“Of all the presidents of the United States, Andrew Johnson stands out as unique—unique in having been the only one to be impeached, unique in not having attended school for a single day, unique in originating in such poverty that even those who doubt the ‘log cabin myth’ in the history of the presidency accord him a place of exception, and unique in returning to the Senate six years after leaving the White House” (Trefousse, p. 13).
I have to admit that Andrew Johnson is, unfortunately, one of those presidents that I remember. Actually, the word “remember” here is rather strong—I think that the word “recall” would work better since all that I recall about Andrew Johnson is that he is the only president to be impeached. So with that dubious distinction I began searching for a decent book on old Andrew and with only a scanty collection available, I chose Andrew Johnson: A Biography by Hans L. Trefousse (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989). It is a few years old, for sure, but it was either this book or a newer one that simply dealt with the impeachment alone and we all know that I need the whole shebang.
Andrew Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina on December 29, 1808. He was the last of three children of a captain and a seamstress. When Andrew was only 3 years old, his father died while saving others from a frozen river which left the family adrift. Andrew was apprenticed to a tailor at a young age but soon ran away, finding himself in the frontier wilds of Greeneville, Tennessee.
On May 17, 1827, Johnson married Eliza McCardle and soon after that his tailor business grew quite quickly. “Business flourished, for Johnson knew how to make money, with thriving investments in real estate as well as in business” (p. 30). Everyone agreed that Johnson was an excellent business man and with the time he saved having employees run the business, he began educating himself by reading everything he could get his hands on. His reputation grew; soon he was alderman and then mayor of the city of Greeneville.
1835 saw Johnson’s first foray into the wider political world when he was elected to the Tennessee state legislature. He became a Democrat and supported the Van Buren and Polk administrations on the national stage. He became steadily wealthier, acquiring more property and slaves. He then won a seat to the US Senate upon his own interpretation of Democratic policies. “These included an unremitting advocacy of the rights of the poor, the laboring people, the mechanics, as they were called, against what he considered an overbearing aristocracy; extreme economy in government, and opposition to protective tariffs” (p. 53).
“Always conscious of his humble background and his lack of formal education, he became ever more aggressively proud of his origins and rarely failed to assert the superiority of the common people from whom he had sprung” (p. 59). While in the Senate, Johnson would write and foster the Homestead Bill, which he would passionately propel forward against enormous odds. The Homestead Bill aimed to give land out West to the poor, not only to support the growing population in gainful employment but to help the United States establish control over areas that it owned in name only. Many politicians were against this bill since it practically gave away land and mainly to poor people!
But the people back home loved him. Around 1843, Johnson was voted back to Washington but this time into the US House of Representatives where he followed a strict course urging extreme economy in the government and increased support for the Homestead Bill. He was re-elected each time until he left congress to become Governor of the state of Tennessee in 1853. “His populist appeals, his wheeling and dealing, and his knowledge of his home section had succeeded in sufficiently increasing the Democratic vote in East Tennessee to capture the state” (p. 88).
“While carrying on these activities, Johnson never forgot the main advantage of the governorship, the opportunity to advertise himself and his opinions” (p. 93-4). Why would he need to advertise himself? Well he wanted to be president in 1860 and used this particular political platform to enhance his name with a more national renown. Amazingly, in 1857, he was back in the US Senate and his ambitions of being president soon became increasingly well know. He even had his followers propose his name at the 1860 Democratic convention but when the convention fell apart and split, he removed his name from the lists.
Although Johnson was very southern in his leanings, favoring slavery and states’ rights, he did not approve of secession when it finally came. “The ordeal of the Union was a real crisis for him, not merely because he was genuinely devoted to its preservation—Andrew Jackson was his model—but also because his position at home was becoming increasingly difficult” (p. 128). Johnson did everything in his power to keep Tennessee in the Union and although he failed and was almost killed over it, his love of the Union promoted his name to the North in a way that his stint as governor never could achieve. In an electric speech to the Senate, Johnson stood by the Union while his state left it and in so doing, he lost everything in Tennessee. “As the only senator from a seceding state to have remained loyal, he enjoyed a unique position, so that Lincoln listened attentively to his please for aid for his persecuted fellow citizens in East Tennessee” (p. 143). The Senate immediately placed him on the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War.
This was a bleak period for Andrew Johnson for he was not able to return to Tennessee and yet, that is where his family and all of their property and money was located. “Worried about his family and friends, disappointed at the generals’ hesitation, he was determined to do his utmost to bring about the liberation of East Tennessee and the speedy suppression of the rebellion” (p. 148). Thus even though he did not want to take on a new job, he allowed Lincoln to appoint him military governor over the state of Tennessee, becoming also a brigadier general.
