in endeavoring to establish and perpetuate the principles of free government, and I believe that the government, in passing through its present trials, will settle down upon principles consonant with popular rights, more permanent and enduring than heretofore.” Noble sentiments indeed. “I must be permitted to say, if I understand the feelings of my own heart, I have long labored to ameliorate and alleviate the condition of the great mass of the American people.” Hallelujah. “Toil and an honest advocacy of the great principles of free government have been my lot.” Glory, Glory, “The duties have been mine -- the consequences are God's.” Hallelujah. “This has been the foundation of my political creed.” Glory, Glory, “I feel that in the end the government will triumph, and that these great principles will be permanently established.” Hallelujah, “In conclusion, gentlemen, let me say that I want your encouragement and countenance.” The, “ I shall ask and rely upon you and others in carrying the government through its present perils.” Union, “I feel in making this request that it will be heartily responded to by you and all other patriots and lovers of the rights and interests of a free people." Makes us Strong. They could hear it, blaring in their mind’s ear, Andrew, Gideon, Montgomery, they could hear the Union Battle cry, once a tribute to old Abe, as Andrew concluded a Speech where he referred to the “sad event” that decided Abe’s fate, without ever even mentioning Abraham by name.