Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson Click to enlarge

• Born: 29 December 1808
• Birthplace: Raleigh, North Carolina
• Died: 31 July 1875
• Best Known As: President of the United States, 1865-1869

The 17th president of the United States, Andrew Johnson was a poor tailor in Tennessee before he entered politics. A fast learner with a flair for oratory, he worked his way up to the U.S. Senate. In the Civil War he was the only Southern Democrat to support Abraham Lincoln, and was chosen for the vice-presidency in 1864. When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, Johnson became President, but clashed with Radical Republicans, who held a majority in congress. They passed the Tenure of Office Act in 1867, restricting presidential powers, and when Johnson defied them, he was impeached in 1868. A few months later the Senate acquitted him by one vote. He was succeeded in office by Ulysses S. Grant.

In 1875, former President Johnson was elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee.

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

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.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

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).

(click to enlarge)
Andrew Johnson. (credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born Dec. 29, 1808, Raleigh, N.C., U.S. — died July 31, 1875, near Carter Station, Tenn.) 17th president of the U.S. (1865 – 69). Born in poverty, he never attended school, and he taught himself to read and write. After a short apprenticeship as a tailor, he moved with his family to Greeneville, Tenn., where he opened his own tailor shop. Before he was 21 he organized a workingman's party. Elected to the state legislature (1835 – 43), he became a spokesman for small farmers. He then served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1843 – 53) and as governor of Tennessee (1853 – 57). Elected to the U.S. Senate (1857 – 62), he opposed antislavery agitation, but, in 1860, after the election of Pres. Abraham Lincoln, he vehemently rejected Southern secession, a position he maintained even after Tennessee seceded in 1861. During the American Civil War he was the only Southern senator who refused to join the Confederacy. In 1862 he was appointed military governor of Tennessee, then under Union control. In 1864 he was selected to run for vice president with President Lincoln; he assumed the presidency after Lincoln's assassination. During Reconstruction he favoured a moderate policy of readmitting former Confederate states to the Union with few provisions for reform or civil rights for freedmen. In 1867, Johnson's vetoes of legislation to establish a Freedmen's Bureau and other civil rights measures angered moderate as well as Radical Republicans; in response, they united to pass the Tenure of Office Act (1867), which forbade the president from removing civil officers without senatorial consent. In 1868, in defiance of the act, Johnson dismissed secretary of war Edwin M. Stanton, an ally of the Radicals. The House then voted to impeach the president — the first such occurrence in U.S. history. In the subsequent Senate trial, the charges proved weak, and the necessary two-thirds vote needed for conviction failed by one vote. Johnson remained in office until 1869, but he had lost the ability to lead. He returned to Tennessee, where he won reelection to the Senate shortly before he died.

For more information on Andrew Johnson, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: Dec. 29, 1808, Raleigh, N.C.
• Political party: Democrat; elected Vice President as Unionist
• Education: no formal education
• Military service: military governor of Tennessee, 1862–64
• Previous government service: alderman, Greeneville, Tenn., 1829–30; mayor of Greeneville, 1831–35; Tennessee State Constitutional Convention, 1834; Tennessee House of Representatives, 1835–37, 1839–41; Tennessee Senate, 1841–43; U.S. House of Representatives, 1843–53; governor of Tennessee, 1853–57; U.S. Senate, 1857–62; Vice President, 1865
• Succeeded to Presidency, 1865; served, 1865–69
• Subsequent government service: U.S. Senate, 1875
• Died: July 31, 1875, Carter Station, Tenn.

Andrew Johnson was a Southern Democrat elected on the Unionist ticket with President Abraham Lincoln in 1864. His Southern sympathies and conciliatory Reconstruction policies caused him to flout the Reconstruction Acts passed by Congress, and he became the first and so far the only President to be impeached by the House of Representatives and tried by the Senate. This conflict with Congress weakened the Presidency for the remainder of the century.

