Chapter XVIII: Part 18

JOHN GEORGE I. (1585-1656), elector of Saxony, second son of the elector Christian I., was born on the 5th of March 1585, succeeding to the electorate in June 1611 on the death of his elder brother, Christian II. The geographical position of electoral Saxony hardly less than her high standing among the German Protestants gave her ruler much importance during the Thirty Years' War. At the beginning of his reign, however, the new elector took up a somewhat detached position. His personal allegiance to Lutheranism was sound, but he liked neither the growing strength of Brandenburg nor the increasing prestige of the Palatinate; the adherence of the other branches of the Saxon ruling house to Protestantism seemed to him to suggest that the head of electoral Saxony should throw his weight into the other scale, and he was prepared to favour the advances of the Habsburgs and the Roman Catholic party. Thus he was easily induced to vote for the election of Ferdinand, archduke of Styria, as emperor in August 1619, an action which nullified the anticipated opposition of the Protestant electors. The new emperor secured the help of John George for the impending campaign in Bohemia by promising that he should be undisturbed in his possession of certain ecclesiastical lands. Carrying out his share of the bargain by occupying Silesia and Lusatia, where he displayed much clemency, the Saxon elector had thus some part in driving Frederick V., elector palatine of the Rhine, from Bohemia and in crushing Protestantism in that country, the crown of which he himself had previously refused. Gradually, however, he was made uneasy by the obvious trend of the imperial policy towards the annihilation of Protestantism, and by a dread lest the ecclesiastical lands should be taken from him; and the issue of the edict of restitution in March 1629 put the coping-stone to his fears. Still, although clamouring vainly for the exemption of the electorate from the area covered by the edict, John George took no decided measures to break his alliance with the emperor. He did, indeed, in February 1631 call a meeting of Protestant princes at Leipzig, but in spite of the appeals of the preacher Matthias Hoë von Hohenegg (1580-1645) he contented himself with a formal protest. Meanwhile Gustavus Adolphus had landed in Germany, and the elector had refused to allow him to cross the Elbe at Wittenberg, thus hindering his attempt to relieve Magdeburg. But John George's reluctance to join the Protestants disappeared when the imperial troops under Tilly began to ravage Saxony, and in September 1631 he concluded an alliance with the Swedish king. The Saxon troops were present at the battle of Breitenfeld, but were routed by the imperialists, the elector himself seeking safety in flight. Nevertheless he soon took the offensive. Marching into Bohemia the Saxons occupied Prague, but John George soon began to negotiate for peace and consequently his soldiers offered little resistance to Wallenstein, who drove them back into Saxony. However, for the present the efforts of Gustavus Adolphus prevented the elector from deserting him, but the position was changed by the death of the king at Lützen in 1632, and the refusal of Saxony to join the Protestant league under Swedish leadership. Still letting his troops fight in a desultory fashion against the imperialists, John George again negotiated for peace, and in May 1635 he concluded the important treaty of Prague with Ferdinand II. His reward was Lusatia and certain other additions of territory; the retention by his son Augustus of the archbishopric of Magdeburg; and some concessions with regard to the edict of restitution. Almost at once he declared war upon the Swedes, but in October 1636 he was beaten at Wittstock; and Saxony, ravaged impartially by both sides, was soon in a deplorable condition. At length in September 1645 the elector was compelled to agree to a truce with the Swedes, who, however, retained Leipzig; and as far as Saxony was concerned this ended the Thirty Years' War. After the peace of Westphalia, which with regard to Saxony did little more than confirm the treaty of Prague, John George died on the 8th of October 1656. Although not without political acumen, he was not a great ruler; his character appears to have been harsh and unlovely, and he was addicted to drink. He was twice married, and in addition to his successor John George II. he left three sons, Augustus (1614-1680), Christian (d. 1691) and Maurice (d. 1681) who were all endowed with lands in Saxony, and who founded cadet branches of the Saxon house.

JOHN GEORGE II. (1613-1680), elector of Saxony, was born on the 31st of May 1613. In 1657, just after his accession, he made an arrangement with his three brothers with the object of preventing disputes over their separate territories, and in 1664 he entered into friendly relations with Louis XIV. He received money from the French king, but the existence of a strong anti-French party in Saxony induced him occasionally to respond to the overtures of the emperor Leopold I. The elector's primary interests were not in politics, but in music and art. He adorned Dresden, which under him became the musical centre of Germany; welcoming foreign musicians and others he gathered around him a large and splendid court, and his capital was the constant scene of musical and other festivals. His enormous expenditure compelled him in 1661 to grant greater control over monetary matters to the estates, a step which laid the foundation of the later system of finance in Saxony. John George died at Freiberg on the 22nd of August 1680.

JOHN GEORGE III. (1647-1691), elector of Saxony, the only son of John George II., was born on the 20th of June 1647. He forsook the vacillating foreign policy of his father and in June 1683 joined an alliance against France. Having raised the first standing army in the electorate he helped to drive the Turks from Vienna in September 1680, leading his men with great gallantry; but disgusted with the attitude of the emperor Leopold I. after the victory, he returned at once to Saxony. However, he sent aid to Leopold in 1685. When Louis XIV.'s armies invaded Germany in September 1688 John George was one of the first to take up arms against the French, and after sharing in the capture of Mainz he was appointed commander-in-chief of the imperial forces. He had not, however, met with any notable success when he died at Tübingen on the 12th of September 1691. Like his father, he was very fond of music, but he appears to have been less extravagant than John George II. His wife was Anna Sophia, daughter of Frederick III. king of Denmark, and both his sons, John George and Frederick Augustus, became electors of Saxony, the latter also becoming king of Poland as Augustus II.

