Andrew Johnson

The American Presidents #17

by Annette Gordon-Reed, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (Editor), Sean Wilentz (Editor)

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian recounts the tale of the unwanted president who ran afoul of Congress over Reconstruction and was nearly removed from office

Andrew Johnson never expected to be president. But just six weeks after becoming Abraham Lincoln's vice president, the events at Ford's Theatre thrust him into the nation's highest office.

Johnson faced a nearly impossible task—to succeed America's greatest chief executive, to bind the nation's wounds after the Civil War, and to work with a Congress controlled by the so-called Radical Republicans. Annette Gordon-Reed, one of America's leading historians of slavery, shows how ill-suited Johnson was for this daunting task. His vision of reconciliation abandoned the millions of former slaves (for whom he felt undisguised contempt) and antagonized congressional leaders, who tried to limit his powers and eventually impeached him.

The climax of Johnson's presidency was his trial in the Senate and his acquittal by a single vote, which Gordon-Reed recounts with drama and palpable tension. Despite his victory, Johnson's term in office was a crucial missed opportunity; he failed the country at a pivotal moment, leaving America with problems that we are still trying to solve.

Genres: Biography, Presidents, History, Nonfiction, American History, Us Presidents, Politics

192 pages, Hardcover

First published December 30, 2008

About the author

Annette Gordon-Reed is a professor of law at New York Law School and a professor of history at Rutgers University. She is the author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Andrew Johnson, a mediocre man who became president through a lamentable series of accidents, presided over our nation at a time when we required a leader of vision and political skill. The story of this mediocre man is worth telling, but unfortunately the book by Annette Gordon-Reed that tells it is mediocre too.

First, the mediocre man. Like Lincoln, Johnson, born in poverty, advanced through force of character, but, unlike the Great Emancipator, he possessed few good qualities in addition to his extraordinary will. A tailor by trade, he taught himself to read and write (with much assistance from his wife Eliza) but never became a scholar or an accomplished writer. He was, however a fine public speaker, with a booming voice, a love for oratory, and a talent for public disputation. Debate—along with fist fights and knife fights—was a popular form of village entertainment in the 1820’s, and often led to a political career. So it was with Tennessee Johnson, who, becoming a Greeneville alderman at the age twenty-one, advanced from office to office unto he reached the position of United States Senator at the age of forty-nine.

When the Civil War broke out, Senator Johnson, a fierce defender of the Union, remained in Washington even after Tennessee—the last state to do so—seceded.. In March of 1862, when the Union had recovered much of his state’s territory, Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of Tennessee. The following year, when Lincoln ran for re-election, he was already looking forward to Reconstruction, and thought it would be advisable to add a Southern Unionist to his presidential ticket. Andrew Johnson—senator, anti-slavery, pro-union, successful military governor—was an obvious choice. Johnson was elected vice-president in 1864, and five months later, an assassin’s bullet elevated him to the position of President of the United States.

Johnson clearly lacked Lincoln’s extraordinary gifts, but the situation was worse than it appeared. For Johnson, although opposed to slavery, was a confirmed racist: he believed that the black slave, in league with the planter class (!?), conspired to deprive the poor white man of his legitimate employment. Once the institution of slavery was abolished, Johnson believed, the white man should be allowed to govern his state in any manner he pleased. Matters such as education and the political franchise were best left up to the individual states. The Radical Republicans in congress were outraged, Johnson stubbornly stood by his beliefs, and thus became to first United States president to be impeached.

Now to the mediocre book. It is not a bad book, really. Annette Gordon-Reed’s prose is lucid, and she writes with a clear, breezy style. It is just that her book suffers from occasional lapses in word choice and poor planning. Her diction is sometimes eccentric (the word “grandee” used--more than twice--to describe influential men) and sometimes just wrong (“astral” used as a superlative, in place of “stellar”), but the outstanding fault is the organization of her chapter “The Tailor’s Apprentice.” Gordon-Reed clearly planned to write an entire chapter about Johnson's early years, but, not finding enough facts to fill out the pages, she indulges in redundant speculation to the point of obvious padding.

Still, Andrew Johnson, whatever its faults, gives us a vivid and fair account of a not terribly sympathetic man, a white man from humble beginnings who, hampered by racist views and an inflexible temperament, endeavored to do his best by the country, and failed.

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Johnson In The American Presidents Series

On April 15, 1865, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson (1808 -- 1875) became the 17th president and assumed the unenviable task of presiding over the Reconstruction that followed the Civil War. Annette Gordon-Reed offers a highly critical overview of Johnson and his presidency in her brief biography, "Andrew Johnson" prepared as part of the American Presidents series. Edited by Arthur Schesinger Jr. and Sean Willenz, this series offers the opportunity to get to know each of the American presidents and their times and to think about the nature of leadership. Each book is written by an author who can bring his or her perspective to the subject. Annette Gordon-Reed is a Professor at Harvard, Harvard Law School, and Radcliffe. She has written extensively about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, among other subjects in American history.

Much of this short 150-page book is devoted to Johnson's early life; the book does not reach Johnson's vice-presidency until past the half-way mark. Gordon-Reed discusses Johnson's unlikely rise to prominence, drawing effective comparisons and contrasts with Lincoln. Born to poor parents in Virginia, Johnson's father died at an early age and the young boy was apprenticed to become a tailor. Desiring to learn, ambitious, and stubborn, Johnson learned to read and write and became active in public life. He served in the Tennessee legislature, and in the United States Congress and Senate. He was the sole southern Senator to remain loyal to the Union. In 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson the military governor of Tennessee. Then, in 1864, in an action that almost certainly was Lincoln's, Johnson became Lincoln's vice-presidential candidate replacing Hannibal Hamlin of Maine. The goal was to offer a balanced, moderate ticket in the wake of the soon to be over Civil War.

Gordon-Reed praises Johnson for his ability to rise from poverty and to better himself. She also commends Johnson for the manner in which he held the country together in the precarious days following Lincoln's assassination. But the overwhelming tone of the book is negative, probably more so than in any other book in the American Presidents series. With ample justification, Gordon-Reed concludes that Johnson was a racist whose goal as president was to keep African Americans in a deeply subservient position. Although Johnson also disliked the planter class in the South, he acted to restore them to power when he became president. Johnson also properly faults Johnson for his stubbornness and inability to work with others. During Johnson's tenure, there were many moderate Republicans with whom he could have forged a political alliance. Johnson rejected this course and had a confrontational, tortured relationship with Congress. An underlying issue was the respective roles of the president and Congress in the Reconstruction. Johnson tried to act on his own. When Congress disagreed with his course and enacted legislation, Johnson vetoed it, and Congress overrode the vetoes. Johnson refused to enforce the laws. Ultimately Johnson was impeached, but the Senate acquitted him by one vote. The impeachment was based upon Johnson's violation of the Tenure of Office Act which, as Johnson maintained, was almost surely unconstitutional. Gordon-Reed argues that Johnson deserved to be impeached if not for the violation of the Tenure of Office Act for his failure to enforce the Reconstruction statutes the Congress had enacted over his vetoes. These matters were not included in the indictment of Johnson.

There is a tendency in historical research to judge historical figures by current standards, an approach sometimes called "presentism". Gordon-Reed considers and rejects the charge that her treatment of Johnson suffers from "presentism". I think she is correct in rejecting the charge in this instance, as Johnson's attitudes and actions were widely criticized in his own day for reasons much like those given by Gordon-Reed. I also tend to agree with Gordon-Reed's overall assessment of Johnson's presidency, which is in line with much recent scholarship. I still am uncomfortable with some of the polemics of the book, especially in the opening chapter, which seem to me overheated and excessive. I also think a book of this scope should have taken account of differing perspectives on Johnson over the years, particularly on the question on the relationship between Executive and Congressional power.

