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| Greeneville is proud of its hometown boy |
Early career
He was born in 1808 in Raleigh, NC, to poor, uneducated parents. His father died when he was three. His mother, even more impoverished without his father, apprenticed Andrew (age 9) and his brother to a local tailor to learn a trade and pick up some education. He never forgot the poverty of his early years
When he was about 17, the family moved to Greeneville, TN, where he lived most of his adult life. He quickly became the town's tailor, married, and learned to read and write with his wife's help. He gradually became deeply interested in politics and developed a skill as a debater.
In 1829 he was elected Alderman, then Mayor. In 1835 he began 2 terms in the State Assembly, followed by one in the state Senate. Beginning in 1843, he served 5 terms as US Representative, followed by 2 terms as Governor of Tennessee, and then was elected to the US Senate. A remarkable political trajectory, when you think about it, particularly given his background.
Johnson's principles
One of his driving principles was belief in and support for the working folks.
As you can see, some of his positions would be greatly in favor today.
At least partly as a result of his faith in the traditional American concept of self-reliance, he was a fiscal conservative.
Again, some of these positions would be popular today.
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| Thomas Nast cartoon |
Political party development up to the 1850s and '60s
By the time of the Civil War, the US had 3 major political parties, each with a distinctly different background.
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| Democrats gradually became regional |
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| Whigs were focused on finance |
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| Republicans weren't as much for something as they were against slavery |
Andrew Johnson, being from Tennessee, was a Democrat. The records aren't clear but, beginning shortly before he went to Congress, he seems to have owned as many as 8 people who worked around his house.
On the other hand, he saw secession as being unconstitutional and thought the South was much better served by trying to work out their problems within the Union. However, once TN had seceded, Johnson was technically no longer a member of the US Senate.
TN was the site of the second-most battles of the Civil War (VA has the dubious distinction of being first), including one of the war's bloodiest: Shiloh. However, Nashville, the state's capital, came under Union control as early as 1862 and Lincoln appointed Johnson as military governor, seeing him as a pro-Union Southerner.
In his tenure in this role, Johnson first tried peaceful means to bring people into compliance but, when those didn't work, he resorted to threats and intimidation. As an example, he required an oath of loyalty to the Union before a person could be granted a business license. Actually, that seems moderately reasonable to me, but Southerners saw him as harsh and tyrannical.
It was his performance here that led Northerners to believe he would be the right running mate for Lincoln in 1864. It might seem odd (it did to me) that he'd be chosen since he was a Democrat, but the wartime Republicans were forming coalitions with Whigs and Democrats who supported their position. They called themselves the National Unionist Party and put up the ticket of Lincoln and Johnson. And with Lincoln's assassination in 1865, Southern Democrat Andrew Johnson became the Union's 17th president.
Post-war presidency
As sometimes happens, the Union after the Civil War was more dis-unified than it had been during the war, even before the southern states rejoined. Our divided government, set up by the Founding Fathers to be inefficient, was further beset by 2 radically different views of how reunification needed to be handled.
The differences were oddly exacerbated by the fact that Congress wasn't in session for the first 7 months of Johnson's presidency (unlike today's never-ending sessions).
Without Congress, Johnson was able to begin implementing his view of Reconstruction. Because the Constitution makes no allowance for secession, Johnson believed the southern states were still legally part of the Union. His idea was to bring them back into the government as quickly as reasonably possible. In fact, what he tried to do was implement Lincoln's own plans, modified of course by his own belief in constitutionally limited federal government.
Johnson's Reconstruction plans:
Republican Congress's Reconstruction plans:
Since Congress has the authority to write laws, they wrote them consistent with implementing their views. Johnson vetoed 29 of them; Congress overrode his veto 15 times. Johnson said almost every time that his veto was based on his belief that the laws were unconstitutional. Here are some of them.
In many of these cases, Johnson may have been right about the laws not following a strict construction of the Constitution, but he was dead wrong about leaving these things to the states; his way wouldn't have brought about a reconciliation any more than Congress's. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that the southern states, left to their own impulses, would never ever have granted any rights whatever to the formerly enslaved people. And this was, in essence, what had brought about the Civil War in the first place.