JOHN GEORGE IV. (1668-1694), elector of Saxony, was born on the 18th of October 1668. At the beginning of his reign his chief adviser was Hans Adam von Schöning (1641-1696), who counselled a union between Saxony and Brandenburg and a more independent attitude towards the emperor. In accordance with this advice certain proposals were put before Leopold I. to which he refused to agree; and consequently the Saxon troops withdrew from the imperial army, a proceeding which led the chagrined emperor to seize and imprison Schöning in July 1692. Although John George was unable to procure his minister's release, Leopold managed to allay the elector's anger, and early in 1693 the Saxon soldiers rejoined the imperialists. This elector is chiefly celebrated for his passion for Magdalene Sibylle von Neidschütz (d. 1694), created in 1693 countess of Rochlitz, whom on his accession he publicly established as his mistress. John George left no legitimate issue when he died on the 27th of April 1694.

JOHN[1] MAURICE OF NASSAU (1604-1679), surnamed the Brazilian, was the son of John the Younger, count of Nassau-Siegen-Dillenburg, and the grandson of John, the elder brother of William the Silent and the chief author of the Union of Utrecht. He distinguished himself in the campaigns of his cousin, the stadtholder Frederick Henry of Orange, and was by him recommended to the directors of the Dutch West India company in 1636 to be governor-general of the new dominion in Brazil recently conquered by the company. He landed at the Recife, the port of Pernambuco, and the chief stronghold of the Dutch, in January 1637. By a series of successful expeditions he gradually extended the Dutch possessions from Sergipe on the south to S. Luis de Maranham in the north. He likewise conquered the Portuguese possessions of St George del Mina and St Thomas on the west coast of Africa. With the assistance of the famous architect, Pieter Post of Haarlem, he transformed the Recife by building a new town adorned with splendid public edifices and gardens, which was called after his name Mauritstad. By his statesmanlike policy he brought the colony into a most flourishing condition and succeeded even in reconciling the Portuguese settlers to submit quietly to Dutch rule. His large schemes and lavish expenditure alarmed however the parsimonious directors of the West India company, but John Maurice refused to retain his post unless he was given a free hand, and he returned to Europe in July 1644. He was shortly afterwards appointed by Frederick Henry to the command of the cavalry in the States army, and he took part in the campaigns of 1645 and 1646. When the war was ended by the peace of Münster in January 1648, he accepted from the elector of Brandenburg the post of governor of Cleves, Mark and Ravensberg, and later also of Minden. His success in the Rhineland was as great as it had been in Brazil, and he proved himself a most able and wise ruler. At the end of 1652 he was appointed head of the order of St John and made a prince of the Empire. In 1664 he came back to Holland; when the war broke out with England supported by an invasion from the bishop of Münster, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Dutch forces on land. Though hampered in his command by the restrictions of the states-general, he repelled the invasion, and the bishop, Christoph von Galen, was forced to conclude peace. His campaigning was not yet at an end, for in 1673 he was appointed by the stadtholder William III. to command the forces in Friesland and Groningen, and to defend the eastern frontier of the Provinces. In 1675 his health compelled him to give up active military service, and he spent his last years in his beloved Cleves, where he died on the 20th of December 1679. The house which he built at the Hague, named after him the Maurits-huis, now contains the splendid collections of pictures so well known to all admirers of Dutch art.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Caspar Barlaeus, _Rerum per octennium in Brasilia et
alibi nuper gestarum historia, sub praefectura illustrissimi comitis
J. Mauritii Nassoviae_ (Amsterdam, 1647); L. Driessen, _Leben des
Fürsten Johann Moritz von Nassau_ (Berlin, 1849); D. Veegens, _Leven
van Jaan Maurits_, Graaf van Nassau-Siegen (Haarlem, 1840).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] This name is usually written Joan, the form used by the man
himself in his signature--see the facsimile in Netscher's _Les
Hollandais en Brésil_.

JOHN O' GROAT'S HOUSE, a spot on the north coast of Caithness, Scotland, 14 m. N. of Wick and 1¾ m. W. of Duncansby Head. It is the mythical site of an octagonal house said to have been erected early in the 16th century by one John Groot, a Dutchman who had migrated to the north of Scotland by permission of James IV. According to the legend, other members of the Groot family followed John, and acquired lands around Duncansby. When there were eight Groot families, disputes began to arise as to precedence at annual feasts. These squabbles John Groot is said to have settled by building an octagonal house which had eight entrances and eight tables, so that the head of each family could enter by his own door and sit at the head of his own table. Being but a few miles south of Dunnet Head, John o' Groat's is a colloquial term for the most northerly point of Scotland. The site of the traditional building is marked by an outline traced in turf. Descendants of the Groot family, now Groat, still live in the neighbourhood. The cowry-shell, _Cypraea europaea_, is locally known as "John o' Groat's bucky."