The book serves its purpose in introducing the reader to Johnson and to the difficulties of the Reconstruction Era. Interested readers may wish to pursue further the broad, controversial questions surrounding Reconstruction.

Robin Friedman

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of the books in the excellent The American Presidents series edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger,Jr. and Sean Wilentz. I've read many of the books in the series by now and this one is about the 17th president, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee ( 1808-1875). The author is Annette Gordon-Reed and she certainly is in agreement with the consensus of historians that Andy Johnson was one of our worst presidents.
Johnson was the least educated of all the presidents; his wife helped him to learn how to write. But unlike Lincoln who rose to greatness and overcame the handicaps of a disadvantaged childhood, Johnson was scarred by his early experiences and was a deeply insecure person. As Gordon-Reed writes, "....he never got over ... the experience of being looked down upon by his so-called social betters." However, Johnson was an ambitious man who became a great "stump speaker," rising to become a Tennessee state legislator, then US congressman, then the governor of his state, and then US senator. He became a hero of the North as the only Southern senator to support the Union and not leave the Senate when his state seceded. Lincoln appointed him military governor of Tennessee and then, in the election of 1864, Lincoln made Johnson his running mate on the ticket of what was called "the National Union Party." With Lincoln's reelection, Johnson became Vice-President and then, following the assassination of Lincoln, the man from the hills of eastern Tennessee became President of the United States.
He became president at a critical time in American history. With the end of civil war with over 600,000 dead, Johnson faced the daunting task of rebuilding the nation. His vision was to restore the Southern states to the Union as rapidly as possible--including with the enactment by those states of "Black Codes" to keep the newly freed slaves under tight control. Johnson was against safeguarding the civil rights of the ex-slaves for one simple reason--he saw black people as inferior, little better than animals and fit only to serve the white race. Johnson's primitive racism was at the heart of the battle he waged with Congress as the Republican majority passed Reconstruction Acts designed to protect the rights of African-Americans.
In the end, Congress voted to impeach Johnson but the Senate failed to remove him from office by one vote. As the author points out, it was a failed presidency and, more importantly, it was a crucial missed opportunity for the nation as a president had emboldened white supremacists rather than follow Lincoln's vision of "a new birth of freedom." It goes without saying, this country is still struggling with issues concerning race and the legacy of slavery.
I give this book only 3 stars as it is very short and lacks a lot of detail. But the author does make her point and I think she makes it brilliantly.

[Kierstin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review has to be taken in two parts: the first the subject, and the second the author, because each were evidently profoundly affected by the other, which is apparent throughout the book.

Firstly, Andrew Johnson is consistently rated in the worst presidents rakings and knowing that at the start of a biography made me want to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially after reading (and wholeheartedly disliking) the pre-Civil War corps. I mean, how much worse could Johnson be? What I gather is that his "badness" is very much like Buchanan's "badness" - Johnson's faults lie in his Southern sympathies, his overt bias/bigotry against the freedmen (as they were called), and an egocentric obstructionist attitude that caused stalemate and stagnancy to the country’s detriment.

Johnson was born into relative poverty made worse by the early death of his father. Johnson's mother sold him into a tailor's apprenticeship at 10, from which he ran away at 16. He never attended school, but was taught how to read by his wife with whom he eloped when he was 19 and she was 17. He supported his wife and five eventual children by working as a tailor, and through this work became involved in local labor unions and then local and state politics. His early platform, which is a perverse explanation for his radical (as a Southerner) support for the North in the coming Civil War, was fiercely anti-plantation class, which to him represented the subjugation of poor, landless whites (the people of his birth). He opposed slavery because it was the deciding factor between rich whites and poor whites - to abolish slavery would even the playing field.

Fast forward to the Civil War: Johnson was the only member of the Tennessee delegation to oppose succession and return to the Senate. In reward, Lincoln named him Governor of the Union-occupied portions of Tennessee, and after three years of solid anti-Confederate leadership, he was put on Lincoln's re-election ticket in 1864 as a show of solidarity to the practically defeated South. In an anecdote that means nothing, but is often-repeated in hindsight, Johnson arrived drunk as a skunk to the inauguration and delivered a rambling, nonsensical speech that left many wondering what Lincoln had been thinking to elevate Johnson to Vice President. Five weeks later, Lincoln was dead.

Johnson served out the entirety of Lincoln's term, and spent it in constant argument with Congress. Essentially, Johnson carried out a recess policy of leniency and outright favoritism toward the defeated Confederates, Congress convened to retract what it could, which was then vetoed by Johnson, and finally overturned by Congressional majority. Contested policies included fast-tracked re-entry of Confederate states, enfranchisement, readmission of Confederate leaders to their former Union leadership positions, (lack of) punishment to rebel leaders, redistribution of plantation land as pension to Confederate soldiers, and the war of Congress' Civil Rights bill versus Johnson's Black Codes. What made Johnson support the Union during the Civil War (to bring down the plantation class), morphed into a weird policy of propping up poor whites by isolating and vilifying the freedmen from the rich whites to whom Johnson now felt a sympathy after the satisfaction of seeing them laid low.

After two years of escalating and unchecked violence against blacks and disturbing patterns of Confederate activity reforming in open forums, Congress impeached Johnson on what amounted to a technicality. He escaped removal by just one vote and was allowed to finish his term. On a successful note, Alaska was purchased by Johnson's administration, which was ridiculed at the time, but since judged as a brilliant move. Johnson courted a Democratic nomination for President in the 1868 elections, but was rebuffed. He ran unsuccessfully for several Congressional seats, before rejoining the Senate in 1874. He served about five months before dying of a stroke.

My only comment about the author, a prize winner and qualified historian, is that it felt very awkward and appropriate at the same time to read a black woman's biography of the man who declared himself the protector of the "government for white men" and white men only. The book had a decidedly race-oriented overtone, which repeatedly distracted me from coming to the same conclusion independently. I know this guy was a racist and caused atrocities to occur specifically to black people, so her interpretation is not inaccurate in any way, just a bit melodramatic and light on straight forward fact delivery. This is not a thousand-page tome however, so making conclusions for readers is to be expected.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Annette Gordon-Reed tries her level best to say nice things about Andrew Johnson.

He was a bad president. Everyone thought so, in the end. But before he was a bad president, he was a poor lad teaching himself to read while apprenticed to a tailor because his mother couldn't afford to feed him. Gordon-Reed stresses this: his rise was impressive and if he'd just stayed put as a city councilman, or a state representative, or a congressman, or a senator, or a vice-president, Johnson would be vaguely remembered by history as a self-taught gentleman, a great orator, and an occasional jackass. But he became president and ruined it for himself by being Andrew Johnson. Annette Gordon-Reed says that even when he was a local politician, his stupid obstinacy hurt him: He opposed a railway line through his town because it would take jobs from carters and innkeepers on the road, not understanding that a railway would create more jobs and taverns would move and grow because of the increase in travel, and his constituents were wildly in favor of the railroad. As president, Johnson believed that steadfastly never ever changing his mind about anything no matter how much new information was presented to him demonstrated leadership or courage or something. When he was a young man on the make, Johnson believed that the white upper class and enslaved Black people were engaged in a cabal against poor white people, but after becoming the president of the United States, Johnson decided that the white Southern upper class, who had just waged a war against the United States, were actually best where they were, and that he would do everything in his power to maintain their status by destroying anything congress was trying to do for the freedmen and maintaining their power over Black people by creating a system that allowed slavery to continue exactly as it had in everything but name. Annette Gordon-Reed is really nice to Andrew Johnson, but he still comes off like the terrible president he was. Fucking John Wilkes-Booth.

Andrew Johnson also gave a long drunk speech before Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural.

