President Andrew
Johnson
Andrew Johnson was born on Dec. 29, 1808 in Raleigh, N.C. The
Johnson family was poor–primarily supported by Andrew’s
father, who worked as a handyman at a local tavern. At age five,
the family was turned upside-down by the sudden death of Andrew’s
father. The family made it the best way they could until Andrew
reached the age of 10 and was apprenticed to a local tailor
in Raleigh.
The "bound apprentice" methods of learning a trade
were commonplace in those days and sometimes the life could
be brutal. The apprentice would practically become a member
of the master’s house for a period of ten years and was
subject to his master’s wishes. Enlisting in the military
was the only way the contract could be broken by the apprentice
himself. The conditions of his apprenticeship were so disagreeable
that a 16-year-old Andrew Johnson fled from his master’s
house to South Carolina, which led to the master taking out
a warrant that put a price on Johnson’s head. In fact,
a handbill was issued on the young apprentice that circulated
between the two Carolinas.
In 1826 at age 18, Johnson returned to his mother’s home
in Raleigh, straightened out the legal problems, and moved west
to the City of Greeneville, Tenn., where he opened a small tailor’s
shop.
Not too long after setting up shop, he met Elizabeth McCardle
and soon the two were married. She often worked with Johnson
in the shop and, with patience only love knows, the young woman
taught her newlywed husband how to read and write. During his
time as a tailor in Carolina and Tennessee, Johnson had become
interested in politics. In 1828, he made his first run for office
and was elected alderman of Greeneville. Two years later he
was elected mayor of the city and began his rise to prominence
in Tennessee politics. He served as a state legislator and,
in 1843, was elected to a seat in Congress, which he held for
ten years. As a Jacksonian Democrat, he held the same populist
views of the former President and earned him a solid voter base
among small farmers and the emerging American middle-class.
In 1853, he gave up his seat in Congress to run for Governor
and was elected to the office.
In the newly built state capitol, Governor Johnson worked to
empower the smaller family farms in Tennessee and established
the State Agricultural Bureau. In addition, he lobbied for and
won the legislature’s approval on a bill that supported
public schools by direct taxation and, in accordance with a
legislative act, purchased the Hermitage in order to make it
a standing monument to former President Andrew Jackson.
After one term as Governor, Andrew Johnson made a bid for the
U.S. Senate and handily won the election in 1857. Senator Andrew
Johnson began seeing the division in America and fought against
secession in the South and, especially, Tennessee. While Johnson
opposed rich southern planters, he was a slave owner himself
and, like the Republican candidate Lincoln, refused to make
it a national issue in the National Democratic Convention in
Charleston of 1860. During the Convention, Johnson was nominated
for President, but dropped his bid to support the Breckenridge
ticket.
Following the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency,
however, Johnson knew keeping the nation together was a lost
cause, but the Senator remained a staunch supporter of negotiating
a compromise. When Tennessee chose to follow the other southern
states and secede from the Union in 1861, he became the only
U.S. Senator from a seceded Southern state to not resign his
seat. Instead, Johnson returned to Tennessee to preach against
secession, but the Senator barely escaped being hanged by an
angry mob, which were furious over Lincoln’s handling of
the situation in South Carolina.
While supporting the Union’s military actions against the
Confederacy, Johnson sponsored a resolution in the Senate disavowing
emancipation of slaves as a goal of the war. As a defunct Senator
with no state to represent, Johnson became an agent of the Union
in Tennessee. Following the fall of Nashville in 1862, Johnson
was appointed military governor of Tennessee. During his time,
he ruled with an iron hand and absolute control.
During the Presidential election of 1864, Lincoln found himself
in a tight race and in danger of losing the office. Lincoln’s
Democratic challenger was former Union General George McClellan,
who, like many northern Americans, wanted to bring the war to
an end and negotiate with the South. Lincoln knew he was in
a tight spot and broke ranks with his party when he selected
the former Senator and Democrat Andrew Johnson as his Vice-Presidential
running mate. Although Johnson was seen as a radical choice,
it had the needed effect on Democrats in the North and in the
border states. With Confederate strongholds beginning to fall
and the war looking like it was coming to an end, Lincoln-Johnson
won the election by a near landslide.