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, an American educational institution at Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. Its trustees, chosen by Johns Hopkins (1794-1873), a successful Baltimore merchant, were incorporated on the 24th of August 1867 under a general act "for the promotion of education in the state of Maryland." But nothing was actually done until after the death of Johns Hopkins (Dec. 24, 1873), when his fortune of $7,000,000 was equally divided between the projected university and a hospital, also to bear his name, and intended to be an auxiliary to the medical school of the university. The trustees of the university consulted with many prominent educationists, notably Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, Andrew D. White of Cornell, and James B. Angell of the university of Michigan; on the 30th of December 1874 they elected Daniel Coit Gilman (q.v.) president. The university was formally opened on the 3rd of October 1876, when an address was delivered by T. H. Huxley. The first year was largely given up to consultation among the newly chosen professors, among whom were--in Greek, B. L. Gildersleeve; in mathematics, J. J. Sylvester; in chemistry, Ira Remsen; in biology, Henry Newell Martin (1848-1896); in zoology, William Keith Brooks (1848-1908); and in physics, Henry Augustus Rowland (1848-1901). Prominent among later teachers were Arthur Cayley in mathematics, the Semitic scholar Paul Haupt (b. 1858), Granville Stanley Hall in psychology, Maurice Bloomfield in Sanskrit and comparative philology, James Rendel Harris in Biblical philology, James Wilson Bright in English philology, Herbert B. Adams in history, and Richard T. Ely (b. 1854) in economics. The university at once became a pioneer in the United States in teaching by means of seminary courses and laboratories, and it has been eminently successful in encouraging research, in scientific production, and in preparing its students to become instructors in other colleges and universities. It includes a college in which each of five parallel courses leads to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, but its reputation has been established chiefly by its other two departments, the graduate school and the medical school. The graduate school offers courses in philosophy and psychology, physics, chemistry and biology, historical and economic science, language and literature, and confers the degree of Doctor of Philosophy after at least three years' residence. From its foundation the university had novel features and a liberal administration. Twenty annual fellowships of $500 each were opened to the graduates of any college. Petrography and laboratory psychology were among the new sciences fostered by the new university. Such eminent outsiders were secured for brief residence and lecture courses as J. R. Lowell, F. J. Child, Simon Newcomb, H. E. von Holst, F. A. Walker, William James, Sidney Lanier, James Bryce, E. A. Freeman, W. W. Goodwin, and Alfred Russel Wallace. President Gilman gave up his presidential duties on the 1st of September 1901, Ira Remsen[1] succeeding him in the office. The medical department, inaugurated in 1893, is closely affiliated with the excellently equipped Johns Hopkins Hospital (opened in 1889), and is actually a graduate school, as it admits only students holding the bachelor's degree or its equivalent. The degree of Doctor of Medicine is conferred after four years of successful study, and advanced courses are offered. The department's greatest teachers have been William Osler (b. 1849) and William Henry Welch (b. 1850).

The buildings of the university were in 1901 an unpretentious group on crowded ground near the business centre of the city. In 1902 a new site was secured, containing about 125 acres amid pleasant surroundings in the northern suburbs, and new buildings were designed in accordance with a plan formed with a view to secure harmony and symmetry. In 1907 the library contained more than 133,000 bound volumes. Among the numerous publications issued by the university press are: _American Journal of Mathematics_, _Studies in Historical and Political Science_, _Reprint of Economic Tracts, American Journal of Philology_, _Contributions to Assyriology and Semitic Philology_, _Modern Language Notes_, _American Chemical Journal_, _American Journal of Insanity_, _Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity_, _Reports of the Maryland Geological Survey_, and _Reports of the Maryland Weather Service_. The institution is maintained chiefly with the proceeds of the endowment fund. It also receives aid from the state, and charges tuition fees. Its government is entrusted to a board of trustees, while the direction of affairs of a strictly academic nature is delegated to an academic council and to department boards. In 1907-1908 the regular faculty numbered 175, and there was an enrolment of 683 students, of whom 518 were in post-graduate courses.

On the history of the university see Daniel C. Gilman, _The Launching of a University_ (New York, 1906), and the annual reports of the president.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Ira Remsen was born in New York City on the 10th of February
1846, graduated at the college of the City of New York in 1865,
studied at the New York college of physicians and surgeons and at the
university of Göttingen, was professor of chemistry at Williams
College in 1872-1876, and in 1876 became professor cf chemistry at
Johns Hopkins University. He published many textbooks of chemistry,
organic and inorganic, which were republished in England and were
translated abroad. In 1879 he founded the _American Chemical
Journal_.

JOHNSON, ANDREW (1808-1875), seventeenth president of the United States, was born at Raleigh, North Carolina, on the 29th of December 1808. His parents were poor, and his father died when Andrew was four years old. At the age of ten he was apprenticed to a tailor, his spare hours being spent in acquiring the rudiments of an education. He learned to read from a book which contained selected orations of great British and American statesmen. The young tailor went to Laurens Court House, South Carolina, in 1824, to work at his trade, but returned to Raleigh in 1826 and soon afterward removed to Greeneville in the eastern part of Tennessee. He married during the same year Eliza McCardle (1810-1876), much his superior by birth and education, who taught him the common school branches of learning and was of great assistance in his later career. In East Tennessee most of the people were small farmers, while West Tennessee was a land of great slave plantations. Johnson began in politics to oppose the aristocratic element and became the spokesman and champion of the poorer and labouring classes. In 1828 he was elected an alderman of Greeneville and in 1830-1834 was mayor. In 1834, in the Tennessee constitutional convention he endeavoured to limit the influence of the slaveholders by basing representation in the state legislature on the white population alone. In 1835-1837 and 1839-1841 Johnson was a Democratic member of the state House of Representatives, and in 1841-1843 of the state Senate; in both houses he uniformly upheld the cause of the "common people," and, in addition, opposed legislation for "internal improvements." He soon was recognized as the political champion of East Tennessee. Though his favourite leaders became Whigs, Johnson remained a Democrat, and in 1840 canvassed the state for Van Buren for president.