Johnson's father was a laborer and his mother a barmaid. His father died when he was three, and his mother barely survived by sewing and taking in laundry. She could not afford to send him to school, and Johnson became a tailor's apprentice at 14. He and his brother opened their own tailor shop in Carthage, North Carolina; then, at 18, he opened his own shop in Greeneville, Tennessee. He married the next year and his wife, Eliza, taught him how to read, write, and count. He learned how to speak in public by participating in a debating society at a nearby college.

Johnson became active in local politics, identifying with poor whites and denouncing the rich planters and financiers. As governor of Tennessee, he supported free public education. He also supported slavery (and actually owned several slaves himself) and attacked abolitionists. But he broke with his party while he was in the Senate to support homesteading on Western lands (providing 160 acres for each settler who worked the land for five years), eventually getting the Homestead Act passed by Congress in 1862.

Johnson ran for the Democratic nomination for President in 1860, but was never in real contention. He supported Democrat John C. Breckinridge over Lincoln in the election.

When the Civil War came, Johnson denounced the secessionists, and by June 1861 he was the only Southern senator to remain in his seat and refuse to join the Confederacy. He sponsored a resolution in the Senate declaring that the aim of the war was reunion and not the emancipation of slaves.

President Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of Tennessee in 1862, and he managed to end rebellion in the state by 1864. Johnson was an obvious choice for the Vice Presidential nomination, running as a Democrat with the Republican Lincoln on a coalition Unionist ticket. Only 42 days into his second term Lincoln was shot, and Johnson succeeded to the Presidency on April 15, 1865.

Johnson began his Presidency by issuing a proclamation of amnesty on May 29, 1865, to all citizens in the states that had seceded except for certain civil and military officers and citizens with property worth more than $20,000; he appointed provisional civil governors in the Southern states; he reestablished state governments on lenient terms (requiring merely that they ratify the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and absolved the U.S. government from paying Confederate debts); and he issued pardons to 14,000 Southern officers who applied, including General Robert E. Lee. Johnson refused to confiscate the property of former rebels. He left questions of voting rights to the states and did nothing when the new state governments instituted “black codes” that deprived former slaves of the right to vote, serve on juries, testify in lawsuits, or possess firearms (and in many states banned them from occupations other than farming). In 1866 he vetoed a civil rights bill that would have extended citizenship and legal protection to the former slaves and denounced the proposed 14th Amendment, which would have accomplished the same thing. On August 20, 1866, Johnson announced that the “insurrection” was over and that “peace, order, tranquility and civil authority now exist in and throughout the whole of the United States.”

Radical Republicans in Congress fought Johnson and pushed stiffer Reconstruction measures on the South. When Congress reconvened in December 1865, it refused to seat Southern congressional delegations, thus preventing the South from obtaining a majority in Congress. In April 1866 Congress developed its own plans for Reconstruction, which would guarantee blacks the right to vote but take it away from former Confederate soldiers. In June Congress passed the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing black voting rights and due process of law. All the Southern states except Tennessee refused to ratify it, and Congress refused to lift its ban on their representation in the national legislature. In July Congress extended the life of the Freedmen's Bureau, the agency to protect freed slaves, over Johnson's veto.

To defeat the radical Republicans, Johnson organized a National Union Movement of Democrats and conservative Republicans to try to elect supporters of his Reconstruction policies in the 1866 elections. He campaigned across the Midwest for his candidates and policies. The result was that voters chose radical Republicans over the Democrats favored by Johnson, and the new Congress had a veto-proof Republican majority determined to bend the President to its will.

On March 2, 1867, Congress passed the first Reconstruction act: it divided the South into five military districts, with Freedmen's Bureau officials and military tribunals protecting the rights of blacks. The military would create a new list of voters in each state, who would, in turn, organize state constitutional conventions. The military governors could purge civil officials and state legislators whom they viewed as “disloyal.” An army of occupation, 20,000 strong, enforced military rule. Johnson vetoed this Reconstruction law, which was then passed over his veto, and thereafter did as little as possible to enforce it. He began removing Republican office holders from the executive branch and replacing them with Democrats, and he encouraged Southern states to vote against ratification of the 14th Amendment.