In the March 1865 Presidential Inauguration, Johnson found himself
recovering from a bout with Typhoid fever. In order to deal
with the flu-like conditions, Johnson had been drinking whisky.
He appeared disheveled and somewhat inebriated, which earned
him an undeserved reputation as a drunkard and would come to
be used against him in the days ahead.
Following the assassination of President Lincoln a month later,
Johnson found himself thrust into the Presidency and with a
hostile Congress wanting revenge rather than repatriation of
the Southern states. Johnson seemed to anger them at every turn.
Prior to 1864, Lincoln had issued an amnesty proclamation that
stated: if one tenth of the voters from the 1860 elections in
a Confederate State took a prescribed Presidential oath, they
might establish a civil government, but admission of their federal
representatives would rest entirely with the legislative branch.
Congress expressed its opposition to it by passing the Wade-Davis
Bill of 1864, which Lincoln vetoed.
Johnson reportedly followed Lincoln’s desire to bring the
Confederate states back into the Union as quickly as possible
by issuing a similar proclamation less than a month after the
President’s death. Johnson added a few more provisions,
but the Southern states complied and, by October 1865, six Southern
states, including Tennessee, had met the requirements. The Congress,
however, despised Johnson’s quick amnesties and refused
to seat the Tennessee delegation or any other southern state
until the states ratified the 14th Amendment to the Constitution,
which Johnson did not support as a requirement for readmission
to the Union. Faced with the overwhelming task of reuniting
a nation, Johnson saw it and the Civil Rights bill, which he
vetoed, as irrelevant antagonistic legislation by the Congress
to exact revenge against former Confederates. While the 14th
Amendment extended citizenship and voting rights to freed blacks,
it unfairly denied those rights to former Confederates, who
Johnson had granted amnesty. In addition, Congressman Thaddeus
Stevens and Senator William Fessenden established a "Reconstruction"
committee, which proposed a brutal reconstruction plan for the
Southern states. The committee was composed of nine congressmen
and six senators and was responsible for creating a division
between the President and the Congress. Angered over its formation–
Johnson replied by vetoing the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and
accused the committee of trying to destroy the principals of
government. Congress fought back by overriding the Presidential
vetoes and passing the controversial legislation.
In the 1867 mid-term elections, both political parties tried
to appeal to the national interests of reunification, but Johnson’s
inexperience in government and the unsettling domestic front
of rogue state governments led to sweeping victories for radical
Republicans who were able to ram the "Reconstruction Acts"
through Congress. Ex-Confederates, who had been promised amnesty,
were suddenly without rights or Constitutional claims. In addition,
Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, which forbade President
Johnson from removing or firing any cabinet officer without
Congressional approval. President Johnson considered the Tenure
Act unconstitutional and challenged the law by firing Secretary
of War Edwin Stanton. Stanton had opposed Johnson’s lenient
terms for former Confederates and outspokenly supported the
Radical Republicans in Congress. His use of military force and
rule in Southern states was, President Johnson felt, counter-productive
to reunification. Although Johnson replaced Stanton with General
U.S. Grant, the Congress reinstated the Secretary of War and,
on Feb. 24, 1868, impeached President Johnson for "High
Crimes and Misdemeanors".
The main charges against him were:
1. His dismissal of Stanton
2. His declarations that certain laws were unconstitutional
3. His speeches in the campaigns of 1866
4. His opposition to Congressional Reconstruction
The Congress poorly conducted the trial in the Senate that followed.
The evidence produced showed more animosity towards Johnson
than hard proof of crimes. President Johnson refused to attend
the Senate trial, which led many Senators to observe the political
nature of what was occurring. Johnson went on to permanently
appoint Gen. Schofield to Secretary of War, which pleased many
of the Republicans in the Senate. In addition, the Senate was
growing fearful of Radical Republican Sen. Benjamin Wade. The
Ohio Senator, who was President of the legislative body, was
not liked by moderate Republicans and Democrats and remembered
for the Wade-Davis Bill opposing Lincoln on his Amnesty Proclamation.
It was enough to bend the final vote in President Johnson’s
favor. On the final vote, Johnson was acquitted of the charges
35-19, lacking one vote to give the Senate the two-thirds majority
needed to remove him from office. Following the vote, Edwin
Stanton resigned as Secretary of War and returned to private
life.