In 1843 he was elected to the national House of Representatives and there remained for ten years until his district was gerrymandered by the Whigs and he lost his seat. But he at once offered himself as a candidate for governor and was elected and re-elected, and was then sent to the United States Senate, serving from 1857 to 1862. As governor (1853-1857) he proved to be able and non-partisan. He championed popular education and recommended the homestead policy to the national government, and from his sympathy with the working classes and his oft-avowed pride in his former calling he became known as the "mechanic governor." In Congress he proved to be a tireless advocate of the claims of the poorer whites and an opponent of the aristocracy. He favoured the annexation of Texas, supported the Polk administration on the issues of the Mexican War and the Oregon boundary controversy, and though voting for the admission of free California demanded national protection for slavery. He also advocated the homestead law and low tariffs, opposed the policy of "internal improvements," and was a zealous worker for budget economies. Though opposed to a monopoly of political power in the South by the great slaveholders, he deprecated anti-slavery agitation (even favouring denial of the right of petition on that subject) as threatening abolition or the dissolution of the Union, and went with his sectional leaders so far as to demand freedom of choice for the Territories, and protection for slavery where it existed--this even so late as 1860. He supported in 1860 the ultra-Democratic ticket of Breckinridge and Lane, but he did not identify the election of Lincoln with the ruin of the South, though he thought the North should give renewed guarantees to slavery. But he followed Jackson rather than Calhoun, and above everything else set his love of the Union, though believing the South to be grievously wronged. He was the only Southern member of Congress who opposed secession and refused to "go with his state" when it withdrew from the Union in 1861. In the judgment of a leading opponent (O. P. Morton) "perhaps no man in Congress exerted the same influence on the public sentiment of the North at the beginning of the war" as Johnson. During the war he suffered much for his loyalty to the Union. In March 1862 Lincoln made him military governor of the part of Tennessee captured from the Confederates, and after two years of autocratic rule (with much danger to himself) he succeeded in organizing a Union government for the state. In 1864, to secure the votes of the war Democrats and to please the border states that had remained in the Union, Johnson was nominated for vice-president on the ticket with Lincoln.

A month after the inauguration the murder of Lincoln left him president, with the great problem to solve of reconstruction of the Union. All his past career and utterances seemed to indicate that he would favour the harshest measures toward ex-Confederates, hence his acceptability to the most radical republicans. But, whether because he drew a distinction between the treason of individuals and of states, or was influenced by Seward, or simply, once in responsible position, separated Republican party politics from the question of constitutional interpretation, at least he speedily showed that he would be influenced by no acrimony, and adopted the lenient reconstruction policy of Lincoln. In this he had for some time the cordial support of his cabinet. During the summer of 1865 he set up provisional civil governments in all the seceded states except Texas, and within a few months all those states were reorganized and applying for readmission to the Union. The radical congress (Republican by a large majority) sharply opposed this plan of restoration, as they had opposed Lincoln's plan: first, because the members of Congress from the Southern States (when readmitted) would almost certainly vote with the Democrats; secondly, because relatively few of the Confederates were punished; and thirdly, because the newly organized Southern States did not give political rights to the negroes. The question of the status of the negro proved the crux of the issue. Johnson was opposed to general or immediate negro suffrage. A bitter contest began in Feb. 1866, between the president and the Congress, which refused to admit representatives from the South and during 1866 passed over his veto a number of important measures, such as the Freedmen's Bureau Act and the Civil Rights Act, and submitted to the States the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Johnson took a prominent and undignified part in the congressional campaign of 1866, in which his policies were voted down by the North. In 1867 Congress threw aside his work of restoration and proceeded with its own plan, the main features of which were the disfranchisement of ex-Confederates and the enfranchisement of negroes. On the 2nd of March 1867 Congress passed over the president's veto the Tenure of Office Act, prohibiting the president from dismissing from office without the consent of the Senate any officer appointed by and with the advice and consent of that body, and in addition a section was inserted in the army appropriation bill of this session designed to subordinate the president to the Senate and the general-in-chief of the army in military matters. The president was thus deprived of practically all power. Stanton and other members of his cabinet and General Grant became hostile to him, the president attempted to remove Stanton without regard to the Tenure of Office Act, and, finally, to get rid of the president, Congress in 1868(February-May) made an attempt to impeach and remove him, his disregard of the Tenure of Office Act being the principal charge against him. The charges[1] were in part quite trivial, and the evidence was ridiculously inadequate for the graver charges. A two-thirds majority was necessary for conviction; and the votes being 35 to 19 (7 Republicans and 12 Democrats voting in his favour on the crucial clauses) he was acquitted. The misguided animus of the impeachment as a piece of partisan politics was soon very generally admitted; and the importance of its failure, in securing the continued power and independence of the presidential element in the constitutional system, can hardly be over-estimated. The rest of his term as president was comparatively quiet and uneventful. In 1869 he retired into private life in Tennessee, and after several unsuccessful efforts was elected to the United States Senate, free of party trammels, in 1875, but died at Carter's Station, Tenn., on the 31st of July 1875. The only speech he made was a skilful and temperate arraignment of President Grant's policy towards the South.

