The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
If we turn from the moral and personal to the menial characteristics of
Mr. Johnson's speeches, we find that his brain is to be classed with
notable cases of arrested development. He has strong forces in his
nature, but in their outlet through his mind they are dissipated into a
confusing clutter of unrelated thoughts and inapplicable phrases. He
seems to possess neither the power nor the perception of coherent
thinking and logical arrangement. He does not appear to be aware that
prepossessions are not proofs, that assertions are not arguments, that
the proper method to answer an objection is not to repeat the
proposition against which the objection was directed, that the proper
method of unfolding a subject is not to make the successive statements a
series of contradictions. Indeed, he seems to have a thoroughly
animalized intellect, destitute of the notion of relations, with ideas
which are but the form of determinations, and which derive their force,
not from reason, but from will. With an individuality thus strong even
to fierceness, but which has not been developed in the mental region,
and which the least gust of passion intellectually upsets, he is
incapable of looking at anything out of relations to himself,--of
regarding it from that neutral ground which is the condition of
intelligent discussion between opposing minds. In truth, he makes a
virtue of being insensible to the evidence of facts and the deductions
of reason, proclaiming to all the world that he has taken his position,
that he will never swerve from it, and that all statements and arguments
intended to shake his resolves are impertinences, indicating that their
authors are radicals and enemies of the country. He is never weary of
vaunting his firmness, and firmness he doubtless has, the firmness of at
least a score of mules; but events have shown that it is a different
kind of firmness from that which keeps a statesman firm to his
principles, a political leader to his pledges, a gentleman to his word.
Amid all changes of opinion, he has been conscious of unchanged will,
and the intellectual element forms so small a portion of his being,
that, when he challenged "the man, woman, or child to come forward" and
convict him of inconstancy to his professions, he knew that, however it
might be with the rest of mankind, he would himself be unconvinced by
any evidence which the said man, woman, or child might adduce. Again,
when he was asked by one of his audiences why he did not hang Jeff
Davis, he retorted by exclaiming, "Why don't you ask me why I have not
hanged Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips? They are as much traitors as
Davis." And we are almost charitable enough to suppose that he saw no
difference between the moral or legal treason of the man who for four
years had waged open war against the government of the United States,
and the men who for one year had sharply criticised the acts and
utterances of Andrew Johnson. It is not to be expected that nice
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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