Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson
Born	Andrew Johnson 12/29/1808
Birthplace	Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.
Died	07/31/1875 Elizabethton, Tennessee, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Politician, tailor
Known for	17th President of the United States; first president to be impeached
Spouse(s)	Eliza McCardle Johnson

Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 – July 31, 1875) was an American politician who served as the 17th President of the United States from 1865 to 1869. Born into crushing poverty in Raleigh, North Carolina, Johnson never attended school. He was apprenticed to a tailor as a young boy. Yet he rose through Tennessee politics to become an alderman, mayor, state legislator, congressman, governor, and senator before reaching the vice presidency under Abraham Lincoln in 1865. When Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, Johnson inherited the presidency at an extraordinary moment. The Civil War was drawing to a close, and the nation grappled with how to reconstruct the defeated Southern states. As president, Johnson pursued lenient policies toward former Confederate states, opposing civil rights protections for the formerly enslaved and vetoing legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Congress. His battles with Congress over Reconstruction policy led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives on February 24, 1868, making him the first president in American history to be impeached. The Senate acquitted him by a single vote. Historians broadly consider Johnson's presidency one of the least successful in American history, chiefly because he opposed freedmen's rights during the critical Reconstruction era.

Early Life

Andrew Johnson was born on December 29, 1808, in Raleigh, North Carolina. His parents, Jacob Johnson and Mary ("Polly") McDonough, lived in poverty. His father worked as a porter and handyman at a local inn and died when Andrew was only three years old. The family's circumstances grew even worse. Johnson's mother remarried, but poverty remained their reality.

He received no formal education whatsoever. As a young boy, Johnson was apprenticed to a tailor named James Selby. There he learned the trade that would sustain him for years. During his apprenticeship, he began to learn to read, reportedly taught in part by workers and customers who'd read aloud in the shop. He ran away before completing his apprenticeship and moved westward, settling in Greeneville, Tennessee, around 1826, where he opened his own tailor shop.

Johnson married Eliza McCardle in Greeneville in 1827. She'd received more schooling than her husband and helped teach him to write and improve his reading. Her influence mattered throughout his political career. The couple settled into community life, and Johnson's tailor shop became a gathering place for local political debate. He got involved in civic affairs quickly. His skill as a speaker drew attention from neighbors.

His early years shaped everything that came later. Poverty, lack of formal education, yet self-made success. He branded himself a champion of working people and maintained deep suspicion of planter elites and old money. Even so, as his fortunes improved in Tennessee, Johnson himself acquired property, including enslaved people. This contradiction ran through his entire career.

Career

Early Political Career in Tennessee

Politics started locally for Johnson in Greeneville. He was elected alderman in 1829 and then served as mayor. His speaking abilities and appeal to working-class voters pushed him into the Tennessee General Assembly. He won election to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1835 and served briefly in the state Senate before moving to the national stage.

The United States House came next. In 1843, Johnson was elected to represent Tennessee's 1st congressional district. He served five consecutive two-year terms, staying until 1853. As a Democrat, he followed the Jacksonian tradition, backing small farmers and working people against what he saw as planter dominance. The Homestead Bill became his chief legislative cause. It aimed to give free land parcels to settlers willing to develop them. Johnson championed this for years. The Homestead Act wasn't signed into law until 1862, after he'd left the Senate, when President Lincoln signed it.

Governor of Tennessee

In 1853, Johnson was elected the 15th Governor of Tennessee, serving from October 17, 1853, to November 3, 1857. He continued backing common citizens' interests, supporting public education and infrastructure work. He won re-election and served two terms before the Tennessee state legislature elected him to the United States Senate in 1857.

United States Senator and the Civil War

Johnson entered the Senate on October 8, 1857, representing Tennessee. He kept pushing for the Homestead Bill and remained a strong Union advocate even as sectional tensions heated up in the late 1850s. When Southern states began seceding after Lincoln's election in 1860, Johnson stood against it. He was the only sitting senator from a Confederate state who didn't resign when his state seceded. This made him admired in the North but intensely disliked across much of the South.