President Johnson's leading political principles were a reverence of Andrew Jackson, unlimited confidence in the people, and an intense veneration for the constitution. Throughout his life he remained in some respects a "backwoodsman." He lacked the finish of systematic education. But his whole career sufficiently proves him to have been a man of extraordinary qualities. He did not rise above untoward circumstances by favour, nor--until after his election as senator--by fortunate and fortuitous connexion with great events, but by strength of native talents, persistent purpose, and an iron will. He had strong, rugged powers, was a close reasoner and a forcible speaker. Unfortunately his extemporaneous speeches were commonplace, in very bad taste, fervently intemperate and denunciatory; and though this was probably due largely to temperament and habits of stump-speaking formed in early life, it was attributed by his enemies to drink. Resorting to stimulants after illness, his marked excess in this respect on the occasion of his inauguration as vice-president undoubtedly did him harm with the public. Faults of personality were his great handicap. Though approachable and not without kindliness of manner, he seemed hard and inflexible; and while president, physical pain and domestic anxieties, added to the struggles of public life, combined to accentuate a naturally somewhat severe temperament. A lifelong Southern Democrat, he was forced to lead (nominally at least) a party of Northern Republicans, with whom he had no bond of sympathy save a common opposition to secession; and his ardent, aggressive convictions and character, above all his complete lack of tact, unfitted him to deal successfully with the passionate partisanship of Congress. The absolute integrity and unflinching courage that marked his career were always ungrudgingly admitted by his greatest enemies.

See L. Foster, _The Life and Speeches of Andrew Johnson_ (1866); D. M.
De Witt, _The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson_ (1903); C. E.
Chadsey, _The Struggle between President Johnson and Congress over
Reconstruction_ (1896); and W. A. Dunning, _Essays on the Civil War
and Reconstruction_ (1898). Also see W. A. Dunning's paper "More Light
on Andrew Johnson" (in the _American Historical Review_, April 1906),
in which apparently conclusive evidence is presented to prove that
Johnson's first inaugural, a notable state paper, was written by the
historian George Bancroft.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The charges centred in the president's removal of Secretary
Stanton, his _ad interim_ appointment of Lorenzo Thomas, his campaign
speeches in 1866, and the relation of these three things to the
Tenure of Office Act. Of the eleven charges of impeachment the first
was that Stanton's removal was contrary to the Tenure of Office Act;
the second, that the appointment of Thomas was a violation of the
same law; the third, that the appointment violated the Constitution;
the fourth, that Johnson conspired with Thomas "to hinder and prevent
Edwin M. Stanton ... from holding ... office of secretary for the
department of war"; the fifth, that Johnson had conspired with Thomas
to "prevent and hinder the execution" of the Tenure of Office Act;
the sixth, that he had conspired with Thomas "to seize, take and
possess the property of the United States in the department of war,"
in violation of the Tenure of Office Act; the seventh, that this
action was "a high misdemeanour"; the eighth, that the appointment of
Thomas was "with intent unlawfully to control the disbursements of
the moneys appropriated for the military service and for the
department of war"; the ninth, that he had instructed Major-General
Emory, in command of the department of Washington, that an act of
1867 appropriating money for the army was unconstitutional; the
tenth, that his speeches in 1866 constituted "a high misdemeanour in
office"; and the eleventh, the "omnibus" article, that he had
committed high misdemeanours in saying that the 39th Congress was not
an authorized Congress, that its legislation was not binding upon
him, and that it was incapable of proposing amendments. The actual
trial began on the 30th of March (from the 5th of March it was
adjourned to the 23rd, and on the 24th of March to the 30th). On the
16th of May, after sessions in which the Senate repeatedly reversed
the rulings of the chief justice as to the admission of evidence, in
which the president's counsel showed that their case was excellently
prepared and the prosecuting counsel appealed in general to political
passions rather than to judicial impartiality, the eleventh article
was voted on and impeachment failed by a single vote (35 to 19; 7
republicans and 12 democrats voting "Not guilty") of the necessary
two-thirds. After ten days' interval, during which B. F. Butler of
the prosecuting counsel attempted to prove that corruption had been
practised on some of those voting "Not guilty," on the 26th of May a
vote was taken on the second and third articles with the same result
as on the eleventh article. There was no vote on the other articles.

JOHNSON, BENJAMIN (c. 1665-1742), English actor, was first a scene painter, then acted in the provinces, and appeared in London in 1695 at Drury Lane after Betterton's defection. He was the original Captain Driver in _Oronooko_ (1696), Captain Fireball in Farquhar's _Sir Harry Wildair_ (1701), Sable in Steele's _Funeral_ (1702), &c.; as the First Gravedigger in _Hamlet_ and in several characters in the plays of Ben Jonson he was particularly good. He succeeded, also, to Thomas Doggett's rôles.

JOHNSON, EASTMAN (1824-1906), American artist, was born at Lovell, Maine, on the 29th of July 1824. He studied at Düsseldorf, Paris, Rome and The Hague, the last city being his home for four years. In 1860 he was elected to the National Academy of Design, New York. A distinguished portrait and genre painter, he made distinctively American themes his own, depicting the negro, fisherfolk and farm life with unusual interest. Such pictures as "Old Kentucky Home" (1867), "Husking Bee" (1876), "Cranberry Harvest, Nantucket" (1880), and his portrait group "The Funding Bill" (1881) achieved a national reputation. Among his sitters were many prominent men, including Daniel Webster; Presidents Hayes, Arthur, Cleveland and Harrison; William M. Evarts, Charles J. Folger; Emerson, Longfellow, Hawthorne, James McCosh, Noah Porter and Sir Edward Archbald. He died in New York City on the 5th of April 1906.