Although his power was virtually destroyed, Johnson went on
to accomplish many things in the White House, including enforcement
of the Monroe Doctrine in Mexico and the purchase of the Alaskan
territory from Russia.
After failing to win his party’s nomination in 1868, Johnson
returned to Greeneville where he remained active in politics
and national affairs. He was eventually reelected to the U.S.
Senate in 1875, the only former President to ever do so, but
didn’t remain in office for long. On July 31, 1875, Andrew
Johnson died at Carter’s Station, Tenn. near Jonesboro.
Thousands from across the state and nation attended Andrew Johnson’s
funeral. Knoxville musician and founder of the City’s first
Symphony Robert Knaba wrote a special funeral dirge for the
President that was played as his body was taken to Greeneville
and laid to rest. A 27-foot monument stands over the site with
the inscription: "His faith in the people never wavered".
Following his death six months later, his beloved wife Eliza
McCardle also passed away and was laid to rest next to her husband
of 48 years.
There was much controversy surrounding President Johnson and
his tenure in office. His actions as Military Governor of Tennessee
led many in his native state to despise him. When he was elected
with Lincoln in 1865, Republican representatives were comforted
with the backroom philosophy that Johnson was a way to keep
their party in power in the White House and would merely serve
as a puppet of Lincoln’s. Johnson was, by and large, considered
tactless and uneducated with an ego that many couldn’t
tolerate. Because Johnson never attended college or practiced
law, experts will still tell you he was the most uneducated
President to sit in office. Whether or not he was ill equipped
to handle the position is still a subject of debate. The fact
that he became President during the most trying time in American
history leaves many historians hesitant about making judgments
on his administration. Johnson was not a skilled negotiator
nor seemed to possess the ability to build a consensus among
his own party. Johnson was, however, a firm believer in the
U.S. Constitution and his religious adherence to it angered
a Congress that had grown used to its war-time suspension. The
U.S. Supreme Court later declared the Office Tenure Act passed
by Congress, which was used as the chief charge in his impeachment
from office, unconstitutional.
The Johnson home in Greeneville was occupied by both Confederate
and Union forces during the War Between the States and sustained
some war-time damage, which Johnson later repaired before his
death. When he passed away, Johnson did not have a Will and
his estate remained unsettled. His wife was appointed executrix,
but her own death six months later left matters unresolved.
In fact, when Johnson’s son died in 1879, the estate was
still in question. Johnson’s daughters, Mary Stover and
Martha Patterson did finally reach an agreement with Andrew
Johnson, Jr.’s widow and purchased most of the household
effects in a sale ordered by the Greene County Chancery Court.
When Mary Stover died in 1883, Johnson’s eldest child,
Martha Patterson, finally became the Estate’s official
guardian and owner. The home passed on to her eldest son upon
her death and, in 1942, the U.S. Government purchased the home
as a National Historic Site.
The Andrew Johnson National Historical Site includes the two-story
home of the former President, his tailor shop, and the Monument
Hill Cemetery. This past summer the historic site celebrated
the 130th anniversary of the impeachment vote where he was found
not guilty. In addition, they celebrated the grand opening of
their newly renovated museum.
As part of the tour of the new facility, visitors can now cast
their own ballots on the guilt or innocence of Andrew Johnson
in a ballot box in the museum. Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson
was among numerous state and federal officials on hand at the
dedication and cast the first official "not guilty"
ballot in the box.
Until recently, Andrew Johnson was the only U.S President in
American history to actually be impeached by the Congress. The
staff at the site has already started working to change the
pamphlets and literature listing Johnson as the only President
to be impeached. Officials say they now have everything corrected.
If you have any of the old material from the site prior to President
Clinton, experts say to hold on to it, as they could become
collector’s items in the future.
In spite of the impeachment by Congress, Johnson’s decision
to fire Edwin Stanton was later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Andrew Johnson National Historic Site is open daily and
there is no charge to tour the museum. There is a $2 admission
fee, however, to tour the Andrew Johnson Home for those age
18 and above. Special discounts are available for children and
groups. In spite of the recent attention, the historic site
is traditionally one of the most visited places in East Tennessee.
