vivacity, not sparing his adversaries, but giving them plenty of "pure Tennessee."

His second term in the gubernatorial chair drew to a close; and as, after he had enjoyed the highest legislative honors in his State, he was sent to the national House of Representatives; so now, after he had received from Tennessee the highest honor she could confer on him in her service at home, his faithfulness was rewarded by the most prominent position she could appoint him to in her interest outside of her borders. He was (in 1857) by almost unanimous consent elected United States Senator for a full term, to end March 3, 1863.

CHAPTER IV.

THE HOMESTEAD BILL.

1857-1858.

TAKES his Seat in the United States Senate - The Homestead Bill - Flippant Opposition to it-Johnson's continuous Advocacy of the Measure — Answers the "Constitutional Objection" - The People own the Land - Nine Millions of Quarter-sections and Three Millions of Voters - As a Revenue Measure Johnson the acknowledged Leader on the Question - Tributes to him from A. G. Brown of Mississippi, J. L. Dawson and J. R. Chandler of Pennsylvania - Manoeuvres of Southern Senators to Waylay him and his Bill Hunter and the Appropriation Bills Pleas for Regularity of Business Satirical Compliment to Hunter-Johnson's Speech of May, 1858Refutes the Southern Charges of "Emigrant Aid Society" and "Demagogism" Was Washington a Demagogue?-Vattel on Agriculture - The Nursing Father of the State - Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, the Advocates of a Homstead Bill - The Measure considered: Financially, Socially, Politically-Rural Districts 8. Large Cities - Build up the Villages Character of the Middle Classes - Emigration Defended - Replies to the Feudal and Aristocratic Doctrines of Clay and Hammond - The "Property Aristocrats" and the "Mudsills" of Society-Johnson Independent of Southern Opinion - Operatives in the South- Are all Slaves who do not own Slaves? Should Congress create or reflect Public Opinion - Wanton Opposition to the Bill.

THE credentials of Hon. Andrew Johnson, as Senator from the State of Tennessee to the Congress of the United States, were presented on the opening of the Thirty-fifth Congress, Monday, December 7, 1857. In the absence of Vice-President Breckinridge, the oath prescribed by law was administered by Hon. Jesse D. Bright, "the oldest member of the Senate present."

In this Congress Senator Johnson took most prominent action on his favorite subject, the Homestead bill, to grant to every person who is the head of a family and a citizen of the United States, a homestead of one hundred and sixty acres of land out of the public domain, on condition of occupancy and cultivation in a specified time. This noble

project to distribute land to the landless and give a home to the homeless without money and without price, met, like all projects which have ameliorated the condition of mankind, with decided and great opposition for a long time. Mr. Johnson, however, never lost sight of its vast importance, and with coequal assiduity, in the face of that odium which is so easily raised by flippant minds against one who is accredited with the possession of a "hobby" to ride other people's time and attention down, he steadily pressed it forward, year after year, gaining friends for it and strength, until he had the pride and satisfaction of seeing it pass by a triumphant majority in the House of Representatives, while it met, at the same time, with such advocates as Webster and Cass in the United States Senate.

During the debate of 1852, discussing one of the points. raised, if I mistake not, by Hon. John A. Millson of Virginia, in the House of Representatives, Mr. Johnson said:

"What then becomes of the constitutional objection? I say it is a dereliction upon our part, and we omit to perform a high obligation imposed upon us by the Constitution, if we do not do something of the sort to induce the settlement and cultivation of our public lands. Then what is the proposition? We have acquired territory by the exercise of this treaty-making power. When does the fee pass? The fee passed upon its acquisition into the Government as the trustee-the equity passed to the people in the aggregate, and this is merely a proposition to distribute severally the fee where the equity already resides. That is what it proposes; and gentlemen who can spin distinctions down to a fifteen hundred, can understand a plain common sense proposition like this. Ah! say they, you gave money for it and you must have money back again for it. Is money the only consideration you paid for it? Where are those gallant sons who now sleep in Mexico? Where are the ten thousand graves containing the bones and blood of your best citizens? You owe it to the gallant dead who now sleep in your own and foreign lands, who sacrificed their all in the acquisition of this territory, to dispose of it in the way best calculated to promote the interest and happiness of those left behind.

