ANDREW JOHNSON | 1865-1869
With the assassination of Lincoln, the presidency fell to a southern Jacksonian Democrat of pronounced states' rights views. Andrew Johnson was a most unfortunate president. Set against him were the Radical Republicans in Congress, brilliantly led and ruthless in their tactics. Johnson was no match for them.
Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on December 29, 1808, Johnson grew up in poverty. He ran a tailor shop in Tennessee. In local debates, he championed the common man and vilified the plantation aristocracy. In the 1840s and 50s, as a member of the House and the Senate, he advocated a homestead bill to provide a free farm for the poor man.
Johnson remained in the Senate even when Tennessee seceded, making him a hero in the North. Lincoln appointed him governor of Tennessee. Republicans, contending that their Party was for all loyal men, nominated the southern Democrat for vice president in 1864.
After Lincoln's death, President Johnson proceeded to reconstruct the former Confederate States while Congress was not in session. By the time Congress met in December 1865, slavery was being abolished. But "black codes" regulating the freedmen were starting to appear. Radical Republicans in Congress, dismayed at restrictions imposed upon blacks, moved to change Johnson's program. Refusing to seat any representative or senator from the old Confederacy, they passed measures dealing with freedmen. Johnson vetoed the legislation. Congress overrode his veto to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, establishing Negroes as American citizens and forbidding any discrimination against them.
A few months later Congress submitted to the states the Fourteenth Amendment, which specified that no state should "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." All the former Confederate States except Tennessee refused to ratify the amendment, and there were two bloody race riots in the South. The Radical Republicans won an overwhelming victory in congressional elections that fall.
In March 1867, the Radicals effected their own plan of Reconstruction, again placing southern states under military rule. They also passed laws placing restrictions upon the president. When Johnson allegedly violated one of these, the Tenure of Office Act, by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the House voted eleven articles of impeachment against him. He was tried by the Senate in the spring of 1868 and acquitted by one vote.
In 1875, Tennessee returned Johnson to the Senate. He died a few months later.
