JOHNSON, ANDREW

Andrew Johnson ascended to the U.S. presidency after the assassination of abraham lincoln. He was the seventeenth president and the first to undergo an impeachment trial.

Johnson was born December 29, 1808, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Little is known of his early life. His ancestry is usually traced only to the family of his father, Jacob Johnson, who raised his family in Raleigh and served as the city's constable and sexton, was a porter to the state bank, and was a respected captain in the militia of North Carolina. He was viewed as a hero after saving two men from drowning in a pond outside Raleigh. He died of health

complications only a year later, leaving the Johnson family in poverty.

From the age of ten to the age of 17, Johnson worked as an apprentice to a Raleigh tailor, J. J. Selby. Shortly after, he settled in Greeneville, Tennessee, where he opened his own tailor shop. Before he reached the age of 19, he had met Eliza McCardle, a respected teacher in Greeneville, whom he married on May 17, 1827.

Johnson's wife encouraged his aspirations to become politically active, and Johnson turned his tailor shop into a center for men throughout Greeneville to debate and practice their oratory. In 1828 Johnson was overwhelmingly elected city alderman. Two years later his supporters elected him mayor. From 1835 to 1843, he served in the Tennessee legislature. For the next ten years, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives. He returned to Tennessee in 1853 and was elected governor of the state. When his term expired in 1857, he became a member of the U.S. Senate, where he served until 1862. He was the only southern senator who refused to resign during the Civil War.

Johnson attracted the attention of President Lincoln. In 1862 Lincoln appointed the Tennessee congressman to serve as military governor of the state. After Johnson effectively managed the state throughout the Civil War, Lincoln selected him to run for vice president in the 1864 election. The pro-Union ticket of Lincoln and Johnson was victorious.

Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, and Johnson assumed the duties of president on April 15. He had been left with the daunting task of assimilating the former confederacy of southern states into the United States. Johnson sought to overlook the secession of the South. He granted many pardons and allowed southern politicians to restore oppressive practices toward former slaves, such as forcing them to give land back to their old masters and depriving them of the right to vote. A group of congressional Republicans, led by Thaddeus Stevens, a representative from Pennsylvania, opposed Johnson's practices. Against Johnson's wishes, the South was put under military rule. The civil rights act of 1866, passed in spite of Johnson's veto, granted blacks the right to vote.

In 1867 Congress passed the tenure of office act (14 Stat. 430), also over Johnson's veto. This act declared that the president could not, without the Senate's permission, remove from federal office any official whose appointment had been approved by the Senate. In August 1867, Johnson refused to follow the Tenure Act when he requested the removal of Secretary of War edwin m. stanton. He did so

on the ground that Stanton had conspired with radical Republicans against the president.

In removing Stanton from his position, Johnson aroused the wrath of even moderate Republicans in Congress. On February 24, 1868, the House passed resolutions to impeach Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors. By early March, the House had drawn up 12 articles of impeachment against Johnson. Eight of these concerned his alleged violations of the Tenure of Office Act. The ninth alleged a lesser charge, that he had overstepped his boundaries in suborning a U.S. general. The tenth and eleventh articles accused Johnson of defaming Congress in public speeches. A twelfth and final article, dubbed the omnibus article, was intended to induce senators who might have qualms about specific charges against Johnson to find him guilty on general grounds.

Under the Constitution at least two-thirds of the Senate must vote to impeach the president. In Johnson's case this meant that 36 senators would have to vote for impeachment. The defense knew that vote would have to come from the Senate's 42 Republican members—the Senate's 10 Democrats and 2 Johnsonites were bound to support his acquittal. Johnson's lawyers were confident that if they could appeal to the senses of moderate Republicans—whom the defense presumed were loyal to the restoration of the Union—the impeachment effort would fail.

On May 16 and May 26, 1868, the Senate voted 35–19 against Johnson on three of the articles of impeachment. By only one vote less than the two-thirds majority necessary to remove him, Johnson was acquitted of the most serious charges. The Senate subsequently adjourned its court, and Johnson was allowed to finish his term. His presidency ended in 1869, and he returned to Tennessee.