JOHNSON, REVERDY (1796-1876), American political leader and jurist, was born at Annapolis, Maryland, on the 21st of May 1796. His father, John Johnson (1770-1824), was a distinguished lawyer, who served in both houses of the Maryland General Assembly, as attorney-general of the state (1806-1811), as a judge of the court of appeals (1811-1821), and as a chancellor of his state (1821-1824). Reverdy graduated from St John's college in 1812. He then studied law in his father's office, was admitted to the bar in 1815 and began to practise in Upper Marlborough, Prince George's county. In 1817 he removed to Baltimore, where he became the professional associate of Luther Martin, William Pinkney and Roger B. Taney; with Thomas Harris he reported the decisions of the court of appeals in _Harris and Johnson's Reports_ (1820-1827); and in 1818 he was appointed chief commissioner of insolvent debtors. From 1821 to 1825 he was a state senator; from 1825 to 1845 he devoted himself to his practice; from 1845 to 1849, as a Whig, he was a member of the United States Senate; and from March 1849 to July 1850 he was attorney-general of the United States. In 1856 he became identified with the conservative wing of the Democratic party, and four years later supported Stephen A. Douglas for the presidency. In 1861 he was a delegate from Maryland to the peace convention at Washington; in 1861-1862 he was a member of the Maryland House of Delegates. After the capture of New Orleans he was commissioned by Lincoln to revise the decisions of the military commandant, General B. F. Butler, in regard to foreign governments, and reversed all those decisions to the entire satisfaction of the administration. In 1863 he again took his seat in the United States Senate. In 1868 he was appointed minister to Great Britain and soon after his arrival in England negotiated the Johnson-Clarendon treaty for the settlement of disputes arising out of the Civil War; this, however, the Senate refused to ratify, and he returned home on the accession of General U. S. Grant to the presidency. Again resuming his practice he was engaged by the government in the prosecution of Ku-Klux cases. He died on the 10th of February 1876 at Annapolis. He repudiated the doctrine of secession, and pleaded for compromise and conciliation. Opposed to the Reconstruction measures, he voted for them on the ground that it was better to accept than reject them, since they were probably the best that could be obtained. As a lawyer he was engaged during his later years in most of the especially important cases in the Supreme Court of the United States and in the courts of Maryland.

JOHNSON, RICHARD (1573-1659?), English romance writer, was baptized in London on the 24th of May 1573. His most famous romance is The _Famous Historie of the Seaven Champions of Christendom_ (1596?). The success of this book was so great that the author added a second and a third part in 1608 and 1616. His other stories include: _The Nine Worthies of London_ (1592); _The Pleasant Walks of Moorefields_ (1607); _The Pleasant Conceites of Old Hobson_ (1607), the hero being a well-known haberdasher in the Poultry; _The Most Pleasant History of Tom a Lincolne_ (1607); _A Remembrance of ... Robert Earle of Salisbury_ (1612); _Looke on Me, London_ (1613); _The History of Tom Thumbe_ (1621). _The Crown Garland of Golden Roses ... set forth in Many Pleasant new Songs and Sonnets_ (1612) was reprinted for the Percy Society (1842 and 1845).

JOHNSON, RICHARD MENTOR (1781-1850), ninth vice-president of the United States, was born at Bryant's Station, Kentucky, on the 17th of October 1781. He was admitted to the bar in 1800, and became prominent as a lawyer and Democratic politician, serving in the Federal House of Representatives and in the Senate for many years. From 1837 to 1841 he was vice-president of the United States, to which position he was elected over Francis Granger, by the Senate, none of the four candidates for the vice-presidency having received a majority of the electoral votes. The opposition to Johnson within the party greatly increased during his term, and the Democratic national convention of 1840 adopted the unprecedented course of refusing to nominate anyone for the vice-presidency. In the ensuing election Johnson received most of the Democratic electoral votes, but was defeated by the Whig candidate, John Tyler. He died in Frankfort, Kentucky, on the 19th of November 1850.

JOHNSON, SAMUEL (1709-1784), English writer and lexicographer, was the son of Michael Johnson (1656-1731), bookseller and magistrate of Lichfield, who married in 1706 Sarah Ford (1669-1759). Michael's abilities and attainments seem to have been considerable. He was so well acquainted with the contents of the volumes which he exposed for sale that the country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought him an oracle on points of learning. Between him and the clergy, indeed, there was a strong religious and political sympathy. He was a zealous churchman, and, though he had qualified himself for municipal office by taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession, was to the last a Jacobite in heart. The social position of Samuel's paternal grandfather, William Johnson, remains obscure; his mother was the daughter of Cornelius Ford, "a little Warwickshire Gent."

