So there was something more than "poor white" in
him, after all.
By the time he was eighteen, he had had enough of his shiftless
surroundings, and struck out for himself, journeyed across the mountains
to Greenville, Tennessee, met there a girl of sixteen named Eliza
McCardle, and, with youth's sublime improvidence, married her! As it
happened, he did well, for his wife had a fair education, and night
after night taught him patiently, until he could read fairly well and
write a little. I like to think of that family group, so different from
most, and to admire that girl-wife teaching her husband the rudiments of
education.
Already, as a result of his lowly birth and the class prejudice he
everywhere encountered, young Johnson had conceived that hatred of the
ruling class at the South which was to influence his after life so
deeply. He had a certain rude eloquence which appealed to the lower
classes of the people, and, in 1835, succeeded in gaining an election to
the state legislature. He nursed his political prospects carefully, and
eight years later, was sent to Congress. He was afterwards twice
governor of Tennessee.
It has been said that secession was, in the beginning, a policy of the
ruling class in the South and not of the people. It is not surprising,
then, that Johnson should have arrayed himself against it, and fought it
with all his might.
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