The people of Tennessee welcomed Johnson home and elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1875. However, he died soon after the election, on July 31, 1875, near Carter Station, Tennessee. In 1887 the Tenure of Office Act was repealed. In 1926 the Supreme Court rendered an ex post facto (retroactive) judgment declaring the act unconstitutional (272 U.S. 52, 47 S. Ct. 21, 71 L. Ed. 160 1926).

Most scholars and historians have concluded that the impeachment charges against Andrew Johnson were motivated by partisan politics and that removing Johnson on any one of the charges would have set a dangerous precedent. In effect Congressional Republicans were trying to use impeachment as a political tool to overcome Johnson's repeated attempts to impede their legislative efforts. However, the Founding Fathers, by devising a constitutional system of checks and balances in which the three co-equal branches of government are each delegated certain specific, enumerated authority, tried to prevent any one branch from acquiring too much power and wielding it in a despotic fashion. Had Congress been successful in removing Johnson, impeachment might have become a favored political weapon against future U.S. presidents, thereby severely weakening the presidency and removing any incentive for the House and Senate to cooperate and compromise with the executive branch.

"Amendments to the Constitution ought not be too frequently made; … [if] continually tinkered with it would lose all its prestige and dignity, and the old instrument would be lost sight of altogether in a short time."
—Andrew Johnson

Many scholars and historians have also concluded that the Johnson impeachment proceedings helped narrow the class of impeachable offenses. The U.S. Constitution provides that the "President … of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for … high Crimes and Misdemeanors," but fails to define what those terms mean. U.S. Const. art. II § 4. The Johnson impeachment proceedings, in the minds of many observers, have come to stand for the proposition that before an offense may be deemed an impeachable offense it must not only constitute a crime but the crime itself must be of a serious or grave nature. However, this precedent only advanced the discussion so far, as it failed to determine how serious or grave the criminal activity must be for it to be considered an impeachable offense, a question that recurred throughout the impeachment proceedings against william jefferson clinton, who was acquitted by the Senate on charges that he committed the crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice to conceal his relationship with former White-House intern Monica Lewinsky.

further readings

Castel, Albert. 1979. The Presidency of Andrew Johnson. Lawrence, Kans.: Regents Press of Kansas.

Field, P. F. 2000. "The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson." Choice Magazine (December 1).

Foner, Eric, and Olivia Mahoney. 1995. America's Reconstruction: People and Politics after the Civil War. New York: Harper Perennial.

Horowitz, Robert F. 1979. The Great Impeacher: A Political Biography of James M. Ashley. New York: Brooklyn College Press.

Jones, James S. 1901. Life of Andrew Johnson, Seventeenth President of the United States. Greeneville, Tenn.: East Tennessee.

Lomask, Milton. 1960. Andrew Johnson: President on Trial. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Cudahy.

Rehnquist, William H. 1992. Grand Inquests: The Historic Impeachments of Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson. New York: Morrow.

Simpson, Brooks D. 1987. Advice after Appomattox: Letters to Andrew Johnson, 1865–1866. Edited by Leroy P. Graf and John Muldowney. Knoxville, Tenn.: Univ. of Tennessee Press.

Stalcup, Brenda, ed. 1995. Reconstruction: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: Greenhaven Press.

cross-references

Assassination; Civil Rights Acts; Ex Post Facto Laws; Lincoln, Abraham; Stanton, Edwin McMasters; Tenure of Office Act; Veto.

Andrew Johnson 1808–75, 17th President of the United States (1865–69), b. Raleigh, N.C.

Early Life

His father died when Johnson was 3, and at 14 he was apprenticed to a tailor. In 1826 the family moved to E Tennessee, and Andrew soon had his own tailor shop at Greeneville. A man of no formal schooling but of great perseverance and strength of character, he was greatly aided by his wife, Eliza McCardle, whom he married in 1827; she taught him to write and improved his reading and spelling. He prospered at his trade, and the tailor shop became the favored meeting place of other artisans, laborers, and small farmers interested in discussing public affairs. The best debater in the community, Johnson became the leader of his group in opposition to the slaveholding aristocracy.