Taking up residence in Nashville again, Johnson had a motto that he would stand by for years. “Traitors must be punished and treason crushed” (p. 155). He was down on secession and the South and yet because of his hard ideals, he found himself in conflict with every US Army commander in Tennessee. He continued to press Lincoln and the US government for more help in Tennessee and he worked hard to prevent Confederate Armies encroaching in his territory.
With the election of 1864 right around the corner, Lincoln decided to change the name of the Republican Party to the Union party so that he would not estrange anyone of any political party who was against the war effort. At the Union party presidential convention, Lincoln was unanimously backed by the party but Hannibal Hamlin, the sitting vice president, was dropped. Hamlin was from Maine and did not carry very much political clout during the war, so the Union Party endorsed Andrew Johnson instead. He was added as vice president for the 1864 presidential election.
Lincoln won another term but in April of 1865, only one week after the fall of the
South and only month after his inauguration, he was killed and Andrew Johnson became the 17th President of the United States. “Good Friday of 1865 has always been considered a day of bad omen in American history; how ominous it was, however, no one realized at the time. The assassination of the president was serious enough; the accession of his successor had more fateful consequences than anyone could have foretold” (p. 193).Reconstruction was the major issue affecting his presidency and Johnson already had his own ideas of how this would be accomplished—this was basically to get the southern states back into the Union as quickly as possible. Presidential Reconstruction then would encompass just that, which made nobody happy, along with no black suffrage (remember Johnson agreed with the South about slavery and its uses). “The result was a disaster. The legislatures [of the Southern states] elected by the enfranchised voters tended to be dominated by arch-conservatives and secessionists. Imbued with reverence for the lost cause, they became notorious for passing black codes so stringent as to constitute a virtual reestablishment of slavery under another name” (p. 230). In essence, Johnson missed a golden opportunity to promote a promising racial policy and allowed the states, under strict states’ rights, to control it instead.
Congress was appalled—after all, what was the point of winning war if the Southern states could simply nonchalantly reenter the Union at will—and they became increasingly fractious with the president. First he vetoed the Freedman’s Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Bill. Countering this, Congress overrode the president’s veto passing the Civil Rights Bill into law. Then Johnson vetoed Colorado statehood and was aggressively against the proposed 14th amendment, which Congress also passed over him. Then Congress repealed the Confiscation Act and then passed the Tenure of Office Act, tying the president’s hands in case he wanted to get rid of any cabinet members. Then they took Reconstruction away from the president and passed the Military Reconstruction Act which effectively began congressional Reconstruction and military rule over the seceded states.
Johnson though did not get along with his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, a holdover from the Lincoln administration, and wanted to get rid of him in favor of Grant but this caused an insane debacle including Congress and the Tenure of Office Act. In the
end, Congress was so upset that they brought up impeachment charges against him on January 7, 1867. “Announcing that he was impeaching ‘Andrew Johnson, Vice President and Acting President of the United States,’ of high crimes and misdemeanors, Ashley charged Johnson with the usurpation of power and violation of law by corruptly using the appointing, pardoning, and veto powers, by disposing corruptly of the property of the United States, and by interfering in elections” (p. 283). The trial began on March 3, 1868 and Andrew Johnson was eventually acquitted by just one vote. Unfortunately Johnson no longer had a political party backing him, which became obvious as the Republican and Democratic conventions nominated other people to run for president in 1868. Johnson, who had been elected through the Union Party, parted ways with them over his Reconstruction ideas and the Democrats did not want to touch him after the impeachment trial. Instead, Ulysses S Grant became another Republican president after running against Democrat, Horatio Seymour, while Johnson degenerated into a truly powerless lame duck president. “He [Johnson] had been unable to win the presidential nomination; he had been incapable of influencing the outcome of the campaign; he was unable to stop the further progress of congressional Reconstruction, at least for the time being, and he could not even rid himself of subordinates he suspected of peculation” (p. 344).
After Grant’s inauguration day, Johnson took his time going home to Greeneville, TN. He found life at home, after so many years in Washington, pretty flat. It was, perhaps, inevitable that Johnson did not stay away from politics and soon was campaigning for the next Senate election in 1869. He lost, then had a very bad bout with cholera but he recovered. In 1875, Andrew Johnson returned to Washington again as a Senator but only months later, on July 31, 1875, he died of a heart attack/stroke at his daughter’s house. “The White House and government departments were draped in black; all business in Washington was suspended on the day of the funeral, and the armed services were ordered to perform the customary ceremonies” (p. 377).
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