Johnson's Unionism came from strict constitutional interpretation and his belief that secession was unconstitutional. His loyalty caught Lincoln's attention. In 1862, the president appointed Johnson Military Governor of Tennessee after Union forces retook much of the state. From March 12, 1862, to March 4, 1865, Johnson worked to restore civil government and suppress Confederate resistance. The job was brutal. Guerrilla warfare and divided loyalties plagued Tennessee throughout the war.

Vice Presidency

Lincoln chose Johnson as his running mate in 1864 on the National Union Party ticket. A Republican selecting a War Democrat from a Confederate state sent a message. It meant national unity. The Lincoln-Johnson ticket won, and Johnson was inaugurated as the 16th Vice President on March 4, 1865.

The vice presidency was short and marred by disaster. His inauguration went badly. Johnson appeared visibly intoxicated while delivering his inaugural address in the Senate chamber. Embarrassment spread widely. He later blamed illness and whiskey taken to calm his nerves. Only 42 days passed before Lincoln's assassination on April 14, 1865, threw him into the presidency.

Presidency (1865–1869)

Accession and Presidential Reconstruction

Johnson became president on April 15, 1865, after Lincoln died. He took office facing an enormous challenge. The nation had to reintegrate former Confederate states and determine the status and rights of roughly four million formerly enslaved people. Johnson's approach to Reconstruction differed sharply from what many congressional Republicans had in mind.

While Congress was in recess during summer 1865, Johnson pursued his own form of Presidential Reconstruction. He issued proclamations directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections for new civil governments. His plan required them to repudiate secession, abolish slavery, and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. It did not require civil rights or suffrage for the formerly enslaved. Johnson also granted broad amnesty, pardoning most former Confederates who took loyalty oaths. Wealthy planters and high-ranking Confederate officials had to apply individually for pardons. Johnson granted those liberally.

Former Confederate states quickly reconstituted their governments under Johnson's lenient terms. Many returned prewar leaders to power. They enacted so-called Black Codes. These were restrictive laws designed to control freedmen's labor and movement, stripping them of many civil liberties. The codes varied by state but commonly blocked African Americans from owning property, conducting business, buying or leasing land, and moving freely in public spaces.

Conflict with Congress

Congress returned in December 1865 and refused to seat representatives and senators elected under Johnson's Reconstruction plan. Republicans established the Joint Committee on Reconstruction to investigate Southern conditions and develop alternative policies. This confrontation between president and Congress defined his entire presidency.

Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to protect freedmen's rights. Johnson vetoed it. Congress overrode his veto, a first for significant legislation in American history. A pattern developed. Congress would pass bills protecting formerly enslaved people and imposing stricter terms on former Confederate states. Johnson would veto. Congress would override.

He also opposed the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and guaranteed equal protection under the law. Johnson urged Southern states to reject it. The amendment was ratified anyway in 1868.

In 1866, Johnson undertook an unprecedented national speaking tour called the "Swing Around the Circle." He traveled through Northern states to promote his Reconstruction policies and campaign against Republican candidates in the midterm elections. Disaster followed. He was heckled at several stops and made intemperate remarks that damaged his standing badly. Republicans won overwhelming victories in 1866, strengthening their congressional control and emboldening them to pursue their own Reconstruction program.

Impeachment

The confrontation reached its peak in 1867 and 1868. Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in March 1867. It prohibited the president from removing certain officeholders, including Cabinet members, without Senate consent. Everyone understood the real target: Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. He sympathized with Republican Reconstruction and served as a key link between Congress and military commanders enforcing Reconstruction in the South.

In February 1868, Johnson defied the act and tried to remove Stanton from office. The House voted to impeach Johnson on February 24, 1868, by a vote of 126 to 47. Eleven articles of impeachment were adopted. Most centered on alleged Tenure of Office Act violations. Some addressed broader misconduct charges.

The Senate trial began in March 1868, with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding. It lasted several weeks. On May 16, 1868, the Senate voted on three articles. Each vote was 35 guilty to 19 not guilty. One vote short of conviction. Seven Republican senators broke ranks to vote for acquittal. They believed conviction would threaten executive branch independence dangerously. Johnson stayed in office until his term ended, but his political power was essentially spent.