At a house (now the Johnson Museum) in the Market Square, Lichfield, Samuel Johnson was born on the 18th of September 1709 and baptized on the same day at St Mary's, Lichfield. In the child the physical, intellectual and moral peculiarities which afterwards distinguished the man were plainly discernible: great muscular strength accompanied by much awkwardness and many infirmities; great quickness of parts, with a morbid propensity to sloth and procrastination; a kind and generous heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper. He had inherited from his ancestors a scrofulous taint, and his parents were weak enough to believe that the royal touch would cure him. In his third year he was taken up to London, inspected by the court surgeon, prayed over by the court chaplains and stroked and presented with a piece of gold by Queen Anne. Her hand was applied in vain. The boy's features, which were originally noble and not irregular, were distorted by his malady. His cheeks were deeply scarred. He lost for a time the sight of one eye; and he saw but very imperfectly with the other. But the force of his mind overcame every impediment. Indolent as he was, he acquired knowledge with such ease and rapidity that at every school (such as those at Lichfield and Stourbridge) to which he was sent he was soon the best scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he resided at home, and was left to his own devices. He learned much at this time, though his studies were without guidance and without plan. He ransacked his father's shelves, dipped into a multitude of books, read what was interesting, and passed over what was dull. An ordinary lad would have acquired little or no useful knowledge in such a way; but much that was dull to ordinary lads was interesting to Samuel. He read little Greek; for his proficiency in that language was not such that he could take much pleasure in the masters of Attic poetry and eloquence. But he had left school a good Latinist, and he soon acquired an extensive knowledge of Latin literature. He was peculiarly attracted by the works of the great restorers of learning. Once, while searching for some apples, he found a huge folio volume of Petrarch's works. The name excited his curiosity, and he eagerly devoured hundreds of pages. Indeed, the diction and versification of his own Latin compositions show that he had paid at least as much attention to modern copies from the antique as to the original models.

While he was thus irregularly educating himself, his family was sinking into hopeless poverty. Old Michael Johnson was much better qualified to pore over books, and to talk about them, than to trade in them. His business declined; his debts increased; it was with difficulty that the daily expenses of his household were defrayed. It was out of his power to support his son at either university; but a wealthy neighbour offered assistance; and, in reliance on promises which proved to be of very little value, Samuel was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the young scholar presented himself to the rulers of that society, they were amazed not more by his ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive and curious information which he had picked up during many months of desultory but not unprofitable study. On the first day of his residence he surprised his teachers by quoting Macrobius; and one of the most learned among them declared that he had never known a freshman of equal attainments.

At Oxford Johnson resided barely over two years, possibly less. He was poor, even to raggedness; and his appearance excited a mirth and a pity which were equally intolerable to his haughty spirit. He was driven from the quadrangle of Christ Church by the sneering looks which the members of that aristocratical society cast at the holes in his shoes. Some charitable person placed a new pair at his door; but he spurned them away in a fury. Distress made him, not servile, but reckless and ungovernable. No opulent gentleman commoner, panting for one-and-twenty, could have treated the academical authorities with more gross disrespect. The needy scholar was generally to be seen under the gate of Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a circle of lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave him an undisputed ascendancy. In every mutiny against the discipline of the college he was the ringleader. Much was pardoned, however, to a youth so highly distinguished by abilities and acquirements. He had early made himself known by turning Pope's "Messiah" into Latin verse. The style and rhythm, indeed, were not exactly Virgilian; but the translation found many admirers, and was read with pleasure by Pope himself.

The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the ordinary course of things, have become a Bachelor of Arts; but he was at the end of his resources. Those promises of support on which he had relied had not been kept. His family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford tradesmen were small indeed, yet larger than he could pay. In the autumn of 1731 he was under the necessity of quitting the university without a degree. In the following winter his father died. The old man left but a pittance; and of that pittance almost the whole was appropriated to the support of his widow. The property to which Samuel succeeded amounted to no more than twenty pounds.

His life, during the thirty years which followed, was one hard struggle with poverty. The misery of that struggle needed no aggravation, but was aggravated by the sufferings of an unsound body and an unsound mind. Before the young man left the university, his hereditary malady had broken forth in a singularly cruel form. He had become an incurable hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been mad all his life, or at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth, eccentricities less strange than his have often been thought ground sufficient for absolving felons and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings, sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people who did not know him. At a dinner table he would, in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady's shoe. He would amaze a drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating a clause of the Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every post in the streets through which he walked. If by any chance he missed a post, he would go back a hundred yards and repair the omission. Under the influence of his disease, his senses became morbidly torpid, and his imagination morbidly active. At one time he would stand poring on the town clock without being able to tell the hour. At another he would distinctly hear his mother, who was many miles off, calling him by his name. But this was not the worst. A deep melancholy took possession of him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views of human nature and of human destiny. Such wretchedness as he endured has driven many men to shoot themselves or drown themselves. But he was under no temptation to commit suicide. He was sick of life; but he was afraid of death; and he shuddered at every sight or sound which reminded him of the inevitable hour. In religion he found but little comfort during his long and frequent fits of dejection; for his religion partook of his own character. The light from heaven shone on him indeed, but not in a direct line, or with its own pure splendour. The rays had to struggle through a disturbing medium; they reached him refracted, dulled and discoloured by the thick gloom which had settled on his soul, and, though they might be sufficiently clear to guide him, were too dim to cheer him.