To prevent Johnson from interfering with congressional policies, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act on March 2, 1867. Johnson vetoed this law, but Congress passed it over his veto. It prevented Johnson from dismissing cabinet secretaries or other high-level officials until the Senate had consented to their successors, thus giving the final word on dismissals to the Senate. It also passed a law preventing Johnson from dismissing the commander of the army without Senate consent and requiring the President to issue his military orders through the general of the army, Ulysses S. Grant.

To test the law, Johnson asked for the resignation of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and then suspended him when he refused to resign. On January 13, 1868, the Senate refused to concur in Stanton's suspension. Disregarding the Tenure of Office Act, Johnson fired Stanton on February 21. Three days later the House of Representatives impeached Johnson for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The articles of impeachment concentrated on this violation of the law but added that Johnson's conduct toward Congress had involved “disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and reproach.” It did not include the charge by one member, George S. Boutwell, that Johnson himself was part of the plot to murder Lincoln. The Senate acquitted Johnson on May 16, 1868. The vote was 35 for conviction and 19 for acquittal, one vote short of the two-thirds majority necessary for conviction. Seven Republicans voted to dismiss the charges. The acquittal was unpopular, and all five of these senators who sought reelection were defeated.

Why did the Senate acquit Johnson? A few Republicans who favored the nomination of Ulysses S. Grant in 1868 voted to acquit because if Johnson had been removed, the president pro tempore of the Senate, Benjamin Wade, would have become President. That would have made it likely that Wade would have secured the Republican party's next Presidential nomination over Grant. Johnson agreed, even before the vote, to end his defiance of the Senate and nominate General John M. Schofield—a military man who would follow the Reconstruction policy of the Congress—to become the new secretary of war. In effect, Johnson gave up the powers and influence of his office as the price of maintaining his place in office.

In spite of the domestic turmoil and impeachment crisis, in foreign affairs the Johnson administration was quite successful. Most of the credit rests with Secretary of State William Seward, who had a free hand to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, warning European powers not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere. In 1863 the French emperor Napoleon III had put Maximilian on the throne as emperor of Mexico. At the end of the Civil War, U.S. pressure forced the French to pull their troops out of Mexico and abandon Maximilian, who soon fell victim to a Mexican firing squad. The Johnson administration tamped down a crisis with Great Britain by enforcing neutrality laws, which prohibited U.S. citizens from using military force against other nations, against the Irish-American Fenians who made several armed forays into Canada in an attempt to annex Canadian territory. Civil War claims against Great Britain for building Confederate naval vessels that sank Union ships were sent to arbitration. In another foreign policy triumph, Secretary Seward negotiated a treaty to purchase Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. Though at the time it was ridiculed as “Johnson's Polar Bear Garden” and “Seward's Folly,” the purchase of Alaska turned out to be a great bargain. But Seward was unable to get Senate consent to acquire the Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Greenland, or Iceland.

Andrew Johnson left office embittered, riding out of the capital without even speaking to his successor on Inauguration Day. He was defeated in a House election in 1872. When he returned to the Senate in 1875, only 13 of the 35 senators who had voted for his impeachment remained. One of them, Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, shook his hand in a gesture of reconciliation. Three months later, on vacation at his daughter's home in Tennessee, Johnson collapsed from a stroke. He requested that he be buried with a copy of the Constitution as a pillow and the Stars and Stripes for his shroud.

See also Grant, Ulysses S.; Impeachment; Lincoln, Abraham; Removal power

Sources

• Michael Les Benedict, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (New York: Norton, 1973).
• Eric L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
• James Sefton, Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980)

(1808-1875), seventeenth president of the United States. Johnson, the only president ever to be impeached, was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, into very moderate circumstances. Apprenticed to a tailor as a youth, he ran away from his employer and settled in Greeneville, Tennessee, where he established himself as a tailor.