Now what comes next upon the left, the weakest, and

based upon the least principle, but upon broad and presumptuous assertion. You have up there 'aggrarianism' and 'rank demagogism.' Is it demagogism to comply with the Constitution? Is it ' agrarianism' to permit a man to take that which is his own? They say, when you come to the principle of agrarianism, you take that which belongs to one man to give it to another. Such is not the principle of this bill. How does this measure stand? I will take either horn of the dilemma as embraced in the first section of this bill. Permit the settler to take a quarter of a section, or even more, and I will still say it does not conflict with justice or smack in the slightest degree of agrarianism. We have nine million quarter-sections, as I said before, and three million qualified voters. Suppose we were going to make a pro rata distribution, there would be three quarter sections for each qualified voter in the United States."

Again, in the same speech, he says:

"Pass this bill and you inspire the people of your country with faith in their Legislatures, with faith in their Government, and at the same time inspire their bosoms with hope of doing better hereafter. I said that the bill embraces sound principles of religion. It embraces the religion inculcated by St. James. It embraces a holy religion-I make use of the word in no irreverent sense-that divine arch of promise whose extremities rest upon the horizon, and whose span circles the universe. What do we find in this bill? We find the widow and orphan provided for, and that, too, in strict consonance with the Constitution and its great principles."

Mr. Johnson confuted the idea that the bill would impoverish the Treasury; on the contrary, he believed it would increase the revenue. On this point, he at this time said:

"I say it is a revenue measure. It will increase the receipts of the Treasury. How increase the receipts? By the enhancement of the value of the remainder of your public domain. Let us take a case to illustrate. Take the laborer in society that has no profession -no trade-that has no sort of work of his own, and how much tax does he pay to the support of your Government under the present system? How much? Scarcely any thing. But take one of these men, transplant him in the West upon one hundred and sixty acres of its fat, virgin soil, and in a few years, when he clears a few acres around him, gets a horse and a mule or two, and sɔme fat,

thrifty hogs, which come grunting up to his log-cabin, and a few milch cows lowing at the barnyard, at once you have increased his ability to do what? To purchase one hundred dollars' worth of foreign imposts or goods of domestic manufacture, when previously he could have bought little or nothing. I beg the attention of the Committee while I take a simple case to illustrate this principle. Some stagger and startle at the proposition, and say this thing will not do. How stands the fact in the case? You have nine millions of quarter-sections of public land, and you have three millions of qualified voters. Take one qualified voter who is the head of a family—say a family of seven-you transplant him from a position where he is making hardly any thing, and consequently buying but little, to a possession in the West of one hundred and sixty acres of this land. He bought scarcely any thing before, but by bringing his labor in contact with the productive soil, you increase his ability to buy a great deal."

Mr. Johnson, after continuing to demonstrate by simple but forcibly incontrovertible illustration, that the free distribution of the public lands among actual settlers would increase the national Treasury, closed this part of his argument by reference to a former speech he had delivered in Congress, in which he said:

"That this exposé ought to satisfy every one that, instead of violating the plighted faith of the Government, it was enlarging and making more valuable, and enabling the Government to derive a much larger amount of revenue to meet all its liabilities, and thereby preserving its faith inviolate. He thought, too, that this exposé ought to satisfy even the avaricious Shylock who contended for his pound of flesh, that this was the best policy for the Government to pursue, while at the same time it ameliorated and elevated the condition of the laboring man."

Already Johnson was the acknowledged foster-father and leading advocate of the measure. In 1852 the Hon. A. G. Brown of Mississippi, an earnest supporter of a homestead measure, but desiring to make sure that the occupant of the land should derive all the benefits of his labor, paid deserved tribute to Mr. Johnson in the following passage: "I am not going to make an argument against my friend's proposition. I honor the head that conceived it. The heart that is