Political Career

From 1830 onward Johnson was almost continuously in public office, being alderman (1828–30) and mayor (1830–33) of Greeneville, state representative (1835–37, 1839–41), state senator (1841–43), Congressman (1843–53), governor of Tennessee (1853–57), and U.S. Senator (1857–62). As U.S. Representative and Senator, Johnson was principally interested in securing legislation to make land in the West available to homesteaders. He voted with other Southern legislators on questions concerning slavery, but after Tennessee seceded (June 8, 1861), he remained in the Senate, the only Southerner there. He vigorously supported Abraham Lincoln's administration, and in Mar., 1862, the President appointed him military governor of Tennessee with the rank of brigadier general of volunteers. His ability in filling this difficult position and the fact that he was a Southerner and a war Democrat made him an ideal choice as running mate to Lincoln on the successful Union ticket in 1864.

Presidency

On Apr. 15, 1865, following Lincoln's assassination, Johnson took the oath of office as President. His Reconstruction program (and he insisted that Reconstruction was an executive, not a legislative, function) was based on the theory that the Southern states had never been out of the Union. He therefore restored civil government in the ex-Confederate states as soon as it was feasible. Because he was not prepared to grant equal civil rights to blacks and because he did not press for the wholesale disqualification for office of Confederate leaders, he was roundly denounced by the radical Republicans who, led by Thaddeus Stevens , set out to undo Johnson's work on the convening of the 39th Congress in Dec., 1865.

In Apr., 1866, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act over Johnson's veto, and his political power began to decline sharply. The remainder of his administration saw one humiliation after another. His "swing around the circle" in the congressional elections of 1866 was unsuccessful. Baited by mobs organized by the radicals and slandered by the press, he struck out at his enemies in such harsh terms that he did his own cause much harm. On Mar. 2, 1867, the radicals passed over his veto the First Reconstruction Act and the Tenure of Office Act .

When Johnson insisted upon his intention to force out of office his Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton , whom he rightly suspected of conspiring with the congressional leaders, the radical Republicans sought to remove the President. Their first attempt failed (Dec., 1867), but on Feb. 24, 1868, the House passed a resolution of impeachment against him even before it adopted (Mar. 2–3) 11 articles detailing the reasons for it. Most important of the charges, which were purely political, was that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act in the Stanton affair. On Mar. 5 the Senate, with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding, was organized as a court to hear the charges. The President himself did not appear. In spite of the terrific pressure brought to bear on several Senators, the court narrowly failed to convict; the vote, on the 11th article (May 16) and on the second and third articles (May 26), was 35 to 19, one short of the constitutional two thirds required for removal.

Although the problems of Reconstruction dominated Johnson's administration, there were important achievements in foreign relations, notably the purchase (1867) of Alaska, negotiated by Secretary of State William H. Seward . Johnson's name figured in the balloting at the Democratic convention of 1868, but he did not actively seek the nomination. In 1875, on his third attempt to resume public office, he was returned to the Senate from Tennessee, but died a few months after taking his seat.

Bibliography

See L. P. Graf and R. W. Haskins, ed., The Papers of Andrew Johnson (16 vol., 1967–2000); biographies by R. W. Winston (1928, repr. 1969) and H. L. Trefousse (1997); D. M. Dewitt, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1903, repr. 1967); H. K. Beale, The Critical Year (1930, new introd. 1958); M. Lomask, Andrew Johnson: President on Trial (1960, repr. 1973); E. L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (1960) and Andrew Johnson, A Profile (1969, repr. 1972); M. L. Benedict, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1973); H. L. Trefousse, Impeachment of a President (1975, repr. 1999); A. Castel, The Presidency of Andrew Johnson (1979).

Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson (1808-1875), seventeenth president of the United States, was the only president ever to be impeached.

Andrew Johnson was born on Dec. 29, 1808, in Raleigh, N.C. After serving an apprenticeship with a tailor, he moved to Greeneville, Tenn., where he opened a tailor shop in 1826. Johnson laboriously taught himself to read and write with the help of Eliza McCardle, whom he married in 1827. His business prospered, and Johnson entered the rough-and-tumble world of politics, becoming a formidable stump speaker.

A Jacksonian Democrat, Johnson moved up through local elective offices to U.S. senator in 1857. In the Senate he crusaded for a homestead law and was bitter when the South blocked its passage. Yet he supported Jefferson Davis's demand for a congressional guarantee of slave property in the territories and in 1860 backed the proslavery presidential candidate.

When the Southern states began seceding, however, Johnson was the only senator from the Confederate states to remain in Congress. In 1862 President Abraham Lincoln appointed him military governor of partly reconquered Tennessee with instructions to begin restoring the state to the Union. Johnson did a good job under trying circumstances. Converted by the Civil War to an antislavery position, he set in motion the machinery for a constitutional convention that abolished slavery in Tennessee (January 1865).

Accident President

In 1864 the Republicans, hoping to attract support from Unionist Democrats, nominated Johnson for vice president. When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, heavy responsibilities fell upon Johnson. The new president indicated that he would impose severe punishment on "traitors," but his actual policy during 1865 was surprisingly lenient. He extended amnesty to all but the most prominent and wealthy Confederates and provided for the election (by white voters only) of delegates to the conventions to draw up new Southern state constitutions. Subsequently, Johnson granted thousands of pardons to Southerners exempted from the general amnesty.

Under their new constitutions the Southern states elected several prominent Confederates to high office. Some of the states passed "black codes" restricting the rights of freed slaves to a level little better than slavery. Republicans in Congress grew alarmed and feared that the South would regain by Johnson's leniency much of what it had lost in war; they sought a settlement that would provide Federal protection for freedmen and restrict the power of former Confederates. Congress passed a civil rights bill and a Freedmen's Bureau bill in 1866, but Johnson vetoed both. Congress sent the 14th Amendment to the states for ratification, but Johnson influenced Southern states to reject it.

Impeachment Proceedings

Johnson's belief that "the people" supported his policies should have been shaken by the 1866 congressional elections, which gave the Republicans an overwhelming mandate. Nevertheless, he continued to force Congress to pass every Reconstruction measure over his veto. He tried to weaken enforcement of Reconstruction laws by appointing conservative commanders for some Southern military districts.

An exasperated and vengeful House of Representatives finally impeached Johnson on Feb. 25, 1868. The ostensible grounds were technical transgressions; in reality he was impeached for resisting Congress's will on vital national issues. At Johnson's trial before the Senate, his lawyers proved that he had committed no constitutional crimes or misdemeanors; the verdict for conviction fell one vote short of the necessary two-thirds majority. Johnson served out his term as a powerless president.

Six years later, in 1875, Johnson was elected to the U.S. Senate by Tennessee. However, he suffered a paralytic attack and died on July 31.

Further Reading

Pro-Johnson biographies include Robert W. Winston, Andrew Johnson (1928); Lloyd Paul Stryker, Andrew Johnson (1929); George F. Milton, The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals (1930); and Howard K. Beale, The Critical Year: A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (1930). Recent scholarship is critical of Johnson; see Eric L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (1960); LaWanda Cox and John H. Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865-66 (1963); and William R. Brock, An American Crisis: Congress and Reconstruction, 1865-1867 (1963). A collection of essays that attempts balanced appraisal is Eric L. McKitrick, ed., Andrew Johnson: A Profile (1969). □

Johnson, Andrew (1808–1875), seventeenth president of the United States.Born in extreme poverty in Raleigh, North Carolina, Johnson in 1826 moved to Greenville Tennessee, where he operated a tailor shop. Lacking formal education, he was taught to read and write by his wife, Eliza McCardle, whom he married in 1827, when she was sixteen. Johnson held a series of public offices, culminating in his election as governor in 1853 and U.S. senator in 1857. Throughout his career he stressed his plebian origins and claimed a special identification with ordinary people. Although he vigorously defended the South and slavery in Congress, he supported the Union in 1861 and was the only southern senator to refuse to resign when his state seceded. After Union troops occupied central Tennessee in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln named Johnson military governor. In 1864, he was elected Lincoln's vice president on the National Union (Republican) party ticket.