[Doreen Petersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written book. Andrew Johnson was well known racist totally unfit for the presidency. He is considered to be one of the worst US Presidents.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Johnson was a bad president. Annette Gordon-Reed is a great historian. And this is a very good brief book about Andrew Johnson. I read this book for background when I took my kids to Greeneville, TN to visit Johnson's historic site and peek in on a few other neat areas. (I wrote a tad about that trip here: http://bit.ly/2hJUqDx).

The New York Times series on America's presidents is a fine intro set of short books on all of America's presidents. Each book is a bit overpriced (though affordable through Kindle and free from that mystical land of library).

Gordon-Reed followed heavily from a Trefousse biography written a few decades ago, so there isn't a lot of new history here. But, again, for those seeking an intro, this is fine.

The important points to me were the following. Johnson was infused with intense racism, and not just the "they were all like that back then" type. He pursued it as the key to Civil War reconciliation: he wanted to bring the South back into the US fold by making the white South feel good about their superiority over blacks. Another interesting array of items I learned about Johnson include some positive attributes. First, he really was a self-made man. A hard working American story. Second, he was a strong campaign orator. Third, he was charismatic with children. And fourth, on paper he was incredibly qualified for high office. Johnson was a city alderman, mayor, US Congressman, governor, US Senator, Vice President, and President. I probably even missed a job in there. After serving his one term as president, and unable to win a second term, he was a US Senator again, but died a few months into his term.

Most interesting of all, Gordon-Reed made a compelling, if not entirely convincing, case for Andrew Johnson's impeachment and removal from office. Although most historians recognize that Johnson sucked as president, they almost universally believe he should not have been impeached for removing his Secretary of War and for saying bad things about Congress. Gordon-Reed, referring largely to Michael Les Benedict, pushes for a different understanding. Rather than using a technical and “narrow” understanding of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” Gordon-Reed discusses the “broad view,” which “held that impeachment was appropriate for acts of misfeasance and malfeasance that damaged the office. The precedents, English and American, favored the broad view.” Impeachment could be used to protect America from unwieldy presidential discretion. She’s probably right on the legal grounds, and I’m glad I read this perspective, but I fear bigger problems from embracing this type of approach to dealing with bad leaders. I don’t think we do our democratic republic any favors by convincing an already painfully apathetic public that elections don’t really have to matter. Johnson sucked, and those opposed to his winning a term in his own right should have waged that argument, which I’m sure they did. Regardless of my moral disagreement with this position, it’s an important opinion to consider.

All in all, a readable and interesting brief book about one of our worst presidents.

[Yasmin · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far I've only read about 50 pages of Andrew Johnson and I have two things to say:
Annette Gordon-Reed's storytelling is superb.
Andrew Johnson was a mean SOB; he makes me want to open up a can of whup arze on the ilks of his kind. :(

[Joshua Maher · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I started my journey to read a biography on each president, I had one goal in mind. Gain a better understanding of United States history through the overlapping stories of the men that lead the country. Since beginning, I have added a secondary goal to attempt to achieve from each biography. That goal is to gain a better understanding of each of the presidents as individual human beings and try to understand what drove them to make their choices before, during and after their presidency. We so often think of presidents, especially historical presidents, as mere figure heads, or as one-dimensional people of myth. It is easy to forget that they were actual, living, breathing people driven by hopes and fears. They all have individual strengths and weaknesses.

As whole, this biography partially completes both of the above-mentioned goals. Being a lesser known president, there is not much information available out there on Andrew Johnson. I found this surprising, because he took office directly after Lincoln, one of the best-known presidents. At a minimum, I assumed there would be a wealth of information about Johnson at least as it pertained to his time being Lincoln’s Vice President. Even this aspect of Johnson is limited, due to the fact that he was only Lincoln’s Vice president for Lincoln’s second term, which only lasted a few months before Lincoln was assassinated.

The first half of the book Gordon-Reed does a good job exploring who Johnson is as a person and what she feels drove his life. While I didn’t exactly get a good picture of who Andrew Johnson was as a person, I did get a really good idea about who he was as a public figure. Gordon-Reed does a very thorough, and concise, job painting the picture of a poor, uneducated man constantly driven to move forward and upward throughout his life to prove that he was better than his upbringing. While this part of the biography did a good job showing the reader who Johnson was, it was a little sparse on informing the reader about the history surrounding Johnson’s early life.

Conversely, the biography lost a lot Johnson and his character once he became president. It shifted tone to more of just a historical bullet point of things that happened during his presidency. Gordon-Reed does attempt to show the reader that Johnson had the all too common belief that former slaves were inferior to whites and that caused him to continually hinder the integration of the former slaves into American society. While this was more than likely true, there was probably more than just racism driving Johnson to make his executive decisions that lead to him being the first president to be impeached by the House (only to be acquitted by a single vote in the Senate).

Overall, this biography does a good job giving the reader a concise account of the 17th president. Gordon-Reed obviously did extensive research on a lesser known president and references many sources to back up the biography throughout. She accomplishes a lot in a short time. However, if someone is looking for a complete telling of Andrew Johnson’s life along with the historical context of his life and presidency, it would probably be better to read one of the longer biographies out there.

[Bettie]

Andrew Johnson dodged impeachment — you can bet Trump will too

[Frank Theising · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short but very informative biography. I started out disappointed as the author seemed to abandon all pretense of objectivity on the very first page by bashing her subject in her dedication of the book to friends who “fought against everything Johnson stood for.” But the more I read, the more I thought she really did a good job. Her writing and explanation of how his youth as a poor white southerner shaped so much of who he would become and what he would do was simply excellent. And with all the talk in the air of impeachment now (in 2019), I found her analysis of the legal debate surrounding Johnson’s impeachment extremely informative. While Johnson is hardly a man to be admired, she covers his life as evenhandedly as possible, pulling no punches on his racism but giving him credit where it was due for remaining loyal to the Union at the outbreak of the Civil War. After reading this book, it is hard to exaggerate just how devastating his presidency was at such a crucial juncture and how it shaped so much of the world we’ve inherited. I really learned quite a bit from this short book.

What follows are my notes on the book:

Lincoln tops most list of greatest presidents, his successor is almost always universally considered the worst: the man who botched Reconstruction, energized defeated Southerners, and the first to ever be impeached by the House of Representatives but who escaped conviction by a single vote in the Senate.

Johnson was indelibly shaped by his childhood poverty and the experience of being looked down on by his social betters. While he would climb his way out of it and rise to the highest office in the land, that experience crippled him inside and created wounds and weakness that were at the heart of his eventual failure as president (7). His life was “one intense, unceasing, desperate struggle upwards” with seemingly little attention to what the climb was all about. Johnson left little written record, his reticence for writing means biographers rely heavily on others who recorded his words. This contributes to him being so enigmatic.

The aftermath of the Civil War and the end of slavery and collapse of the Southern economy demanded flexible, visionary, forward thinking. Johnson however, looked resolutely backward. It is impossible to exaggerate how devastating it was to have a man who despised black people in charge of programs to determine their future in the post-Civil War world. His principle concern was to ensure the poor white Southerners (from whence he came) were not “trodden under foot to protect niggers” (12).

On paper, no one seemed better prepared to be president than Johnson. He overcame obstacle that would have stymied a lesser man and climbed rung after rung: alderman, mayor, state representative, state senator, US representative, US senator, and vice president before becoming president (13).

Born in a log cabin near Raleigh, NC to illiterate parents. His father died after jumping in the water to save the lives of others on a ship that had capsized. His death was a disaster for the family, leaving his wife vulnerable to sexual advances of wealthy men in the houses in which she worked as a seamstress/laundress (19). This situation contributed to false rumors of Andrew’s paternity that would surface during his campaigns. This was false. Likewise, he was not the idealized Jeffersonian farmer. He was simply “white trash.” It was so bad, his mom sold the labor of her children, apprenticing them to a local tailor (22). This tailor was equally poor, so it offered little avenue for improving or educating beyond learning a basic trade.

