THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
manded by General Hooker, and that I was assigned to the command of a so-called Corps of Instruction near Nashville, in which a number of newly levied regiments were to be made fit for active duty, and then, presumptively, to form part of the Army of the Cumberland, under General Thomas. Thus I was separated from General Hooker, but in a manner not at all according to my wishes and expectations. I had hoped to march with Sherman southward, but the position to which I was now assigned promised little active service, for nobody could then foresee the battle of Nashville. Still, I obeyed orders without protest or murmur. My camp was speedily established at Edgefield, on the northern side of the river, opposite Nashville, and several newly organized regiments from Western States, especially from Indiana, came in to fill it.
It was then that I made the acquaintance of Andrew Johnson, whom President Lincoln had made “Military Governor” of Tennessee. I called upon him at the State House in Nashville, and he received me not only with polite kindness, but with some evidence of a desire to cultivate intercourse with me. I was not quite clear in my own mind about the impression be made upon me. He had worked himself up from poverty and a low social position to political prominence by the energy of his character and a degree of ability which, if not brilliant, was at least higher than that of his political competitors in East Tennessee. By a bold and vigorous fight against all secession tendencies and against the arrogant pretensions of the slave-holding aristocracy, he became the most conspicuous representative and the leader of the loyal Union element of the South. His appearance was not prepossessing, at least not to me. His countenance was of a distinctly plebeian cast, somewhat like that of the late Senator Douglas, but it had nothing of Douglas' force and vivacity in it. There was no genial sunlight in it;
[ 95 ]