Becoming president on 15 April 1865, following Lincoln's assassination, Johnson announced a program for reconstructing the postwar South. He built upon Lincoln's wartime policy of appointing provisional governors in the seceding states, offering amnesty to Confederates who professed future loyalty to the Union, and requiring constitutional conventions to reinstitute southern state governments. Johnson's plan required the new state governments to renounce slavery and secession, but by limiting the vote to adult white men, he assured the dominance of lawmakers unsympathetic to the rights of the freepeople. The reestablished governments passed legislation that denied black southerners' political rights and circumscribed their civil rights by enacting “black codes” to replace the prewar slave codes.

The Republican‐dominated Congress refused to recognize the southern state governments restored under Johnson's authority and in June 1866 responded to their racially discriminatory legislation by proposing the Fourteenth Amendment, which defined citizenship and guaranteed fundamental rights and equal protection to all. When all the Johnson‐created governments but that of Tennessee rejected this amendment, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867 and supplementary legislation. These laws placed the recalcitrant states under military rule until they established new governments recognizing equal civil and political rights for all adult men regardless of race.

Supported by the Democratic party and a few renegade Republicans, Johnson bitterly assailed Congress' civil‐rights and Reconstruction legislation, denying the constitutionality of these measures and using his influence and authority as president to obstruct their enforcement. His course threatened a dangerous confrontation over whether to count southern votes in the 1868 election. An initial House of Representatives effort to impeach Johnson, motivated in part by a desire to forestall the potential crisis, failed in December 1867. However, a second attempt succeeded in February 1868 after Johnson removed Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (1814–1869) in apparent violation of the 1867 Tenure of Office Act, which permitted removal of government officials only upon Senate confirmation of their successors.

The impeachment trial before the Senate revealed significant weaknesses in the House's case. Despite the overwhelming Republican majority in the Senate, the House managers of the impeachment narrowly failed in two key Senate votes (16 and 28 May 1868) to secure the two‐thirds majority needed to convict. However, Johnson stopped obstructing the congressional Reconstruction program and served out the balance of his term without incident.

Despite opposition from former secessionists, in March 1875 a coalition of Tennessee Republicans and dissident Democrats again elected Johnson to the U.S. Senate, where he served until his death that July.
See also Confederate States of America; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Federal Government, Legislative Branch: House of Representatives; Federal Government, Legislative Branch: Senate.

Bibliography

Michael Les Benedict , The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, 1973.
Hans L. Trefousse , Andrew Johnson: A Biography, 1989.

Michael Les Benedict

Johnson, Andrew (1808–1875), vice president, seventeenth president of the United States.As a Tennessee congressman in 1843–53 and senator in 1857–62, Johnson provided mixed signals on military issues. In 1850, he remarked that he might like to have one of his sons in the navy, and he worked to get Tennessee boys into West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy. Yet Johnson was at heart a small government Democrat, with special concerns about money and class privilege. Thus in a speech on appropriations in August 1852 he derided the “imbecile” congressional sons who got preference; proposed to close both academies; attacked the wasteful War and Navy Department bureaucracies; and called the army and navy expensive and oppressive in the European style.

Johnson was a strong nationalist, who favored expansion and strongly supported the administration during the Mexican War, even though he and PresidentJames K. Polk openly despised each other. During the secession crisis, Johnson remained firmly loyal to the Union. Abraham Lincoln, needing a strong‐willed figure to begin Reconstruction in Tennessee, appointed Johnson military governor in 1862. This was an anomalous position in American law, and one that the fortunes of war and necessities of politics made frustrating. Johnson's relations with Union generals were often strained.