In a society with slavery, young Andrew was very aware of his social status. Though far from being a slave, his apprenticeship was hardly a life of freedom. Early on he developed a deep seated obsession with the wrongs that poor whites suffered at the hands of the planter class. If he had an objection to slavery, it was that it prevented lower class whites from taking their rightful place at the head of the table. When president, people took notice of how he made disgraced Confederate grandees appear before him to, in effect, beg for re-admittance to the Union (25).

At the shop, customers occasionally read to him, starting his lifelong love of learning. One gave him a book of speeches that captivated him. He was something of a troublemaker, not uncommon for a highly intelligent young person hamstrung by the limits of his small place in the world. He and his brother eventually ran away before fulfilling his term as an indentured servant (there was a $10 reward posted for his return). He was determined to get married young and start a family, seeking to create the stability and better life that he never had and most take for granted. Unable to get hired (because they knew he was still legally bound to the tailor), he left the state and headed west for Tennessee (29).

He found a job in a local tailor shop. At age 19, he married the local shoemaker’s 16-year old daughter Eliza McCardle. Despite 5 decades of marriage, Eliza never was much of a presence in her husband’s public life. They had 5 children. She suffered from tuberculosis and kept indoors (his daughter Martha would be principal hostess when they lived in the White House) (32).

A friendly debate with his friend led them to create a debating society (a common form of entertainment then). Johnson proved a remarkable speaker and found something he was good at beyond making clothes and was elected alderman 1829. President Andrew Jackson, a southern slave owner but a staunch supporter of the federal Union, would become his hero. Old Hickory’s example would prove a template for Johnson’s later life. In 1834 he was elected mayor of Greenville. In the democratic age of Jackson, there were calls to extend the franchise to more white men in TN by relaxing the property requirements. Johnson was a vocal supporter for this and gave speeches, making a name for himself outside his town. Running for state representative, his take-no-prisoners style of debate with its invective and ridicule crushed his rivals (this talent would become a liability later in his public career). The poor illiterate boy was now helping to write laws for his adopted state, a dramatic turnaround (37).

At this time he bought his first slave, a 14 year old girl named Dolly. She would have 3 “mulatto” children, giving rise to rumors of Johnson having a colored concubine (there is no conclusive evidence one way or the other) (39). Despite his love for Jackson, he initially aligned himself with the Whig Party. However, he was not a blind supporter of the party, opposing it on taxpayer funded internal improvements. He opposed railroad expansion into eastern TN because it could put inns and wagon haulers out of business. The ability to engineer his own rise did not translate into a greater vision for progress for others. His vote against this along with his refusal to support anything that cost money, did not endear him to his constituents (41). In 1837 he lost his reelection bid and he shifted his allegiance to the Democrats. The Democrats were suffering nationally with Van Buren’s failure to be reelected during the Panic of 1837 and needed rising stars.

In 1842, he won a seat in the US House of Representatives, styling himself guardian of the public purse and champion of the workingman in opposition to the elites. He was successful in Congress but his quirky independence would occasionally be a source of friction. He proved a bright light for the Democrats coasting to reelection even when other Dems lost. He campaigned for fellow Tennessean Polk but they had public disputes over patronage that strained the relationship.

The admission of new states became a battleground in Congress because of slavery. Johnson offered his own compromise solution, but Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850 was ultimately settled upon (47). Despite being such a penny pincher, he supported a Homestead bill to make cheap land available to whites (basically identical to a measure he later vetoed when applied to black Americans during Reconstruction). Johnson disliked Democrat President-elect Franklin Pierce because he was too close to those who wanted to leave the Union. With his enemies growing, TN expanded his district to include more Whigs, effectively maneuvering him out of Congress.

Instead, he ran for governor, upsetting the Whig candidate in large part due to the enormous turnout of the common man he courted so heavily. TN governor was largely a ceremonial position, made even weaker by Whig control of the legislature. He made use of his bully pulpit to air his political views and gain exposure. Despite his hatred for spending, he supported doubling funds for public schools that would help poor whites (no doubt reflecting on his own struggle for an education).

With the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, that effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the country was hurtling toward confrontation. Fighting was so intense bringing the phrase “Bleeding Kansas” into the vernacular. Pierce’s reputation was in taters and Johnson continued to view him as weak. The Whigs were still strong in TN, but Johnson won reelection further solidifying him as a star of the Democratic Party. Despite a lack of full support from his own party, he continued to win. When the Democrats gained the state legislature, in 1857, the legislature voted him the next Senator from TN (57).

Johnson cared more about passing the Homestead Bill languishing in the Senate than he did about the intense battles raging over slavery. However, most Southern Dems were wary of the measure because of growing anti-slavery hostility in the North. With the defeat of the bill, he had little platform to make a run for President in 1860. He clearly resented the issue, viewing the debate over slavery as a petty distraction to his career ambitions. The reverse would prove true for without the issue, he never would have been selected as a VP candidate.

After a lifetime of struggle to rise in the world, what would become of the sincere Union-supporting southern Senator if the Union dissolved? He would no longer have any natural allies. He had worked so hard to get in the game, only to find that the rules were changing on him. On the Senate floor, he did everything he could to argue for preservation of the Union…this made him something of a beloved hero figure in the Northern press (65). He also wanted to make sure TN remained in the Union should it split. Fort Sumter changed all the calculus. Previously supportive of his position, he was now pilloried as a traitor in his home state. Making speeches across the state, mobs met him everywhere (he was nearly lynched at one stop but displayed great personal courage and warded them off with his pistol). He fled for Washington and became the rarest of birds, the only senator from a state that had seceded that remained seated in the Senate!

Johnson begged Lincoln to send troops to the Unionist strongholds in Eastern TN. Ironically, the lack of railroads (that Johnson had so vigorously opposed) prohibited the move. By 1862, there were enough Union victories in TN that Lincoln appointed Johnson as military governor of the liberated parts of the state (69). In this capacity he had powers to establish offices, tribunals, and suspend habeas corpus. He was determined to punish treason and try traitors to the Union. He vigorously rooted out Confederate influences and demanded loyalty oaths for public officials (those who balked were jailed). He closed hostile newspapers.

With the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Johnson succumbed to the opinion that it was necessary to side with Lincoln, not because he opposed slavery but because he viewed its existence as an impediment to the renegade states rejoining the Union (72). When blacks were enlisted in the Army, he ensured they were restricted to performing manual labor within TN. Despite these efforts, he did not succeed at creating a loyal and popular government in the state.

The growing clamor for peace and end to war threatened Lincoln’s reelection chances. He needed a running mate who could help him send a clear message of his resolve to win the war while also setting the groundwork for reconciliation between North and South. Who better to try and achieve both objectives that a War Democrat from one of the rebel states (75)? Even after Johnson was officially voted onto the ticket, prospects looked bleak. Johnson travelled the country giving rousing speeches. For all his effort, the turning point was the dual Union victories of Gettysburg and Vicksburg. These crushed the Democratic peace ticket chances and Lincoln and Johnson won the election.

Johnson was clearly drunk at his inauguration (84). After climbing his whole life to be respected, he blew it on the biggest stage of his career, justifying all the condescension elites had lorded over him since his youth. Johnson met Lincoln on April 14th to encourage him to be firm with the Confederates in the wake of the surrender at Appomattox…it would be the last time he would see Lincoln alive (87).

The assassins intended to target Johnson too, but the individual assigned to him got drunk instead. After Lincoln’s death, he was gracious to Mary Lincoln, letting her remain in the White House for weeks. He was sworn in in a simple ceremony by Chief Justice Chase. In the midst of the massive outpouring of grief from the North, he asked Lincoln’s cabinet to remain in their positions. In the initial weeks, he seemed more than up to the task before him, carrying himself with dignity. His call for a $100K bounty on Jefferson Davis showed he could be tough on the rebels. He also deftly mediated a dispute between General Sherman and Secretary of War Stanton over the handling of surrender terms in Georgia that had gone beyond military responsibility and entered into policy.

