Thick and squat Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth President of the United States, was a self-reliant man who was very proud of his humble background and made use of every opportunity to attack what he felt were the interests of the rich. Like his successor Abraham Lincoln, Johnson possessed the unrefined simplicity of manner common to men of the frontier. Unlike Lincoln, however, Johnson possessed few social skills and little patience for political compromise. His boisterous and severe nature only added to the political tensions of the Reconstruction era. In February of 1868, Andrew Johnson became the first President ever to stand trial for impeachment. Though he was a southern Democrat, his loyalty to the Union, and President Lincoln during the years of the Civil War earned him the Vice Presidential nomination of the mostly Republican National Union Party in the election of 1864. He became President on April 15, 1865, after an assassin's bullet had killed President Lincoln. His dedication to Lincoln's policy of reconstruction, which was lenient to the returning Confederate states, found him in direct opposition to the northern Republican-controlled Congress. When Congress tried to limit the power of the unpopular President through the Tenure of Office Act of 1867, a high-spirited President Johnson directly defied the law. He was made to stand an impeachment trial and was acquitted by only one vote.
Andrew Johnson was born on December 29, 1808 in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was the youngest of two sons born to Mary and Jacob Johnson. Jacob Johnson, a maintenance worker at the local tavern, died when Andrew was only three. The boy was raised by his mother who worked as a bar maid, seamstress, and clothes washer to support herself and her two sons. Andrew received no formal education. When he thirteen, his mother apprenticed him to a local tailor. Since it was custom for an apprentice to read articles of the day aloud to the tailors as they worked, Andrew's fellow workers taught him to read for this purpose. Already wanted by the local authorities for several pranks he had committed with other local boys, Andrew furthered his outlaw status by running away from his master. He escaped to Laurens, South Carolina where he found work as a tailor. In spite of the reward being offered for his capture, he returned to Raleigh in 1826 to convince his mother and stepfather to move with him to Greenville, Tennessee. In Greenville, Andrew opened up a tailor shop of his own. He married Eliza McCardle on May 17, 1827. The couple had three sons and two daughters. Eliza was well educated and continued to build on the academic foundation Andrew had received as a tailor's apprentice.
In 1828 Andrew Johnson was elected to the Greenville city council. Two years later, he was elected Greenville's mayor.
Andrew Johnson was elected to the Tennessee state legislature as a Democrat in 1835. In the state legislature, Johnson developed his public speaking skills. He became a strong voice for the common farmer and business man. He loudly denounced what he saw as the abuses of the rich. He lost a bid for re-election in 1837, but returned to the state's legislature in 1839. In 1841 he won a seat in the Tennessee Senate.
Andrew Johnson was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1843 and served four consecutive terms. In the House, he supported the policies of President Polk, including the Mexican War. During the Taylor Administration, he supported the Compromise of 1850 under which California was admitted to the Union as a free state, the territories of Utah and New Mexico were created without any mention of the slavery issue, Texas was paid $10 million for surrendering its claims to New Mexico, the trading of slaves was outlawed in Washington D.C., and the Fugitive Slave Act made federal government officials responsible for the capturing of runaway slaves.
In 1853 Andrew Johnson became the Governor of Tennessee and served two terms before being elected to the United States Senate in 1857.
The splintered Democratic Party nominated Andrew Johnson for the Presidency in 1860, but he back out and threw his support to John C. Breckenridge. When Abraham Lincoln's victory in the general election of that year triggered the secession crisis, Andrew Johnson fought against Tennessee's secession. Despite Johnson's efforts, Tennessee seceded from the Union in June of 1861. Andrew Johnson declared his loyalty to the Union, and became the only southern senator to remain in Congress. When the Union army secured Tennessee in 1862, President Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of the State of Tennessee. Johnson was hated at home and decried a traitor, but his bold support of the Union made him somewhat of a hero in national circles.
During the Presidential election of 1864, the Republican Party and the few southern Democrats who had remained loyal to the Union formed the National Union Party. At the convention, Hannibal Hamlin failed to secure the nomination for re-election to the Vice Presidency. In an attempt to gain support in the borderline southern states, the National Union Party nominated Andrew Johnson for Vice President. The National Union Party ticket of President Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson beat the Democrats George McClellan and George Pendleton by a landslide in the general election.
The Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, with the surrender of Confederate General Lee at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia. Six days later, President Lincoln was assassinated, and Andrew Johnson became the seventeenth President of the United States on April 15, 1865.
President Lincoln had favored leniency in dealing with the conquered southern states in pursuing the path toward reconstruction. In his second inaugural address President Lincoln promised to negotiate a peace "with malice towards none, and charity for all." President Johnson intended to follow Lincoln's forgiving policy, but Congress, being overwhelmingly made up of Republicans from the North, demanded a different approach. In 1866 Congress passed the Reconstruction Act which established martial law in the South and limited the voting rights of southern whites. The Act also provided universal suffrage for the recently freed slaves. Universal suffrage was intended to further limit the voice of southern whites in the central government, but actually had the opposite effect when put into practice. It eliminated the Three-Fifths Rule by enabling the South to count slaves as part of the population when determining the number of representatives sent to the House. Corruption and white terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan enabled the South to keep the African American vote from having any effect on their stronger voice in the federal government. President Johnson promptly vetoed the bill. Congress easily retaliated by overriding the President's veto. The Reconstruction Act became law on March 2, 1867.
After the Reconstruction Act, the Republican Congress sought to establish a law that would limit the power of unpopular presidents by devising the Tenure of Office Act of 1867, with the unpopular President Andrew Johnson in mind. The Tenure of Office Act required the President to obtain the approval of the Senate before dismissing any members of his cabinet. On August 12, 1867 President Johnson, in direct defiance of the new law, dismissed Secretary of War Edwin J. Stanton and replaced him with General Ulysses S. Grant, without seeking the Senate's approval. On June 13, 1868, Congress declared President Johnson's actions illegal and reinstated Stanton as Secretary of War. President Johnson countered the Congressional censure of his actions by again dismissing Stanton, this time replacing him with Major General Lorenzo Thomas, as Grant was not prepared to go against Congress a second time. On February 24, 1868 the United States House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to impeach President Johnson for his violation of the Tenure of Office Act. President Johnson, who did not speak on own his behalf at the trial, was acquitted. The final tally fell one vote short of the two thirds majority required for President Johnson's removal from office. The deciding vote was not a denial of the President's guilt, but rather an expression of doubt as to whether the matter merited the severe punishment of removal from office.
The effectiveness of Andrew Johnson's Presidency was hindered by his constant opposition from Congress. Only one effort of the Johnson Administration was ratified by Congress, and that was William Seward's purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, for the price of $7.2 million. Though the purchase was eventually ratified, even this met with fierce opposition. Critics of the purchase called it "Seward's Folly," as the land was believed worthless. Little did they know that in 1880, gold was to be discovered in Juneau.
President Johnson failed to secure the Democrat nomination for re-election and retired to Greenville, Tennessee. In 1869 he made a bid for the Senate and lost. In 1872 he made a bid for the House and lost. He finally won a seat on the Senate in 1874 and resumed the fight for the lenient reconstruction of the South. His term, however, was short lived. Five months after re-entering the Senate, he suffered a stroke and died. Andrew Johnson died on July 31, 1875 while visiting one of his daughters in Carter's Station, Tennessee.
