Andrew Johnson became the seventeenth president of the United States
on April 15, 1865, the morning that President Abraham Lincoln
(1809–1865; served 1861–65) died. Johnson inherited the responsibility of helping the nation to reunite and redefine itself after the end of the
American Civil War (1861–65). This period following the war, called
Reconstruction, was challenging for the Democratic Johnson as tensions with the Republican Congress evolved. His stubbornness and aggressive tactics created battles with Congress that eventually led to the
first impeachment of a U.S. president.
Early life
Andrew Johnson’s rise to the presidency was remarkable for two reasons:
He was the first person to attain the office without either legal or military training, and he managed to overcome the terrible poverty and deprivation of his upbringing. No other president
rose from lower depths of poverty, not even
Lincoln.
Johnson was born December 29, 1808, in a
two-room shack in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Both of his parents were illiterate, and his father
worked a variety of jobs to support the family.
Service to the local militia as captain and to the
Presbyterian Church made Johnson’s father a respected member of his community. His death in
December 1811 left Johnson’s mother to struggle to support their two children on her own.
She did so by sewing, weaving, and washing for
a few years, and then she remarried. Her new
husband proved to be a poor provider.
In 1822, Johnson and his brother were apprenticed to a local tailor. Johnson learned the
trade well, and throughout his life remained
proud of his skills. The tailor and local minister taught Johnson the basics of reading and writing. But the apprenticeship came to an abrupt
end in 1824 when Johnson and his brother were involved in an incident
of rowdiness. Fearing punishment, the boys fled to Tennessee, where
Johnson eventually opened a tailor shop.
Soon after arriving in Greeneville, Tennessee, Johnson met Eliza
McCardle. They were married May 17, 1827, and had five children. His
tailor shop thrived, but Johnson’s passion for political debate drew him
into public service. In time, he became a full-time politician representing the working people. He was a tireless campaigner with excellent
speaking skills, and he was both courageous and outspoken. His devotion to the common farmers and tradesmen of Tennessee and his work
against the wealthy slaveholders moved him to support the U.S.
Constitution and the union of states. Johnson, however, was also a man
of the South who had firm proslavery beliefs.
Between 1829 and 1842, Johnson served as alderman and then
mayor of Greeneville, and then as a state legislator. He next served as a
member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1843 to 1853. He
was elected both in 1853 and 1855 to serve as the governor of Tennessee.
In 1857, he won a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Ascending to the presidency
Johnson was a U.S. senator during the election of 1860, when the debates marked growing divisions in the nation. The expansion of slavery
and state power to dictate federal government policy were two important
issues. Johnson supported the proslavery candidate of the Democratic
Party, Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861), who lost the election to the
Republican, Abraham Lincoln. Though Lincoln denounced the expansion of slavery, his party intended to allow it to remain in the areas where
it had already been established.
Southern fears of losing the right to own slaves and to have powerful state governments led many states to consider secession, or leaving
the union of the United States. Johnson’s own state of Tennessee was one
of them. As senator, Johnson spent the winter after the election trying to
discourage secession, taking a much firmer pro-Union stand than most
Southern congressmen. At first, Johnson was successful.
A month before Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861, six states seceded to form the Confederate States of America. In April, the
Confederates fired upon the Union forces at Fort Sumter in South
Carolina, provoking Lincoln to call for troops from the states. Tennessee
joined the next wave of seceding states.
Johnson and his family were driven from Tennessee, but Johnson
maintained his position within the U.S. Senate. Although he believed in
states’ rights and slavery, he placed preservation of the Union above all
else. He denounced the Confederacy as a conspiracy by wealthy plantation owners, and he took an active role in devising war measures in the
Senate. Johnson was the only Southern senator not to resign his seat and
follow his state into the Confederacy.
In 1862, the Union army pushed Confederate forces out of western
and central Tennessee. Noting Johnson’s Union loyalty, Lincoln invited
him to become the military governor of Tennessee. Johnson received full
power to restore order in Tennessee and to build a new pro-Union government for the state. It was a challenging task, but Johnson was aggressive in making it happen.
Johnson became the ideal running mate for President Lincoln’s reelection campaign in 1864. Though Johnson was a Democrat, he was
firmly committed to the Union. Having him as the vice presidential candidate helped to attract support from both the northern prowar Democrats and the border state Unionists. Lincoln and Johnson were
elected and then inaugurated March 4, 1865.
The Civil War came to an end just days before President Lincoln was
shot by an assassin on April 14, 1865. Johnson was sworn in as president
only hours after Lincoln’s death on April 15. Reintegration of the rebellious states had yet to be arranged, so the difficult tasks of restoring the
Union fell to Johnson’s administration. Both his aggressively stubborn
actions and his Southern and Democratic roots caused tensions with the
Republican Congress.
Johnson as president
Johnson’s presidency was dominated by the issues surrounding
Reconstruction. What would the rebellious states be required to do before being brought back into the Union? How would they prove their
loyalty? What changes to their political systems would they have to
make? Since slavery had been abolished, what would be the status of
blacks legally, politically, and socially?
President Johnson introduced his Reconstruction program on May
29, 1865, with the unanimous approval of his cabinet. The program had
two proclamations. The Amnesty Proclamation pardoned (forgave) all
participants in the rebellion except for the highest-level leaders of the
Confederacy and the very wealthy. Those not pardoned would have to
apply to the president for restoration of their rights to vote and hold office. Those pardoned would have to take a loyalty oath. All property, except slaves, would be restored.
The second proclamation, which dealt specifically with North
Carolina, set the pattern for the reintegration of all seceded states where
pro-Union governments were not yet set up. Acting governors were to
appoint temporary state officials and to recommend people for federal
appointments. There would be conventions to write new state constitutions that had to support the abolition of slavery and nullify (cancel) the
states’ ordinances (declarations) of secession. Only those who had been
eligible to vote in 1861 and had taken the new loyalty oath could vote.
Unpardoned rebels and all blacks were barred from voting. Similar
proclamations were made for Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida,
Georgia, Alabama, and Texas.
During the summer of 1865, all of these states held constitutional
conventions. South Carolina, however, refused to nullify its ordinance of secession, and Mississippi rejected the Thirteenth Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution, which had abolished slavery. By the fall of 1865, the
Southern states held state and congressional elections. Many of the winning candidates were actually ineligible to hold office under the Amnesty
Proclamation. Johnson himself contributed to the ineffectiveness of this
proclamation. At first, he granted pardons only sparingly, but by the end
of 1865 he was granting them almost automatically in hopes of gaining
goodwill in the South. He wanted to run for president in the election of
1868 and was already seeking political support.
When the mostly Republican U.S. Congress reconvened in 1866,
they would not let the newly elected Southern congressmen take
their seats. Congress created the Joint Committee of Fifteen on
Reconstruction to investigate conditions in the South and to recommend appropriate laws. These actions were a signal to Johnson that
Congress believed that further Reconstruction measures were needed. It
was a direct challenge not only to Johnson’s Reconstruction policy but
also to his authority as president.
Johnson reacted to Congress by asking the public to pressure
Congress to accept the Southern congressmen. For a time, it seemed that
this strategy might work. In February 1866, however, Congress passed
the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill to extend indefinitely the Freedmen’s
Bureau, which had been established at the end of the Civil War to provide aid, education, and legal protection to former slaves. Before passing
it, Republicans in Congress had offered to change anything that Johnson
did not like about the bill, and since he had voiced no objections, they
expected that he would sign it. However, when it came time for the president to sign the bill into law, Johnson stunned Congress by declaring it
unnecessary and unconstitutional. The congressional vote on the bill had
excluded the duly elected representatives of the eleven Southern states,
and on that basis Johnson vetoed it. Congress failed to override the veto,
and Johnson reveled publicly in the victory.
Three weeks later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866,
which declared that blacks were citizens of the United States entitled to
equal protection of the laws. It gave the federal government broad enforcement powers. Johnson vetoed this bill as well, calling it an unconstitutional intrusion on states’ rights that discriminated against whites in
favor of blacks. Although his opinion may have been sincere, Johnson’s
veto was motivated also by his desire to retain Democratic and Southern support. Outrage in Congress led it to override Johnson’s veto, making
the bill a law. This was the first time in American history that Congress
had overridden a presidential veto.
Impeachment
Johnson’s vetoes and unwillingness to compromise united his political
opponents in Congress. This weakened Johnson’s power during the remainder of his term. In total, Johnson used the veto twenty-nine times,
and Congress overrode it fifteen times. The veto overrides enacted many
Reconstruction acts and the Tenure of Office Act. This act prohibited
the president from dismissing, without Senate approval, any federal official previously appointed with the Senate’s consent. Johnson called it an
unconstitutional violation of the powers of the presidency.
Johnson had inherited his entire cabinet from Lincoln. From the
start, he had been working with the cabinet members’ guidance, but he
did not work well with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814–1869).
Though Johnson had tolerated Stanton’s lack of respect for his policies,
by the summer of 1867, the president moved to suspend him. As
Congress was out of session, Johnson replaced Stanton temporarily with
former Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885). Upon reconvening, Congress rejected Johnson’s appointment. In February 1868,
Johnson again removed Stanton from office and replaced him with
General Lorenzo Thomas (1804–1875). Ignoring the need for Senate
approval, Johnson violated the Tenure of Office Act.
Johnson’s disregard for the law gave a dissatisfied Congress the excuse it wanted to pursue impeachment. Impeachment is the first of a
two-step process to remove a government official without his or her consent. The process begins with an accusation of misconduct from the
House of Representatives (impeachment), and continues with a trial in
the Senate (resulting in possible conviction). The proceedings took all of
April and May 1868, and though the House voted to impeach Johnson,
the president narrowly escaped conviction in the Senate. Seven
Republican senators repeatedly cast “not-guilty” votes, consistently leaving the opposition one vote short of removing Johnson from the White
House. Though Johnson remained in office, he stopped aggressively
frustrating the efforts of the Republican Congress.
Post-presidential years
Johnson pursued the Democratic nomination for president in 1868.
However, his battles with Congress, his poor presidential record, and the
impeachment all worked against him. The Republicans had nominated
a popular war hero, General Grant, and the Democrats needed a
stronger candidate to face the opposition. They chose New York governor Horatio Seymour (1810–1886), but Grant won easily.
Johnson left the White House on the morning of Grant’s inauguration, March 4, 1869. He returned to Greeneville, Tennessee, where he
again threw himself into local and state Democratic affairs. He failed in
his efforts to be elected to the U.S. Senate in 1869 and to the U.S. House
of Representatives in 1872. In 1875, the Tennessee legislature finally
elected Johnson to the U.S. Senate by one vote. Johnson entered office
in March 1875, but his service proved to be short. On July 28, he suffered a stroke, then he suffered another a few days later and died on July 31, 1875.