As a result of the utter lack of a coordinated vision for Reconstruction, and an utter lack of Republican impulse for compassion, the South was left to deal on its own with the resulting mess that was imposed on them.
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| post-war Southern economy |
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| carpetbaggers and scalawags |
Between these realities and the requirements of bills such as those shown above that became law over Johnson's veto, there should be little wonder that the South emerged from the Reconstruction years with their views about the former slaves unchanged and with bitterness toward Northern attitudes that are still seen today.
Because the Northern and Southern views were so diametrically opposed that a war seemed reasonable, it's also reasonable to suppose that no person has ever existed that could have resolved the post-war continuing conflicts. It's doubtful Lincoln himself could have done it. But Andrew Johnson was not the right man in the right place.
He had always been stubborn, and in no way was he as stubborn as in his adherence to the letter of the Constitution. For this reason he was completely unable, let alone unwilling, to compromise on these issues. And for this reason, he has gone down in history as an ineffective president. But the one thing he was not was wishy-washy. Instead, he was unyielding. And that led to his impeachment.
Impeachment
The historic site begins with what they call a common misconception about impeachment. Note in reading these exhibits that they were written quite a few years ago when today's circumstances were never dreamed of.
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| what's impeachment? |
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| the rationale for Johnson's impeachment |
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| the articles of impeachment against Johnson |
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| Senate trial |
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| Senate vote |
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| what could have resulted |
I thought the result shown here was a real overstatement, because the information they'd presented seemed to be more than political unpopularity. But Wikipedia's account supports this version by listing in detail the articles of impeachment which really were all revolving around the Tenure of Office Act, which general consensus (let alone the Supreme Court) now agrees was an unconstitutional violation of separation of powers. And then there was Johnson's rationale at the time that Stanton had been appointed by Lincoln in his first term and never reappointed so didn't fall under the protection of the act in the first place. A much more involved situation than I'd expected.
The rest of Johnson's presidency
Even during the Reconstruction battles, other matters of state were being conducted.
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| Alaska purchase in 1867 |
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| transatlantic cable completed 1866 |
Post-presidency
Johnson died of a stroke not long after this speech (above) in 1875.
I talked to 2 Park Service rangers about their opinions of Johnson, given what they know from working at the site. One said she thought he was a weak president and that the displays they had were out of date and needed to be revised according to modern historians' views. The other said she thought he'd done the best he could under the circumstances - given that he had rigid ideas and was up against a Congress that had equally rigid and opposite ideas. She thought that even Lincoln couldn't have succeeded Lincoln, given the myths that had sprung up around him and given the attitudes arrayed against him.
I think they may both be right, though I lean more toward the 2nd. Johnson in essence took a my-way-or-the-highway approach, which has never been a winning position in politics. On the other hand, a lot of what he was adhering so rigidly to was purity of the Constitution, a position I have to support.
But I personally am not a strict constructionist. I believe the Framers created a Constitution that they envisioned as being a living thing and, as such, needed to be flexible. After all, they allowed amendments and started with 10 of their own. For this reason, I think Johnson's failure to achieve a reasonable compromise for Reconstruction was his adherence to the idea of limited federal government (and therefore an expanded view of states' rights) without any regard for the results to the African-Americans in the southern states. I think he was blind there.
The Historic Site has a couple of exhibits that relate to his slave ownership and, as seems to be usual, they show him to be admiring of the people he owned and quick to free them from slavery during the war, before the Emancipation Proclamation. Maybe all that's true, but I think his true view of the place of black people in this country is shown by his stance embracing the right of southern states (run by white men only) to make any laws they chose about them.
I suppose as ghastly as Congress's version of Reconstruction was, things might have been even worse if Johnson had prevailed, because it might easily have led to a second civil war - if the South could have figured out a way to pay for it.
I learned a lot here. And one of the things I learned most was that events - and people - are always more complex than they seem. My simplistic summary is that Johnson was in many ways an admirable man who tried his best for the country. And my further takeaway is that stubbornness (one of my own less attractive traits) can produce good, but it can also create far more havoc than it's worth.
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