Ironically, despite all his talk of punishing traitors, Sherman’s postwar leniency would become the president’s preferred course of action and his strained relationship with Stanton would later put him on the road to impeachment. At the victory parade in May 1865, his popularity was at its zenith (96). Despite his desire to punish traitors, he said nothing about his attitude towards altering the Southern social system, which he was against…something that would becoming alarmingly clear to everyone in the country, including the defeated white Southerners.

The first indication of his position was when he issued a proclamation bringing VA back into the Union, without any mention of black voting rights, while Congress was out of session. He did the same for 7 more states. Johnson simply wanted restoration, not reconstruction of the South. In his opinion, secession was illegal, so they were still states his actions were justified and legal. The legislative branch obviously believed they had a say in this process and had a different interpretation. The southern states had clearly left and formed a new government, before they should be re-admitted to the Union there needed to minimal requirements (like black voting rights). Johnson believed states should decide who should be allowed to vote, and appointed provisional governors who would take a hard line on black voting rights.

Stubborn Johnson refused to work with moderates, dooming his presidency and his efforts to restore the South closer to his own terms (110). He refused to compromise with moderates on black rights. In his own words, “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government of white men” (112). The author argues that his commitment to white supremacy is key to understanding his entire course of action in the fight over Reconstruction (113). His commitment to white supremacy overrode his lifelong antipathy to the Southern planter class. He vigorously opposed the Freedmen’s Bureau Act that attempted to offer homestead plots to freed blacks that would have enabled them to be self-sufficient. This doomed freed blacks as they would have to work for their former masters to survive. Johnson’s actions breathed new life into the defeated South and emboldened them, leading to the passage of “Black codes” by the newly elected southern governments to restrict black freedoms and violence against blacks was rampant and staggering in scale (117). His attitude and leniency in effect caused the South to reassess its relations with the victorious government (119).

In Dec 1865, Congress set up the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. They viewed the defeated South as conquered territories, who needed to meet certain terms before readmission to the Union. Johnson adamantly argued the states had never left the Union and had the same rights as before. Republicans did not see black voting rights as a zero-sum game and did not understand Johnson’s obstinacy. To Johnson it was a primal question, living in a region where blacks outnumbered whites in some places he absolutely saw it as zero-sum (124).

Having lost faith in traditional political parties, he attempted to thwart Republicans by forging a party of his own by drawing like-minded people to himself. He even went as far as to call a “party” convention but it fell short. Instead he would try a new tac by purging his cabinet of those not loyal to him (like Sec of State Seward) and traveling the country giving fiery speeches arguing for his positions and attacking political opponents as traitors…these would prove disastrous as they horrified moderates. A trend would emerge of Johnson vetoing major legislation (Civil Rights Bill of 1866, Reconstruction Bill of 1867, 2nd,3rd, 4th Reconstruction Bills, etc) only for Congress to override the veto (130). The President would then thwart those laws by appointing administrators who would not faithfully execute the laws (131). Something had to give.

Should he be impeached? He may be a terrible president but he hadn’t technically broken the law. The Constitution provides for impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors, treason, and bribery. Legal scholars have two different views, one narrow and one broad. The narrow view was that he would have had to commit a specific crime, breaking a defined law to be impeached. Those adhering to the broad view, argue that his malfeasance, comfort to the defeated enemy, and damage to the office were sufficient grounds to consider him a “traitor.” Throughout our history, we the people have feared the broad view because it risks undoing the effects of an election based on an idea, not law (133).

When Sherman, now military governor in TX & LA, removed white troops that had killed blacks, Johnson reversed the decision and told his commanders that they could only enforce Reconstruction laws in the narrowest sense, depriving them of latitude to conduct such actions. Congress immediately began considering impeachment (135) but held to the narrow view. When he fired War Secretary Stanton from his post, many saw this as a violation of the Tenure of Office Act (passed to stop him from thwarting execution of laws passed by Congress) and used it as the pretext for impeachment under the narrow view favored by moderates. The decision to adhere to the narrow viewed doomed its chances of success. 8 of 9 articles of impeachment had to do with Stanton’s firing. Johnson’s lawyers gave an impressive defense in the Senate and he was acquitted by a single vote. Several factors contributed to this decision: the charges were weak, he appointed a new Sec of War favored by moderates, radical Republican Benjamin Wade would have become President and he freaked out moderates, and his term was almost up anyway (139).

He felt vindicated and plotted his reelection, but neither party nominated him. He returned home to TN to a hero’s welcome. In 1875, TN made him their senator again (142). He died of a stroke in summer 1875.

[Collin Mickle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Awful.

Writing an interesting and thoughtful biography of Andrew Johnson seems hard. Judging by this effort, it's impossible -- not that Annette Gordon-Reed seems to have tried very hard.

This book is snide, bad-faith, overwritten, and far, far too long at 144 pages. Everything worthwhile Gordon-Reed is prepared to say about Andrew Johnson, she says in the brief introduction. Namely: Andrew Johnson was a bad president and a worse man, a racist and an ignoramus and an incompetent who made America a worse place than it would have been if he was never born.

Having slogged through this book, I can see her point. But given Johnson's monstrosity, it would be nice to let it speak for itself. Instead, the reader has to trudge on, page after page, pausing every paragraph for the author to tug on our sleeve and say, "See! Told you he was a jerk! It's probably because of [completely unsupported pop-psych speculation about a man who died in 1875]."

Andrew Johnson may not deserve better than this, but I do.

[Kevin Kizer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, this guy was kind of a dick. Although he came from a hardscrabble background, he had zero sympathy for other groups. He wanted to give poor whites free land, but thought giving it to blacks would make them lazy. And he didn't want the government investing in infrastructure, e.g. he was against the government building railroads. He didn't want the government buying anything. Oh yeah, and he HATED blacks. Frederick Douglas related a story about Lincoln's inauguration and how he saw Lincoln point Douglas out to Johnson. Johnson's expression dropped to a sneer then, when he caught Douglas's eye, turned into a sickly smile. The really sad part is that he was the guy who followed Lincoln, and basically sabotaged Reconstruction. If Lincoln had a huge positive impact on the future of the country, then Johnson had to have one of the most negative. No wonder he's usually in the bottom five when historians rate presidents.

[Colleen Browne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is short and designed to be that way because of the series of books that it belongs to. That said, it was long enough. It is depressing to think that anyone actually thought it was a good idea to have him on the ticket in 1864. Gordon-Reed takes no prisoners in her evaluation of the Johnson presidency- and rightfully so. He is a man for whom it is difficult to have empathy for. The author seems to try to find something about the man to like but it isn't an easy chore. At the end of the day, he was the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He belongs in that illustrious group of presidents who were simply, utter failures- His photograph should hang next to GW Bush and Buchanan.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A soulless opportunist joins the Republican party out of political expediency, becomes President to the shock and dismay of many, seeks the counsel of white supremacists who egg him on to confrontations with Congressional leaders who despise him, and is impeached by his perhaps overeager opponents.

It reads like science fiction.

[Jeff Jamba · Rating 4 out of 5]

On one hand, it would be tough to sit down and write a book about this guy. In my presidential bio readings thus far, Andrew Johnson made me the most upset.

Gordon-Reed does a good job balancing the parts of his life, and that’s the point of this series. Still, I would have liked to have more material devoted to the most important part of his life, the actual time he served as president and the impeachment proceedings themselves.

While I don’t personally disagree with any part of what she wrote, there was a bit too much commentary woven in for such a brief work. I would have liked to see that streamlined a bit more to bring more details of his life and era to bear on the book.

