Carolina QuotesIf I should happen to die among the damn spirits that infest Greeneville, my last request before death would be for some friend I would bequeath the last dollar to some Negro to pay -- to take my dirty stinking carcass after death out on some mountain peak, and there leave it to be devoured by the vultures and wolves or make a fire sufficiently large to consume the smallest particle that it might pass off and smoke and ride upon the wind in triumph over the God-forsaken and hell-deserving, money-loving, hypocritical, backbiting, Sunday-praying scoundrels of the town of Greeneville.
Andrew Johnson Carolinian
Source
U.S. Rep. Andrew Johnson, 1847. As quoted from The Washington Post Presidential Podcast Episode Transcript "Andrew Johnson Stitching up a torn country". Johnson would die of a stroke during 1875 while visiting his daughters at the riverside home of his daughter Mary, some 45 miles away, immediately upstream of Brumit Island and northeast of Elizabethton, Tennessee.
- form
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- 1847
Cite this record
“If I should happen to die among the damn spirits that infest…” Andrew Johnson. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-F7087459C3. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/f7087459c3
More from Andrew Johnson
Those damned sons of bitches thought they had me in a trap! I know that damned Douglass; he's just like any nigger, and he would sooner cut a white man's throat than not.
"This is a country for white men, and, by G—d, as long as I am president it shall be a government for white men." Johnson, quoted in The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation by Brenda Wineapple (p. xviii)
Our Government springs from and was made for the people — not the people for the Government. To them it owes allegiance; from them it must derive its courage, strength, and wisdom. But while the Government is thus bound to defer to the people, from whom it derives its existence, it should, from the very consideration of its origin, be strong in its power of resistance to the establishment of inequalities. Monopolies, perpetuities, and class legislation are contrary to the genius of free government, and ought not to be allowed. Here there is no room for favored classes or monopolies; the principle of our Government is that of equal laws and freedom of industry. Wherever monopoly attains a foothold, it is sure to be a source of danger, discord, and trouble. We shall but fulfill our duties as legislators by according "equal and exact justice to all men," special privileges to none.