Johnson, Andrew

Andrew Johnson, a native of Raleigh, North Carolina, grew up in impoverished circumstances. In 1826, he and his family moved to Greeneville, Tennessee, where he opened a tailor shop. It was his wife, Eliza McCardle, whom he married the following year, who taught him to read and write. He took an interest in politics and proved an effective stump speaker. Beginning in 1828, he held public offices, including alderman, mayor, state representative, state senator, and U.S. congressman. He was elected governor of Tennessee in 1853 and four years later was elected to the U.S. Senate. Although he defended slavery, he supported the Union and refused to leave the Senate when the Civil War broke out in 1861.

Lincoln initially rewarded Johnson's loyalty by appointing him military governor of Tennessee after federal forces occupied Nashville in February 1862. During the next two years, Johnson actively supported most of Lincoln's wartime policies, including emancipation, and made at least one well-received speaking tour of the North. Lincoln chose him as his running mate for the 1864 campaign as an affirmation of the sectional unity promoted by the Republican Party's National Union platform.

Lincoln's assassination thrust Johnson into a role he was ill-prepared to play, despite his previous experience. Johnson was a stump speaker with a quick temper and strong prejudices, including a clear bias against any expansion of federal power. As president, he began well, putting aside his own initial demands for postwar vengeance against the South to issue plans for amnesty and political reconstruction that mirrored those developed by Lincoln. Controversy ignited because he did not consult with Congress but relied instead on white Southern leaders to establish loyal governments and comply with federal initiatives such as the Thirteenth Amendment. When some of the Southern conventions, and the provisional governors he had appointed, ignored his requests concerning the endorsement of emancipation and the repudiation of secession and the Confederate debt, Johnson angered congressional leaders, especially the Republicans, by not quashing their defiance. Instead, he issued pardons liberally, insisted that federal reconstruction was not needed because the South had never left the Union, and declared Reconstruction officially over in April 1866.

Congress counterattacked, beginning in December 1865 with a refusal to seat the new members from the South. In early 1866, Congress overrode Johnson's vetoes of bills to protect civil rights and continue the Freedmen's Bureau, both of which he opposed as unwarranted assertions of federal power. Congress also passed the Fourteenth Amendment, prompting Johnson to undertake a speaking tour to persuade Northern voters to replace the radical Republicans who opposed him. Instead of being defeated, radical Republicans won two-thirds of the seats in Congress. They passed the Reconstruction Acts in 1867, placing ten of the eleven former Confederate states under military rule (Tennessee was excluded because it had already ratified the Fourteenth Amendment). Many Southern leaders were subsequently removed, and new state conventions adopted constitutions and reforms that were more amenable to Republican leaders.

Johnson attempted to use his authority as commander in chief to limit Reconstruction. When Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton refused his orders, Johnson dismissed him in deliberate defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, which, like the Reconstruction Acts, Congress had passed over his veto in 1867. The House of Representatives impeached Johnson on eleven counts, the most damaging of which focused on the Tenure of Office Act. Tried by the Senate, he was acquitted by a margin of one when seven Republicans voted against a conviction. His victory proved hollow, however, because he retained almost no control over Reconstruction other than the power to issue pardons. This he continued to do through December 25, 1868, when he extended executive clemency to all former Confederates.

No faction seriously considered nominating Johnson for the presidential race in 1868, despite accomplishments that included the acquisition of Alaska, and he retired to his home in Greeneville, Tennessee. He campaigned unsuccessfully for the United States Senate and the House of Representatives in 1869 and 1872 respectively, and served one term as senator, starting in 1875. Not fully recovered from an attack of Asiatic cholera two years earlier, he suffered a stroke and died at his daughter's home in Elizabethton, Tennessee, on July 31, 1875.

Constitutional Amendments and Changes; Lincoln, Abraham; Reconstruction.

Bergeron, Paul H.; Graf, LeRoy P.; and Haskins, Ralph W., eds. The Papers of Andrew Johnson. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1967–2000.

McCaslin, Richard B., comp. Andrew Johnson: A Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1992.

McKitrick, Eric L. Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.

Trefousse, Hans L. Andrew Johnson: A Biography. New York: Norton, 1989.

Winston, Robert W. Andrew Johnson, Plebeian and Patriot. New York: Henry Holt, 1928.