17. ANDREW JOHNSON (Please Impeach Me)
Born: December 29, 1808, Raleigh, North Carolina
Died: July 31, 1875, Carter’s Station, Tennessee
Term: April 15, 1865- March 4, 1869
Political Party: Democrat
Vice President(s): none
First Lady: Eliza McArdle Johnson
Before the Presidency: Andrew Johnson as born in poverty in North Carolina. His father died when he was three, leaving his mother to work as a weaver/spinner to feed Andrew and his brother. She remarried, but the fortunes didn’t improve. Andrew and his brother were sold as apprentices to a tailor. That didn’t work out so well and the two boys ran away. After two years on the run, Andrew reunited with his mother and step-father before moving west to Greenville, Tennessee.
Now a tailor, Andrew tried to teach himself to read and write but had some difficulty until he met Eliza McArdle, who he would marry. Unlike Andrew, Eliza was well educated and had a yen for money. She taught Andrew to read and write and he was able to invest some money in real estate and farmlands.
His political career started early as he served as a local alderman as well as Mayor of Greenville by 1834. He considered himself a Jacksonian Democrat and his speeches that attracted the interests of the common man, Johnson found himself elected to the Tennessee State Legislature in 1834 and 1838. He then served in the State Senate in 1841.
Johnson served in the US House of Representatives from 1843 to 1853. He lost the seat as the result of gerrymandering, but Johnson would win the Governor’s Seat where he served from 1853 to 1857. He then served in the Senate again from 1857 to 1862. As the only Southern Senator not to abandon his seat, Johnson found himself appointed as Military Governor of Tennessee in 1862.
Johnson had Presidential admirations as he sought the 1860 Democratic nomination. At best, he was a longshot and his candidacy never really gained momentum. As a Southerner, he supported slavery, now having fourteen slaves himself. But he also opposed secession and won praise from the North when he was the only Southerner not to abandon his Senate seat when the Southern States seceded.
So, in 1864, Johnson seemed, on paper anyway, to be a viable candidate for the 1864 Democratic nomination.
But the Republicans had other ideas.
Summary of offices held:
1829-1834: Alderman, Greenville, Tennessee.
1834-1835: Mayor, Greenville, Tennessee
1835-1841: Tennessee State Legislature
1841-1843: State Senator, Tennessee
1843-1853: US House of Representatives
1853-1857: Governor of Tennessee
1857-1862: US Senator
1862-1865: Military Governor, Tennessee
1865: Vice President of the United States
What was going on: Reconstruction, purchase of Alaska,
Scandals within the administration: The Johnson impeachment
Why he was a good President: He more or less stuck to his convictions, warped as they may have been, and he weathered his impeachment with dignity. Then there was Seward’s Folly.
Why he was a bad President: Are you kidding me? He clearly had no desire to help the former slaves and had no problems with the state laws meant to guarantee that blacks would remain third class citizens. And he didn’t really tolerate cabinet members that didn’t always agree with him.
What could have saved his Presidency: If he had simply followed Lincoln’s moderate path by not allowing the Black Code laws and ensuring blacks had equal rights while being reasonably lenient to the South, he would have been fine. He didn’t have to be oppressive to the whites like the radicals wanted and, of course, he wasn’t, but he shouldn’t have enabled them to make life a living hell pretty much for the freed blacks either.
What could have destroyed his Presidency: Um, the guy was impeached. Need I say more?
How he became Vice- President: With the Civil War being drawn out, President Lincoln was nervous about his re-election chances. While his campaign slogan was Don’t change horses in midstream, that’s exactly what he did when he dumped Vice President Hannibal Hamlin and went with Democrat Andrew Johnson. It was felt that, as a war Democrat from the South, Johnson could balance the ticket as was known to be tough against the planter aristocracy. Of course, we know now that this was likely Lincoln’s biggest mistake.
Anyway, Johnson was the running mate and advocates played up to his strengths. Johnson proved attractive to Irish Catholics in the North (Johnson may have been a racist, more on that later, but he evidently stood up for the Catholics as Governor of Tennessee). And, though he wasn’t popular with the Radical Republicans, he scored well with moderates and, with the war turning in Lincoln’s favor, would be elected Vice-President in a landslide.
First term: Andrew Johnson was Vice President for just a little over a month when President Lincoln was assassinated. It’s safe to say he wasn’t ready to fill in the great President’s shoes and it became obvious rather quickly, that the new President did not share the same vision that Lincoln had, and he certainly didn’t have the same agenda the Radical Republicans did.