For instance, she includes a couple of the more colorful (and sometimes crass) speeches he gave. Surely there are extant sources of those speeches that could shed more light onto his personality and characteristics as a person. It was just hard to get a sense of what he was like (perhaps access to sources is the problem in providing a bio of his life).

Still, she does an good job giving us the highlights on a tough President to bio for his single minded white supremacy framework right on the heels of the close of the civil war that just overshadow everything else about Johnson.

[Amanda Grinavich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow. This guy SUCKED. I know I've only read up to President #17, but my guess is he's easily in the top 3 - if not #1 - worst presidents in history. You almost start out with a small level of empathy for the guy; he came from nothing. Didn't know how to read or write. But that's quickly erased when you remember the man was a racist. A big one. He was also your standard politician who knew to say whatever he needed to to progress, like, you know, telling African Americans he would be their Moses. (What?!)

Man, Lincoln must have been rolling in his grave.

It's painful to think this was the guy left to handle things after the Civil War. The author points out that it's dangerous to think "What if ..." but it's hard not to ponder how things would have went if Lincoln was not assassinated or someone else was in the VP spot.

He did give his inauguration speech as VP completely drunk, and I do wish TV was around back then to capture that footage.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

With Trump's impeachment, I thought it time to read about the first impeached president. Johnson was racist, pure and simple. And that hate, while not the reason, helped form the basis why Congress acted. Reading about Johnson himself was hard to stomach -- the man was an ass -- but the chapter on impeachment was enlightening. And rather surprising the similarities between him and Trump. No president is above or greater than Congress and when you take steps to act like you are, you'll be impeached. Rightfully so.

[Brian E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad read. Some parts were informational and some parts appeared opinion. All in all, I would recommend.

[Darrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrew Johnson was born in a log cabin in 1808 in Raleigh, North Carolina. Despite being the state capitol, Raleigh was still a small town at the time. His parents were illiterate. His older sister died as a child. His father, Jacob Johnson, died soon after heroically saving three men who were in a capsized boat.

His mother, Mary (Polly) Johnson, was left to care for two boys by herself. She was a seamstress and laundress. Because Andrew had black hair and a darker complexion than his older brother William (who had freckles and light hair), there were rumors that Andrew's biological father was a lawyer his mom did laundry for. Poor white women at the time did the same work as enslaved black women and were likewise at the mercy of the men in whose houses they worked, so the rumors are at least plausible.

Polly remarried, but Andrew's stepfather was another poor man. Things were so bad financially that Polly had to sell her sons' labor. William and Andrew both became tailor's apprentices. Andrew was an apprentice to James Selby from the age of 10. He was legally bound to be his apprentice until the age of 21. He was basically an indentured servant.

Johnson never went to school a day in his life (making him the least educated man to have become president), but one of Selby's employees taught Johnson the basics of reading. Citizens would come to the shop to read to the tailors. Johnson was captivated by a book of speeches titled The American Speaker and the reader gave him the book as a present. He kept it with him his entire life.

Andrew was a bit of a trouble-maker. He and other boys formed a gang called "Jesse Johnson's boys". When he was 15, a local woman threatened to sue him, his brother, and other boys for throwing objects at her house. The boys ran away from town. Selby, Johnson's master, placed an advertisement in the newspaper offering a reward for the boys' return and threatening prosecution against anyone harboring them.

Johnson never worked for Selby again. He and his brother escaped to South Carolina where he became a tailor in his own right, proving an 11-year apprenticeship was unnecessarily long. At 17, he began courting Mary Wood. He made her a quilt and proposed to her, but she declined. Her mother didn't consider him prosperous enough. He left town soon after, returning to Raleigh. Selby had moved by this time, but no one in town would hire him because he was still legally bound to Selby. He tracked Selby down and offered to buy out his contract, but Selby wanted a lump sum which Johnson couldn't afford. So he skipped town and headed to Tennessee.

There, Andrew met Eliza McCardle and they married. He was 18 and she was 16. They were married by Mordecai Lincoln, President Lincoln's cousin once removed. Not much is known of Eliza. She may have taught Andrew how to write. Andrew and Eliza didn't live together much as husband and wife. She suffered from tuberculosis and stayed home while he often traveled. There were rumors of infidelity on his part, which he denied. They had five children together.

Johnson enjoyed politics and joined a debating society, a popular form of entertainment at the time. He got elected to alderman, then mayor, then state legislature. His opponents didn't know how to respond to his "bully boy" debating style full of invective and savage ridicule. He was said to be forceful without being eloquent.

He left his family behind and moved to Nashville to be in the state legislature. That's where he bought his first slave, a 14-year-old girl named Dolly. Dolly gave birth to three children over the years, who were described as mulattoes on the census. Since Dolly was listed as black, this implies her children had a white father. There were rumors Johnson had a "colored concubine".

He got voted out of the state legislature and switched from being a Whig to a Democrat. He got elected to the US House of Representatives. Johnson spoke in favor of the Homestead Act, which would give land to white people for very little money. Having once been poor himself, he knew the struggle of poor white people trying to make a living.

His enemies redrew the boundary lines of his district to ensure he wouldn't be reelected, so he next ran for governor. Johnson then became a US senator. The Homestead Bill, passed while Johnson was in the House, still hadn't passed the Senate. He wanted to get it passed, but his fellow Southerners were opposed. To get their support, Johnson spoke in overwhelming support of slavery and denounced the North, but Southerners were still suspicious of the Homestead Bill because Northerners supported it. Johnson made amendments to the bill which didn't help it pass. Other supporters made amendments that finally got the bill passed. However, President Buchanan vetoed it.

When Lincoln was elected, Johnson's support for the Homestead Bill alienated him from his fellow Southerners. He'd made enemies of Jefferson Davis and others. It was obvious he wouldn't have a political future with the Confederacy. He was also sincerely in favor of the Union and thought South Carolina had committed treason when it seceded. Throughout the South, Johnson was hanged and burned in effigy and received many death threats.

People in his home state considered him a traitor. He was nearly lynched at a stop in Lynchburg. Someone pulled his nose, which was a way for an upper-class white man to insult another. Johnson warded off the attack by pulling out his pistol and threatening to shoot.

In the end, Tennessee seceded from the Union and he left the state behind. He was the only senator from a state which had seceded to remain in the Senate. He left his wife and children behind enemy lines to be harassed by the Confederates. Perhaps he thought they'd be safer there.

After some military victories, central and western Tennessee once again became part of the Union, but Lincoln treated it as a territory. Due to its rebellion, it couldn't just go back to being a regular state. Lincoln appointed Andrew Johnson to be the military governor of his old state. Johnson demanded loyalty oaths and shut down Confederate newspapers. In eastern Tennessee, his family continued to be harassed by Confederates until Governor Harris, who was in charge of the area, finally let them go.

To help bring about reconciliation with the South, Lincoln replaced his fiercely anti-slavery vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, with southerner Andrew Johnson. Johnson now spoke out against slavery. The main reason he was opposed to slavery was that it led to race mixing.

On inauguration day, he got drunk before being sworn in as vice president and gave a long, rambling, embarrassing speech. Secretary Stanton appeared petrified. The postmaster general "was red and white by turns". Justice Samuel Nelson's lower jaw dropped in sheer horror. Lincoln just looked terribly sad. When taking the oath of office, Johnson picked up the Bible and kissed it.

Weeks later, when a friend told Johnson that Lincoln had been shot, they fell into each other's arms and cried. In addition to the assassination of Lincoln, Secretary of State Seward was nearly killed, and a third would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, was assigned to kill Johnson, but Atzerodt lost his nerve and got drunk instead.

Johnson's reputation for being tough on the southern rebels grew when he put a $100,000 bounty on the head of Jefferson Davis. As he incessantly spoke of punishing traitors, the South feared Johnson more than they feared Lincoln. The South was so devastated and demoralized after the war, they were ready to accept almost any of the North's terms.