Upon Lincoln's death (1865), Johnson succeeded to the assassination presidency. In implementing Reconstruction policy the army played a central role in the institutional struggle between Congress and the president in 1866–67. Johnson's efforts to bring Ulysses S. Grant into his political circle led to a public breach with the popular general. Johnson did have friendly relations with William Tecumseh Sherman, who nonetheless refused a political role. Impeachment proceedings in 1868 were on an asserted violation of the Tenure of Office Act, arising out of the removal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton—a step Johnson justified both on his general executive authority under the Constitution and his specific function as commander in chief.
[See also Civil War: Postwar Impact; Commander in Chief, President as; Expansionism.]

Bibliography

James E. Sefton , Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power, 1980.
Hans L. Trefousse , Andrew Johnson: A Biography, 1989.

James E. Sefton

Johnson, Andrew (1808–75) 17th president of the United States (1865–69) and the first president to be impeached, born in Raleigh, North Carolina. He later settled in Tennessee, where he twice served in the state house (elected 1835, 1839) and later in the senate (1841), establishing a reputation as a Jacksonian Democrat with a firm commitment to fiscal economy. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives for ten years (first elected 1843) and was twice elected governor of Tennessee (1853, 1855) before being sent to the U.S. Senate in 1857. Johnson was a firm defender of slavery who nonetheless opposed secession and remained loyal to the Union, making him a traitor in the South and a hero in the North. Although he came to recognize the need for, and consequently support, emancipation, he never abandoned his racist prejudices. Johnson, a so-called war Democrat, was nominated for vice president on the Union ticket in 1864, sworn in in March 1865, and inaugurated as president six weeks later, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. His Reconstruction policies for dealing with the South after the war allowed for a resurgence of conservative power there, bringing him into conflict with the Republicans in Congress. Eventually the split became so great that Congress was able to override all his vetoes of more stringent Reconstruction legislation. His dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton led to his impeachment by the House, on the grounds that he had violated the tenure of office act, as well as other tenuous charges (1868). The Senate failed to convict him, by one vote. During the remainder of his term in office, he had little power. The most significant achievement of his tenure was the purchase of Alaska (1867). After leaving office, Johnson returned to Tennessee, eventually again winning election to the Senate (1875) after two unsuccessful attempts.

Johnson was the only member of the U.S. Senate from a seceding state who remained loyal to the Union.

Johnson, Andrew (1808–75) US politician; 17th President of the USA (1865–69). As the only southern senator to support the Union in the AMERICAN CIVIL WAR he was appointed military governor of Tennessee. Having been elected as Vice-President to Abraham LINCOLN in 1864, he became President as a result of Lincoln's assassination in April 1865. His reconstruction policy, which failed to protect the interests of former slaves in the ex-Confederate states, brought him into bitter conflict with the Republican majority in Congress: his vetoes of several reconstruction measures were overridden by two-thirds majorities in Congress. His dismissal of his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton (in defiance of a Tenure of Office Act) led to his impeachment (a US legal procedure for removing officers of state before their term of office expires), and Johnson only survived by a single vote in the Senate (1868). He returned to the Senate in 1875 but died soon after.

Johnson, Andrew (1808–75) Seventeenth US president (1865–69), vice president (1864–65). Jonhson was a Democrat governor (1853–57) and senator (1857–62) for Tennessee. He was the only Southerner to remain in the Senate after the outbreak of civil war. Johnson was elected with the incumbent Republican president Abraham Lincoln on a National Union ticket, and became president when Lincoln was assassinated. His policy of Reconstruction saw the restoration of civil government to the South. His opposition to civil-rights for blacks, conciliation of Confederate leaders, and attempt to remove Edwin M. Stanton led to his impeachment for ‘crimes and misdemeanours’. He was acquitted by one vote.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents