Andrew Johnson: A Biography

It is the last Sunday of the month and since I am back on track with the president’s we are picking up this month with our 17th president, Andrew Johnson, making this weeks book of the week Andrew Johnson: A Biography by Hans L. Trefousse.

Andrew Johnson was born on December 29, 1808, in Raleigh, North Carolina to Jacob and Mary “Polly” Johnson. He was their third child; his older brother William was born in 1804 and a sister Elizabeth who had died in in childhood. When Andrew was three years old, his father died, leaving the already poor family in pretty desperate straits. Polly did marry again, another poverty-stricken man named Turner Doughtry, and eventually she apprenticed both of her sons to J. Selby’s Tailor Shop. Terms of apprenticeship were pretty harsh; Johnson was apprenticed in 1818 when he was 9 years old, and his term of indenture was until he was 21.

Prior to his own apprenticeship with the tailor, Johnson would go to the tailor’s shop to listen and learn, eventually learning to read at the tailor’s shop. Public education, as highlighted in Battle Cry of Freedom last month, was really not a thing in the south, but by listening to the citizens debate and talk in the tailor’s shop, Johnson learned how to form ideas and debate, skills which he continued to improve on when he himself was apprenticed to the same shop.

However, over time, Johnson came to see a 12-year apprenticeship, especially one he did not particularly agree to, as a bit of a raw deal…one of many ironies that would accompany his life…and he and his brother ran away from the James Selby, Tailor. In the early 19th century, apprenticeships of this sort, especially in the south, was essentially indentured servitude, and Selby offered a $10 reward for the return of the wayward boys, and the boys were prohibited under the terms of the contract with Selby from seeking employment anywhere else in North Carolina. William, I believe, eventually made his way to Texas, although I don’t specifically recall if that was before or after squaring accounts with Selby.

Johnson, just kept traveling, ending up at this point in Laurens, South Carolina, where he was remembered to be an avid reader. He had planned on marrying a local girl and made a quilt for her as sort of a notice of intent to court, but her mother rejected his suit, given that he was a penniless tailor, and a runaway to boot. In the south, they’d return runaway slaves to each other, but not runaway indentures. So, he at this point returned to Raleigh, intending to square up with Selby. Selby, however, wanted a bulk sum of money to make up for the early training and the time he had run away, which Johnson was unable to come up with. Since he was prohibited from working in the state of North Carolina until his account with Selby was square, and he was unable to square that account, he continued traveling, working for a bit as a tailor in Decatur, Alabama where he actually learned some specifics of bespoke tailoring, before traveling again and settling in eastern Tennessee, specifically Greenville, Tennessee, where he immediately found work at the local tailor’s shop, eventually buying out the old tailor and setting up shop himself.

Part of his reason for settling down in Greenville was that he met his soon-to-be wife Eliza McCardle, and together they had five children, Martha, Charles, Mary, Robert, and Andrew Jr, who was born in 1852, 18 years after Martha was born. Martha and Mary became the apples of his eyes, with Charles and Robert eventually disappointing him, due to both of them descending to alcoholism. Charles eventually died during the war, and Robert committed suicide after because of his alcoholism.

Like many poor people who work their way into a better position, Johnson was quite adept with money, and he eventually ended up owning property all around Greenville, and his own tailor’s shop had apprentices working for him. He used this rags to riches, pull your self up, mentality to make the leap into politics, first as a local congressman, as mayor of Greenville, and eventually becoming member of the US House of Representatives, where he served from 1843-1853 before becoming Governor of Tennessee for four years, finally rounding out his political career pre-Civil War as US Senator, which is the position  he held when the south seceded, including his own Tennessee.

Now, through all of this, he was staunchly democratic, both in party and in principle, and held himself to be a strict constitutional constructionist and Jacksonian. He held slaves himself and firmly believed that black people were inferior to whites by every measure.  Every bill he passed was set to ensure that whites were supreme over blacks, and to maintain status quo in the south. But when Lincoln won and the south seceded, he did NOT go with them. He maintained a strict loyalty to the Union, maintaining that the south could not secede as it was against the Constitution to do so.

So ardent was his defense of the Union and his belief that the constitution should be adhered to in all things, including existing slavery policy, that in 1862 when Tennessee was at least partially ready for reconstruction, Lincoln appointed him military governor of the state, with the intention of bringing the rest of the state in-line and back to the Union fold, a position he held until he was elected vice-president for Lincoln’s second term.

On March 4, 1865, during his swearing in ceremony, Andrew Johnson, for the first and only time in his life, appeared in public entirely intoxicated. The entire senate was worried that this man was now president of the senate and next in line to the White House, but Lincoln expressed full confidence in Johnson, saying “I have known Andy Johnson for many years; he made a bad slip the other day, but you need not be scared; Andy ain’t a drunkard.”

And with that, Johnson settled down, fully expecting to be Vice President over a senate beset by the needs and conflicts of reconstruction. Then on April 14, at 10:15pm, he was woken up by former governor from Wisconsin, Leonard J Farwell, with the news that Lincoln had been shot and was apparently dying, and that Secretary of State Seward was critically injured in the same assassination attempt. Secretary of War Stanton sent guards to Johnson to ensure he at least was safe, and Johnson insisted on seeing Lincoln himself, although he did not linger at the President’s deathbed, lest people feel that was ghoulish and inappropriate.

And on April 15, he was informed that the president had passed, and asked when he wanted to be sworn in. In a quiet ceremony with Chief justice Salmon P. Chase and witnessed by several members of Lincoln’s cabinet and some members of the House of Representatives, Johnson was sworn in as the 17th president of the United States.

Now, at first, everything seemed fine. He kept Lincoln’s cabinet intact; he had great admiration for Seward and would actually keep him on as Secretary of State for Johnson’s entire presidency. Where things started to fall apart is that Johnson, and probably everyone else in congress, realized that with the liberation of all the former slaves, the 3/5 compromise was no longer in force, as the slaves were no longer in bondage. Which meant as the southern states redrew their constitutions and came back to the Union fold, the south was due for a massive influx of representatives.

And so, the race was on, metaphorically speaking, with the radical republicans in congress doing everything they could to pass legislation as quickly as they could to ensure that those freed slaves were counted as citizens, for the representative apportionment, and that those new citizens could vote, so that the south didn’t stack congress with a bunch of white supremacists. For his part, Johnson did everything he could to ensure the south got to stack congress with a bunch of white supremacists.

In the approximately 14 months between his inauguration and the passage of the 14th amendment guaranteeing citizenship to the freed slaves, Johnson pardoned huge swaths of the rebellious population of the south, so that they would be able to vote in favor of laws that would ensure the black populace stayed second class, appointing military governors that were hostile to reconstruction attempts of congress, and vetoing every law he could.

Hostilities became so strong between Johnson and Congress that by the end of his term, Congress would pass a law, Johnson would veto, and within 30 minutes Congress would have the required 2/3 vote to overturn the veto. Like never before, and I don’t THINK since, has Congress pulled so mightily in the same direction all at once.

So, the 13th amendment was passed in the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865. Since the majority of rebelling states had not yet been accepted back to the Union, it was easily ratified on December 6, 1865. Of the three Reconstruction Amendments, this is the only one Johnson did not fight tooth and nail against. By the end of the Civil War, he was ok with the eradication of slavery. He was not ok with the concept that blacks were equal to whites and fought very hard to enshrine their status as beneath that of whites.

Now, between the 13th and 14th amendments being passed, Johnson became the first president to be impeached. It happened like this. Due to his general obstinance and continued appointment of military governors who backed HIS reconstruction plan, i.e., keep the blacks disenfranchised and ignorant, vs Congress’s reconstruction plan, which was to make sure EVERYONE could vote without restrictions, Johnson issued wholesale pardons to anyone who asked vs. Congress who wanted anyone who participated in the rebellion disenfranchised or at the very least the leaders of the rebellion prevented from voting. So, his plan and Congresses were diametrically opposed. And in the midst of this power struggle, Congress passes the Tenure of Office Act in 1867. This was passed to strip the presidency of the power of patronage. Now patronage is one of the perks of the office. ANY political position, from local postmaster to secretary of state, could be appointed by the president. Congress would have to approve the appointment for the cabinet posts, but everything else was open to the president to appoint loyal party members. At first, Johnson had not appointed ANYONE, keeping Lincoln’s appointments more or less intact.

But he believed the appointment of military governor fell under his purview as patronage, Congress disagreed. And so those states that had had military governors installed by Lincoln were having the governors replaced by ones that backed Johnson’s plans for reconstruction. Which led to the Tenure of Office Act. Now, Johnson and his whole cabinet felt this act violated the Constitution, and he initially vetoed the bill when it appeared before him. But Congress mustered the required 2/3 vote to overrule his veto and the act became law.