With such infirmities of body and of mind, he was left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way through the world. He remained during about five years in the midland counties. At Lichfield, his birthplace and his early home, he had inherited some friends and acquired others. He was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, a gay officer of noble family, who happened to be quartered there. Gilbert Walmesley, registrar of the ecclesiastical court of the diocese, a man of distinguished parts, learning and knowledge of the world, did himself honour by patronizing the young adventurer, whose repulsive person, unpolished manners and squalid garb moved many of the petty aristocracy of the neighbourhood to laughter or disgust. At Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of earning a livelihood. He became usher of a grammar school in Leicestershire; he resided as a humble companion in the house of a country gentleman; but a life of dependence was insupportable to his haughty spirit. He repaired to Birmingham, and there earned a few guineas by literary drudgery. In that town he printed a translation, little noticed at the time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book about Abyssinia. He then put forth proposals for publishing by subscription the poems of Politian, with notes containing a history of modern Latin verse; but subscriptions did not come in, and the volume never appeared.

While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson fell in love. The object of his passion was Mrs Elizabeth Porter (1688-1752), widow of Harry Porter (d. 1734), whose daughter Lucy was born only six years after Johnson himself. To ordinary spectators the lady appeared to be a short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy colours, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces which were not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To Johnson, however, whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was too weak to distinguish rouge from natural bloom, and who had seldom or never been in the same room with a woman of real fashion, his Tetty, as he called her, was the most beautiful, graceful and accomplished of her sex. That his admiration was unfeigned cannot be doubted; she had, however, a jointure of £600 and perhaps a little more; she came of a good family, and her son Jervis (d. 1763) commanded H.M.S. "Hercules." The marriage, in spite of occasional wranglings, proved happier than might have been expected. The lover continued to be under the illusions of the wedding-day (July 9, 1735) till the lady died in her sixty-fourth year. On her monument at Bromley he placed an inscription extolling the charms of her person and of her manners; and when, long after her decease, he had occasion to mention her, he exclaimed with a tenderness half ludicrous, half pathetic, "Pretty creature!"

His marriage made it necessary for him to exert himself more strenuously than he had hitherto done. He took a house at Edial near Lichfield and advertised for pupils. But eighteen months passed away, and only three pupils came to his academy. The "faces" that Johnson habitually made (probably nervous contortions due to his disorder) may well have alarmed parents. Good scholar though he was, these twitchings had lost him usherships in 1735 and 1736. David Garrick, who was one of the pupils, used, many years later, to throw the best company of London into convulsions of laughter by mimicking the master and his lady.

At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, determined to seek his fortune in London as a literary adventurer. He set out with a few guineas, three acts of his tragedy of _Irene_ in manuscript, and two or three letters of introduction from his friend Walmesley. Never since literature became a calling in England had it been a less gainful calling than at the time when Johnson took up his residence in London. In the preceding generation a writer of eminent merit was sure to be munificently rewarded by the Government. The least that he could expect was a pension or a sinecure place; and, if he showed any aptitude for politics, he might hope to be a member of parliament, a lord of the treasury, an ambassador, a secretary of state. But literature had ceased to flourish under the patronage of the great, and had not yet begun to flourish under the patronage of the public. One man of letters, indeed, Pope, had acquired by his pen what was then considered as a handsome fortune, and lived on a footing of equality with nobles and ministers of state. But this was a solitary exception. Even an author whose reputation was established, and whose works were popular--such an author as Thomson, whose _Seasons_ was in every library, such an author as Fielding, whose _Pasquin_ had had a greater run than any drama since _The Beggar's Opera_--was sometimes glad to obtain, by pawning his best coat, the means of dining on tripe at a cookshop underground, where he could wipe his hands, after his greasy meal, on the back of a Newfoundland dog. It is easy, therefore, to imagine what humiliations and privations must have awaited the novice who had still to earn a name. One of the publishers to whom Johnson applied for employment measured with a scornful eye that athletic though uncouth frame, and exclaimed, "You had better get a porter's knot and carry trunks." Nor was the advice bad, for a porter was likely to be as plentifully fed, and as comfortably lodged, as a poet.

Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was able to form any literary connexion from which he could expect more than bread for the day which was passing over him. He never forgot the generosity with which Hervey, who was now residing in London, relieved his wants during this time of trial. "Harry Hervey," said Johnson many years later, "was a vicious man; but he was very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him." At Hervey's table Johnson sometimes enjoyed feasts which were made more agreeable by contrast. But in general he dined, and thought that he dined well, on sixpennyworth of meat and a pennyworth of bread at an alehouse near Drury Lane.

The effect of the privations and sufferings which he endured at this time was discernible to the last in his temper and his deportment. His manners had never been courtly. They now became almost savage. Being frequently under the necessity of wearing shabby coats and dirty shirts, he became a confirmed sloven. Being often very hungry when he sat down to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating with ravenous greediness. Even to the end of his life, and even at the tables of the great, the sight of food affected him as it affects wild beasts and birds of prey. His taste in cookery, formed in subterranean ordinaries and _à la mode_ beef shops, was far from delicate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to have near him a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat pie made with rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violence that his veins swelled and the moisture broke out on his forehead. The affronts which his poverty emboldened stupid and low-minded men to offer to him would have broken a mean spirit into sycophancy, but made him rude even to ferocity. Unhappily the insolence which, while it was defensive, was pardonable, and in some sense respectable, accompanied him into societies where he was treated with courtesy and kindness. He was repeatedly provoked into striking those who had taken liberties with him. All the sufferers, however, were wise enough to abstain from talking about their beatings, except Osborne, the most rapacious and brutal of booksellers, who proclaimed everywhere that he had been knocked down by the huge fellow whom he had hired to puff the Harleian Library.