Johnson soon turned to politics, rising to governor and U.S. senator. He became a spokesman for the Jacksonian Democrats of his state, favoring populist measures, particularly a homestead bill. In 1860-1861, he remained loyal to the Union, the only senator from a seceding state to do so, and in 1862, Abraham Lincoln appointed him military governor of Tennessee.

In 1864 Johnson was elected vice president. Inaugurated as president after Lincoln's assassination, he announced his hatred for "traitors," but in reality embraced a lenient Reconstruction policy. A firm believer in states' rights, he held that blacks were innately inferior. Consequently, he asserted that the southern states had never left the Union and ought to be restored quickly, without regard to the safety of the freedmen. This was the rationale for his granting amnesty to all but a few ex-Confederates and appointing provisional governors charged with calling on white voters to reestablish loyal governments. The resulting administrations enacted Black Codes that virtually remanded the freedmen to slavery.

Congress, however, refused to seat the newly elected southern members and broke with the president when he vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau and civil rights bills and opposed the Fourteenth Amendment. His attempt to create a new conservative party and his "swing around the circle," a national tour during which he delivered unbecoming harangues, contributed to the defeat of his supporters in the 1866 midterm elections. Congress then curtailed his powers by passing the Tenure of Office Act to protect radical appointees and a measure to restrict his authority as commander in chief of the army. His objections proved unavailing, as was his bitter opposition to the Reconstruction Acts.

Because Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton opposed his policies, Johnson sought to replace him with Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Not only did the House attempt to impeach the president, but the Senate refused to concur in the secretary's suspension and ordered his reinstatement. After Grant refused to cooperate with Johnson, the president decided to rid himself of Stanton once and for all, this time in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act. In February 1868 he announced the appointment of Lorenzo Thomas as secretary ad interim, whereupon the House passed a resolution of impeachment. In the trial that followed, Johnson's opponents failed to obtain the necessary two-thirds for conviction, and the Senate acquitted him by one vote. After his retirement, Johnson was reelected to the Senate in 1875. He served only briefly, for he died soon thereafter.

Although not successful as president, Johnson was a shrewd politician who repeatedly defeated both Whigs and Democrats in his home state. But by failing to take advantage of the opportunity of remaking the South in the months after Appomattox and by undermining Congressional Reconstruction, he contributed materially to its failure and kept the South a "white man's country."

Bibliography:

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

Author:

Hans L. Trefousse

See also Elections: 1864. For events during Johnson's administration, see Alaska Purchase; Black Codes; Freedmen's Bureau; Granger Movement; Impeachment; Reconstruction; Tenure of Office Act.

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

Publication of Johnson's papers, ed. by L. P. Graf and R. W. Haskins, was begun in 1967. See biography by R. W. Winston (1928, repr. 1969); 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); A. Castel, The Presidency of Andrew Johnson (1979).

A political leader of the nineteenth century. Johnson was elected vice president in 1864 and became president when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. Johnson is one of two presidents to have been impeached (see impeachment); the House of Representatives charged him with illegally dismissing a government official. The Senate tried him, and Johnson was acquitted by only one vote.

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 seventeen, 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 nineteen, 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 Union 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 back 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 twelve 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 thirty-six senators would have to vote for impeachment. The defense knew that vote would have to come from the Senate's forty-two Republican members—the Senate's ten Democrats and two 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. He died soon after the election, on July 31, 1875, near Carter Station, Tennessee.

Ultimately, the consensus of scholars, historians, and even the Supreme Court was that removing Johnson on the specified charges would have set a dangerous precedent. In 1887 the Tenure of Office Act was repealed. In 1926 the Supreme Court rendered an ex post facto (retroactive) judgment declaring it unconstitutional (272 U.S. 52, 47 S. Ct. 21).