His blunders--and that he made blunders is admitted by his staunchest friends--were due to his zeal to bring to pass the measures that his point of view decreed as conducive to the best interests of his country. He met attack with counter attack, and criticism and incrimination with retort and recrimination. Herein lay the pit of his own digging--the ever-widening chasm between himself and Congress into which he was finally plunged on the most trivial and unwarranted charges. The whole matter was a product of the wild spirit of the disorganization that was then upon the land. Through all of the abuse and criticism, Johnson, nevertheless, remained to the bitter end the same stubborn fighter, yielding not one tittle of his principles. Brusque of manner and more brusque of speech, he maintained his attitude, austere, forbidding, uncompromising, and defiant toward a hostile Congress that omitted no opportunity to belittle, discredit, and humiliate him in its final effort to depose a man it could not control for party ends. Exasperated, again and again, and led into violent retorts and unwise attacks not compatible with the dignity of his high office, he kept his faith in himself and his countrymen, in spite of all. When he was finally vindicated, and that by but a single vote, and thus escaped being deposed, it is claimed his mask of indifference was so firmly set that he showed no elation or emotion whatever, unless it was a sense of disappointment that the long battle was over. Johnson was born December 20, 1808, in Raleigh, N. C., in a one-room log cabin. When the boy was but four years old, the father died, leaving him and his mother to battle with poverty and obscurity. The child scrambled daily for pennies, and the best that befell him was his apprenticeship to a tailor, at the age of ten. He had no schooling whatever, not even a knowledge of the alphabet. While he was fully engrossed in learning the technic of tailoring and becoming expert with the shears and goose he heard, through a friend, of a gentleman of the city whose favourite form of social service was that of reading aloud to labouring men in their luncheon hours. Andrew joined the group and manifested such interest that he received as a gift the book used in these readings. This imbued him with the courage to learn to read for himself. In a moment of mischief, while still an apprentice, he and some other boys directed a rock bombardment upon what they believed to be an empty house. To his horror, he learned the next day it was occupied, and that the owner had recognized him and made a formal complaint against him. Young Johnson did not care to face a session with his employer or be taken to court; so he ran away in the night with only the clothes upon his back and the tools of his trade. His employer posted the following advertisement for the return of this future president of the United States. Ten Dollars Reward.