Remaining Months in Office

After the trial, Johnson's presidency became largely ineffective. He vetoed bills constantly, and Congress overrode them constantly. The Reconstruction Acts, passed over his vetoes, imposed military rule on former Confederate states. They required ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and granted suffrage to African American men as conditions for readmission. Johnson's term ended on March 4, 1869. Ulysses S. Grant, who'd won the 1868 election, succeeded him.

One notable action happened in his final months. On Christmas Day 1868, Johnson issued a universal amnesty proclamation, granting unconditional pardons to all who'd participated in the Confederate rebellion, including former Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Return to the Senate

After leaving the presidency, Johnson went back to Tennessee and tried to re-enter public life. His bids for the Senate and House failed at first. But in January 1875, the Tennessee state legislature elected him to the United States Senate. He took his seat on March 4, 1875, becoming the only former president to serve in the Senate afterward. His return was brief. He participated in a special session called by President Grant and delivered a speech criticizing Grant's administration and Reconstruction policies.

Personal Life

Johnson married Eliza McCardle on May 17, 1827, in Greeneville, Tennessee. She was the daughter of a local shoemaker. She reportedly furthered her husband's education, teaching him to write and refining his reading skills. They had five children together. Tuberculosis plagued Eliza for much of her adult life. She rarely appeared publicly during her husband's presidency, leaving her daughter Martha Johnson Patterson to handle most White House social duties.

Johnson himself owned enslaved people during his Tennessee years. This fact complicates his Civil War legacy as a Unionist. While he opposed the planter aristocracy and built his political identity around white working people's interests, he didn't advocate for racial equality. He consistently opposed civil and political rights for African Americans throughout his entire career.

Andrew Johnson died on July 31, 1875, at age 66. He was visiting his daughter in Elizabethton, Tennessee, when a stroke struck. He'd suffered it several days earlier. Greeneville was where they buried him, wrapped in an American flag with a Constitution copy placed under his head, as he'd wished. His burial site is now part of the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery.

Recognition

Johnson's historical legacy has undergone extensive scholarly reassessment. In the decades after his death, some historians, particularly in the early twentieth century, portrayed him sympathetically. They cast him as a defender of constitutional principles against a vindictive Radical Republican Congress. Most modern historians have rejected this interpretation. They see his opposition to freedmen's civil rights as a central failure and a contributor to Reconstruction's incompleteness.

The Andrew Johnson National Historic Site in Greeneville includes his tailor shop, two homes, and the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery. The National Park Service maintains it. Visitors interested in Civil War and Reconstruction history visit regularly. A women's club bearing his name still operates in Greeneville.

February 24, 1868—Johnson's impeachment date—continues to be noted in annual "Today in History" compilations as a significant moment in American political history.

The Library of Congress maintains a comprehensive collection of Johnson resources as part of its presidential bibliography series.

Legacy

Andrew Johnson's presidency holds a troubled place in American memory. He took office at one of the nation's most consequential moments and faced decisions that would shape millions of formerly enslaved people's lives. Those decisions would define how the defeated South would rejoin the Union. His choices mattered enormously. He favored rapid restoration of Southern governments without freedmen protections. He opposed the Fourteenth Amendment. He vetoed civil rights legislation. These decisions had lasting consequences for American race relations and shaped the Reconstruction era's political development.

Johnson was the first American president to be impeached. He held that distinction alone until President Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 and President Donald Trump was impeached in 2019 and again in 2021. Like Johnson, both Clinton and Trump were acquitted by the Senate. Johnson's impeachment set important precedents about executive and legislative power balance and congressional authority to hold presidents accountable.

Historians have consistently ranked Johnson among America's lowest-performing presidents. His opposition to freedmen's rights, his combative Congress relationship, and his lack of leadership during national transformation all factor in. His presidency suffers in contrast to the more inclusive postwar vision Lincoln had begun articulating.

His life story stands out starkly. From illiterate tailor's apprentice to president of the United States. That's notable social mobility in nineteenth-century America. Yet his presidency teaches a harder lesson. Personal success doesn't guarantee effective or just governance. Reconstruction's incompleteness haunted the nation. The decades of racial oppression that followed in the American South are part of Johnson's legacy. Scholars continue examining his role in creating conditions that allowed freedmen's rights rollback in the post-Civil War era.