At first, Johnson expressed support for giving the vote to black men and many thought this should be a condition for reentry into the Union. However, in the summer of 1865 when Congress was out of session, Johnson issued proclamations bringing southern states back into the Union with no mention of black suffrage.

Johnson wasn't interested in reconstruction so much as restoration. He wanted to pretend the Civil War hadn't happened and get back to the way things used to be, except without slavery. Southerners were relieved. Congress asked Johnson to call a special session of Congress or at least wait until Congress was back in session before finalizing his plans, but he refused.

He once told a delegation of black people that rich whites and slaves had conspired to oppress poor whites like himself. He felt poor whites were the real victims of slavery! Frederick Douglass told him blacks and poor whites were both oppressed by the planter class, but Johnson wasn't having it. He believed with slavery gone, the playing field between rich whites and poor whites had now been leveled.

Johnson's supposed hatred of southern aristocracy was just talk compared to his overwhelming support for white supremacy. In 1862, Congress passed a loyalty oath which gave amnesty only to those who hadn't voluntarily aided the rebellion. Johnson ignored this and pardoned the leadership of the rebellion. People were shocked he forgave the people he'd previously railed against so vehemently. Thousands of white and black soldiers died to remove these men from power and Johnson rushed to put them back in charge.

The Freedman's Bureau Act passed in 1865. Johnson vetoed it, but was overridden. It called for breaking land into 40-acre plots for rental and eventual sale to freedmen. It was similar to the Homestead Act supported by Johnson except it benefited black people instead of white people. Johnson moved quickly to block this. Without land of their own, black people would be forced to work for their former masters again.

Southern states instituted "black codes" which brought slavery back in all but name. Black people were required to have labor contracts, and if they left a job, they could be arrested by any white citizen. Hunting and fishing became crimes for black people to prevent them from being self sufficient.

Whites in both the North and the South were horrified at the violence visited upon the four million freed black people in southern states after the Civil War. Black people were killed for running away or disobeying their former masters. White men set fire to a black settlement near Pine Bluff, Arkansas and hung men, women, and children from trees. In one area in Texas, more than a thousand black people were murdered by whites. In South Carolina, a minister shot a black man who complained about another black man being asked to leave the church. One man was killed for not removing his hat.

Thousands of separate instances like this occurred all over the South while Johnson sat back and let it happen. He even resisted efforts to stop it. People warned him he was giving aid and comfort to the people he'd called traitors during the war, but he didn't care.

His leniency towards the South came back to bite him, however. He thought they would appreciate the leniency enough to support him in other matters such as Confederate debt, but they treated his leniency as weakness and ignored him.

Johnson ignoring Congress's plans for Reconstruction also came back to bite him. Congress refused to seat the newly elected southern representatives. Congress formed a committee on Reconstruction and insisted the president didn't have the power to readmit states to the Union. When Congress gave black people in the District of Columbia the right to vote, Johnson vetoed it, but they overrode his veto.

He vetoed the Civil Rights Bill of 1866. He fought the Fourteenth Amendment. The Reconstruction Bill of 1867 said southern states could reenter the Union if they passed the Fourteenth Amendment and gave black men the vote. If not, they would be placed under military rule. Johnson vetoed the bill and was overridden, but he didn't intend to abide by it.

Many in Congress wanted to impeach Johnson for failing to execute the law, but some believed he could only be impeached for explicitly breaking the law. In 1867, when Johnson violated the Tenure of Office Act by removing Secretary of War Stanton from office, he gave them the reason they'd been waiting for. He became the first president to be impeached.

Johnson made backroom deals to remain in office, promising that he would stop obstructing Reconstruction and that he would appoint the moderate Republicans' choice for his new secretary of war. It also helped that if he were impeached, the new president would be senator Benjamin F. Wade, a radical Republican in favor of giving not just black men but also women the vote. His belief in high tariffs and labor unions also made him unpopular among moderates. In the end, Johnson escaped conviction by one vote in the Senate.

Johnson became even more of a hero to the South and was so jubilant, he returned the love by issuing a universal proclamation of amnesty that included Jefferson Davis!

While Reconstruction was the main issue of Johnson's presidency, other important events happened as well. In 1866, Napoleon III used French troops to install Emperor Maximilian in Mexico. The US considered this a violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Secretary of State Seward convinced the French to remove their troops and avoided war. Seward also purchased the territory of Alaska from Russia in 1867.

Johnson wanted to get reelected to president, but he didn't get the nomination from either party. After leaving the presidency, Johnson was struck with tragedy when his son Robert committed suicide. (During his first year as president, his brother William died after accidentally shooting himself.)

Andrew Johnson ran for Senate in 1869 but lost. He ran for the House of Representatives in 1872 but lost again. He got cholera and almost died. He lost a lot of money during a bank failure in 1873. He finally got elected to the Senate again in 1875. As his last hurrah, he gave a speech denouncing President Grant for interfering in the state affairs of Louisiana. That summer, he died of a stroke while visiting his daughter's farm. He was a Mason and the local Masonic temple played a role in his funeral proceedings.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous, fast read on the subject.

[Darcy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was so hard to read this book because I had such negative feelings about its subject. Johnson was a horrible man, very similar to the man who holds the office today, and the similarities just made me cringe. On to better things, I hope.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Thirty-Eight of my Presidential Challenge.

"He may not have been the right man at the right time, but he was there at a time so critical to the American story that we simply cannot turn our eyes from him, no matter how painful the view. History is not just about the things we like or the people we want to love and admire - a fantasy date with our favorite dead person. It is about the events in the past that have mattered greatly to a given society and its culture. At the core of Johnson's life is the story of class and race in America, how they shaped the country in ways familiar and unfamiliar. It is also a story of roads not taken, by him and by the country as a whole. It is a useful, though often maddening, thing to see the choices that were available to people in the past and why they chose one route over another. Through the benefit of hindsight we are able to see the results, good and bad, of those decisions. They have made us who we are. And for better or worse the poor tailor boy from North Carolina and Tennessee helped to make us who we are. We should get to know him."

Andrew Johnson was the wrong man at the wrong time. He reminds me of the evil twin of Martin Van Buren. He was a shrewd politician in that he was able to change his allegiances with the blowing of the political wind and seemed to stand for few principles. To his credit, one of those principles was keeping the Union together. He seemed to truly believe that the South had no right to leave the Union. His legal misconception about this led to problems later. Johnson claims that because it was not legal for the South to leave the Union, they didn't actually do so. This meant that he, and he alone, should be in charge of Reconstruction. You see, if the South had actually left, Congress would be in charge. I'll quote Leland Stanford (yes, that Stanford) by saying "To say because they had no right to go out, therefore they could not does not seem to me more reasonable than to say that because a man has no right to commit murder therefore he cannot. A man does commit murder and that is a fact which no reasoning can refute."

The problem with Johnson solely being in charge of Reconstruction is because of his other bedrock principle: White Supremacy. Johnson literally wanted there to be no repercussions for the South other than the fact that they can no longer own slaves. He opposed enfranchisement for freed slaves (even though who fought for the Union Army) and returned the Southern land owners to their positions of power. This is especially vexing because Johnson HATED Southern land owners. That goes to show how much he must have truly LOATHED freed slaves.

Johnson was ultimately impeached by the House of Representatives but avoided conviction in the Senate by a single vote. Even with all the smack talk I've done about Johnson I don't think impeachment was appropriate here. Everything he did was arguably within his discretion. Just like with ol' Slick Willy Clinton, this was a witch hunt. Although, in this case, Johnson was an unapologetic asshole, so I don't feel too bad for him.

Later, after much effort, Johnson was elected to the Senate which he took as a vindication. Sure buddy, whatever you want to think.