For the Radical Republicans were in a punitive mood. They wanted to impose martial law on the former Confederacy, something Lincoln may have not necessarily agreed with. They likely would have agreed on the laws that would help blacks adapt into white society such as the Freedmen’s Bureau and ensuring certain rights such as voting and even election to office.
The new President had different ideas. He offered amnesty called for new opportunities to help poor white people. Black Code laws were being enforced in some of the Southern states meant to limit the rights of these new free people.
1865 came and went without any incident, or at least following the assassination. President Johnson, as promised, offered amnesty to most Southerners who took a loyalty oath and appointed Provisional Governors throughout the South.
But things went sour in 1866. President Johnson vetoed an extension of the Freedmen’s Bureau which was meant to neutralize the Black Code laws that were popping up in the South. Johnson condemned the radicals as traitors, and a distasteful political war had begun.
A month later, Johnson would veto the Civil Rights Bill. This would be overridden. In fact, of Johnson’s 29 vetoes total, 15 of them would be overridden. Meanwhile, Congress would pass the fourteenth Amendment establishing citizenship for all born on American soil. It would be ratified two years later
Johnson would get a rude awakening come November when radical Republicans he was campaigning against won seats in Congress. This set the tide for one of the more tense years in Congress.
The Congress, and the House in particular, was set on kicking President Johnson out on his butt, so they passed a bill known as the Tenure of Office Act. This was a bill that forbade a President to fire someone in his own cabinet. And, not surprisingly, Johnson took the bait when he fired Edwin Stanton, the War Secretary.
Thus, began the first Impeachment hearings of a US President in history. Both Houses of Congress were loaded with Republicans and the majority of them wanted to see Johnson go. So, they voted to impeach Johnson in 1868.
Now in the United States, this is how impeachment works. A simple majority of the House is all that is needed to impeach. This is sort of like a grand jury that decides on whether to charge a person with something. If impeached, the Senate holds a trial presided over by the Chief Justice. A the end of the trial, the Senate votes on whether to remove the President but, unlike the House, a two thirds majority is needed for removal.
In Johnson’s case, the vote to convict fell by just one vote. John Kennedy (or maybe his ghostwriter) would single out one of the seven Republican Senators who voted against impeachment, Edmund Ross, in his book, Profiles in Courage.
So, President Johnson’s job was saved until the election anyway and not much happened for the rest of his term. He would leave with no real accomplishments save for Seward’s Folly, something I’m sure the Russians kicked themselves for in later years, especially during the Cold War.
Post Presidency: Johnson wouldn’t stay away from Politics. The former President would run for both the Senate and the House of Representatives, failing each time until 1874 when he finally won. Johnson felt vindicated after that particular election. Once in the Senate in 1875, he would speak out against corruption in the Grant Administration mainly.
His tenure in the Senate was short lived. In July 1875, Johnson suffered a stroke and died soon after.
Odd notes: As a tailor, Johnson made his own clothes.
He allegedly once suggested that God had Lincoln killed so he could become President
https://www.ducksters.com/biography/...n%20memorized.
Final Summary: Well, in some ways, Andrew Johnson was his own worst enemy. He really wasn’t prepared to be President, maybe he wasn’t even prepared to be Vice-President. He obviously could care less about the welfare of black people, and while he may have opposed secession, he nevertheless was maybe not as stern as he should have been with the South, particularly when it came to equal rights. Again, no one said he had to bring in the stormtroopers like a bunch of Fascists. But he could have enforced the rights of black citizens much like Dwight Eisenhower would do in the Little Rock school crisis in 1957, in other a words a show of force was all he needed to do, but he couldn’t even do that.
As for the impeachment, well, yeah, that was kind of politically motivated as Clinton's would be more than a century later. Some people might argue that Trump’s first impeachment could have been politically motivated too but that’s for later. Mind you, I’m not saying that Johnson shouldn’t have been spanked, and in a sense, he was when it was obvious he had no chance at keeping the Presidency in the upcoming election.
I’d give the guy an F, but he did do one wise thing by keeping Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward. Yeah, I know, I was talking about Seward’s Folly for a couple times during this bio.
But do you know what Seward’s Folly was? Well, lets put it this way, he was being ridiculed by the Congress for purchasing a large piece of land owned by Russia that was, in the eyes of most people in 1867, fairly barren.
That barren land happened to be Alaska.
So that alone saves Johnson from being the worst President ever.
But everything else, ugh!
Overall rating: D
https://millercenter.org/president/johnson