While the cabinet agreed it was against the Constitution, once it became law, that was it. So, Johnson was hoping to force the issue before the Supreme Court, and attempted to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and replace him with Ulysses S Grant. Now, the Tenure of Office Act allowed for a current cabinet member to resign, which Stanton refused to do. Johnson was able to temporarily suspend Stanton and install Grant when Congress took their break, but once Congress returned, they overturned the suspension, and Stanton returned to work. Johnson tried to get Grant to refuse to step down, even offering to pay the $10,000 fine that the Act attached to anyone attempting to work in an unapproved capacity. Johnson’s intent was to force the Act before the Supreme Court to determine its constitutionality. Grant, however, was like…are you also going to serve the 5-year jail sentence that attaches for me if the Supremes vote against you? It’s gonna be a no for me. Grant didn’t have anything against Stanton and resented Johnson’s attempt to use him for political maneuvering and kept his distance from Johnson for the rest of Johnson’s life, even refusing to share a carriage with Johnson on the day of Grant’s inauguration.

So, Johnson enlisted the aid of Lorenzo Thomas in the same scheme and fired Stanton, installing Thomas. This led to Congress impeaching him on March 5, 1868. Johnson’s highly capable defense team ordered him to not appear at the trial, and to stop giving public statements about this. Of the two, not giving speeches as probably the hardest, Johnson LOVED to give public speeches. Ultimately, he was found not guilty, the loophole being that the Tenure of Office Act as written only covered appointees of the current president. Stanton had been appointed by Lincoln. But during the impeachment, several key senators only voted not guilty on Johnson’s promise to play nice with Congress for the remainder of his term. Which he more or less did, obeying laws as passed, although he was still pretty quick with a veto, and Congress was just as quick to overturn the veto.

The last amendment Johnson oversaw passage of was the 14th amendment, which grants citizenship to all those now freed slaves. And if they are citizens, then they are entitled to representation. And Johnson really wanted that representation to be all white. The only reason he ended up signing the 14th amendment is that it had passed both houses of Congress and the requisite number of states, including some that had reconstructed enough to be out of post war sanctions. But Johnson hated signing it, and I think the only reason he did, is that he had promised to play nice with Congress following his impeachment. The 15th amendment, which granted the right to vote to all the freedmen was signed into law by Grant.

Johnson briefly hoped he might get nominated to run in his own right, but his contentious relations with Congress prevented a nomination, and Ulysses S Grant easily won the presidency, being sworn in on March 4, 1869. Now, Grant refused to ride in a carriage with Johnson, and due to their strained relationship and Johnson’s resentment over Grant’s refusal to test the Tenure of Office Act with him, Johnson refused to attend the inauguration, making him the third outgoing president to do so, the first two being John Adams, and John Quincy Adams.

And so, he returned to Greenville, Tennessee, for the first time since 1861. And finding it entirely too quiet and dull, he began campaigning to be elected US Senator, which, after a few years, he was, returning to the Senate on March 4, 1875. Interestingly enough, he was a genuinely bi-partisan pick. The Unionists of Tennessee remembered his loyalty to the Union and so supported his vote, and the Secessionists remembered all his help in keeping the freedmen as second-class citizens after the war and so supported his vote.

Then on July 31, 1875, while visiting his daughter in Elizabethton, TN, Johnson had a stroke and died. He is buried in Greenville, Tennessee. His wife Eliza followed him about 6 months later.

I don’t know man; I think Johnson may have supplanted Jackson as my least favorite president. Mostly because he was so delusional. Like, if he had not spent most of the war as military governor of Tennessee, he might have known Lincoln better and seen the winds of change were a blowin across the land, and reconstruction might not have been the absolute cluster fuck it became.

I think his dreadful policies and absolute screaming racism contributed to the next 100 years of hatred and bigotry in this country. I was curious about the Tenure of Office Act, because I know Trump was awfully quick to fire people and it seemed like if that was still a thing, Congress would have 100% bludgeoned him with it. The author does cover this in his epilogue, and the Tenure of Office Act was repealed in 1887 and in the 1920’s, Johnson was posthumously vindicated when the Supreme Court did determine it had been unconstitutional.

The author’s summation of Johnson’s presidency was so spot on, I want to quote a bit from it.

“What defeated him during his term in the White House was not so much his lack of formal education, nor even his tactlessness, but his failure to outgrow his Jeffersonian-Jacksonian background….Thus, though he was still able to leave his legacy of white supremacy and achieve reelection (as Senator) in a more traditional Tennessee, he failed to impress his contemporaries in the country at large, and his administration was a disaster. Johnson was a child of his time, but he failed to grow with it.”

This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on September 25, 2022, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.