I still think James Buchanan was our worst President, but it's hard for me to say anybody but Johnson is number two. Buchanan wins this contest because he was the one who broke it, Johnson was just the dummy who was unable to put the pieces of the puzzle back together because he hated all the black puzzle pieces (I don't know where I'm going with this metaphor).

Fun Fact: Our least educated President ever! And go figure he ended up being one of the worst. Who could have ever predicted that?

Annette Gordon-Reed clearly hated Johnson and that comes through in the book. But you know what, that cool lady. I'd be more upset if you were like, "Guys, here's my case for Johnson.!" Her argument was more, look, this guy messed up the country at a very critical time, if we're ever going to correct his mistakes that are still reverberating to this day, we'd better know just who this guy was and what he was about. Job well done lady.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very brief, but concise, biography of Andrew Johnson, one of the American Presidents series, this is a refreshingly frank analysis of the man and of the tragic consequences his character has had on the course of American history. Is completely free of the usual biographer's sympathy for his subject, is free of any attempt to provide extenuating circumstances, excuses for the subject's failings.

Gordon-Reed gives Johnson's private life only cursory consideration. This may have been unavoidable. He learned to write only when in his thirties and seldom indulged the skill when acquired. His official papers were written by others, his personal correspondence was scant. He had no intimate friends - at least none who shared their impressions of the intimate Johnson. Much of his personal life - his relationship to his wife, the reasons for his son's suicide, the source of his prosperity - remains a mystery.
Only the political Johnson is known. And the author turns a powerful searchlight on his political life, brilliantly illuminating his character flaws. Reveals him to be a racist, a southern provincial, limited in his thinking, concerned almost exclusively about his own kind, the poor whites of the south. Reveals him to be preternaturally stubborn, self-righteous, unchanging in his convictions. Reveals him to be driven by out-sized ambitions, rising in politics solely on the basis of his oratorical gifts, on his ability to express the aspirations and resentments of his peers. Reveals him to be loyal only to them and to his ambition.

The heart of the book is Gordon-Reed's compelling argument that Johnson wasted the golden, unique opportunity that the end of the Civil War provided to inaugurate a "new birth of freedom" that he squandered the best chance of granting the newly freed slaves civil equality, basic justice, and economic opportunity. Argues that this expansion of freedom to blacks was possible then, could have been realistically achieved at a time when the southern armies had been defeated, its political leaders discredited, its economy ruined, its population cowered and discouraged, its politics fluid. Was possible at a time when the south expected change and the north demanded it - when both regarded it as the natural consequence of victory. The author blames Johnson for more than just this failure to seize this opportunity, but also for encouraging southern resistance to such change. Argues that his overt racism, his deep personal commitment to white supremacy, his emotional sympathy with southerners, gave the South hope that even in defeat their traditional ways, their "social arrangements", might be preserved - gave them hope that the blacks might be returned to white control, hope that their local political dominance might be restored and protected. She argues, that these hopes, combined with the knowledge that they had a friend in the White House, lead directly to the failure of Reconstruction.

Certainly the extent to which the south was really susceptible to transformational change is debatable - the extent to which they would have been willing to grant the freedmen full and equal civil rights unknown. But there is little that doubt that Johnson's actions harmed, if not precluded, that development. Had he acted differently, had he been less stubborn, more willing to cooperate with moderates, less a racist, less a white supremacist, more open to the currents of change, more respectful of the common humanity, the equality, of all men, the country might have been spared the subsequent resistance to reconstruction, spared the horrors, the brutality of southern "redemption", spared a hundred years of shameful economic oppression of blacks, spared segregation under "Jim Crow", spared the country's continuing racial inequality. For Johnson's contribution to this sad history, for his failure to inaugurate "a new birth of freedom", may his bones burn in hell.

[Alissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great summary of Johnson’s life (a true raise up by your bootstraps story) and the impact of his presidency after Lincoln’s death.

[Michael Camire · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Times American Presidents series offer reliably good short biographies, and this one is a good (although not great) example. The book is excellent through the beginning and middle. In the early chapters Gordon-Reed gave a good analysis of strange and virulent nature of Johnson's racism and motivations. And although in the end I found I hadn't been entirely won over from my own position, in one of the middle chapters she provided an excellent argument for a broad interpretation of the impeachment powers of Congress, that allows for its application not merely in cases of indictable violations of statute law, but in cases of abuse of executive discretion. Although I still disagree with her conclusions (unwritten understandings of when it is appropriate to apply extraordinary uses of power can be subject to abuse, with the definition of extraordinary circumstances tending to drift into the ordinary in the minds of those who find that power useful--see today's controversies over the use of the Senate filibuster) her argument is forceful and convincing enough that it can't be cavalierly dismissed. Unfortunately the book ends rather abruptly and unsatisfyingly, with Gordon-Reed offering only a superficial application of her own analysis to the events of Johnson's presidency. She seemed hampered by the format of the series--all the Times American Presidents books are around 200 pages or less--as though she found herself nearing end of the small book with little room to do more than briefly wrap up matters. It might have been better to apply her analysis less rigidly chronologically--the accounts of Johnson's early life were unusually thorough for the series, which usually focuses on the events of the subjects' presidencies.

[Don Skiba · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was by far the worst of the American President's Series that I have read so far. The author should never have written the book given her strong negative views toward the subject. Most people understand that Andrew Johnson's presidency was a failed one, but I was interested in the details of the man's life. What I got was a preface where the author reviled in every way the man before ever presenting the first fact about his life. Then, she uses the rest of the book to prove that she was right in her preface. I was disappointed and believe that books in this series should be fact based, with personal feelings and life views of the author kept out of the narrative. On this score, the author fell totally short. If you are looking for a historical read about Andrew Johnson with some balance and perspective, don't bother with this book. If you are looking for an author to take her liberal and coastal views and judge Andrew Johnson against the twenty-first century version of them, then this book might be right for you. This book should not be in the series. It doesn't measure up against some pretty good historical presentations in other books in the series.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Andrew Johnson portrayed by Annette Gordon-Reed is a racist pig-headed son of a bitch, and who I am to question her theory? I hardly knew anything about the man coming into this book, other than he followed Lincoln at the beginning of the Civil War, and that he was impeached - and I kind of forgot that until I was half way through the book. Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical Republican from Pennsylvania, called him a "damned scoundrel" and he pretty much was. Gordon-Reed convincingly makes the case that many of Johnson's stupid racist decisions haunted us for a hundred years. Not even four years of having a dumbass as a president, and it wasn't until a hundred years and another Johnson later that the messes he assisted into creation were finally laid to rest. What will we say 100 years from now about our last two or three presidents? Gordon-Reed is a fine writer, crisp and clean, and her sketch of Andrew Johnson is well worth reading.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Because my family lived for over thirty years in Greeneville, Tenn. I am intrigued by Andrew Johnson. This book is some biography but usually the author likes the character they are studying. Annette Gordon-Reed fills the biography with her opinions and really tries to take Johnson on because of his racism. Yes, he was a racist as were most people during that time period. But a more even handed portrait would have made a much better book. I'm surprised a historian of her caliber would create such a poor biography. (There are also spelling errors--greeneville is how the town is spelled. The town was named after General Nathaniel Greene. She gets the county right but not the town's name.)

[Jeff Crosby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Andrew Johnson is typically listed at or near the bottom of lists of American presidents, with good reason. Historican Annette Gordon-Reed (author of an award-winning book on Thomas Jefferson) sheds light (and more than a bit of heat) on the reasons for that infamy, while also empathizing with Johnson's "rags-to-the-presidency" story that began in North Carolina, moved to Tennessee and then on the White House. She shows the complex set of issues the 17th president inherited upon Abraham Lincoln's assassination, and contends that Johnson really wasn't fit to assume such a mantle. A solid entry in Times Books' "American Presidents" Series.