Andrew Johnson

A Raleigh tailor named James Selby put a notice in the paper in 1824 offering ten dollars for the return of two runaway apprentices, William and Andrew Johnson. Andrew was 15 and had been bound to Selby since he was 10. He never spent a day in a schoolroom. Someone in the shop taught him his letters, and men who came in to argue politics read aloud to the workers while they sewed. He got to Greeneville, Tennessee, opened a tailor shop that turned into the town's debating hall, and on May 17, 1827 married Eliza McCardle, who was 16. The story that she taught him to read is a legend. What she actually did was teach him arithmetic and fix his writing.

Four years, from an assassination in April 1865 to a departure in 1869 that nobody marked. He restored the Confederate states fast and cheap, vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Acts, saw Congress override 15 of his vetoes — more than it had ever overridden for anyone — and was impeached in February 1868 for firing his Secretary of War. The Senate acquitted him by a single vote. BriefHistory sets out that record and what it cost the freedpeople. The question here is where the man came from and what became of his name.

Johnson was the only senator from a seceding state who refused to give up his seat in 1861. The Confederacy answered by seizing his Greeneville house and driving his family out, and he spent the war as Lincoln's military governor in Nashville, overseeing the recruitment of some 20,000 Black men into the Union Army. He had also bought his first enslaved person in 1843, a 14-year-old named Dolly, and held about 14 people by 1860. He freed them on August 8, 1863, a date Black Tennesseans still mark, and hired them back as paid servants. None of it made him other than what he said he was in public: a man who believed the United States was a country for white men. His Reconstruction does not parse without that sentence.

Tennessee sent him back to the Senate in 1875, the only former president ever to sit in it, and he was dead five months later — two strokes at his daughter Mary's house in Carter County, on July 31. They buried him in Greeneville wrapped in the flag with a copy of the Constitution under his head, as he had asked. Then the 20th century took him apart. Dunning-school historians had treated his Reconstruction as prudence, and Arthur Schlesinger's 1948 poll of scholars still put him 19th of 29. Once the freedpeople's side of the record counted, the floor went out. A 2010 Siena College survey ranked him the worst president in American history.

Andrew Johnson's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Homestead Bill law
  He pushed it in Congress for 15 years — Lincoln signed it in 1862 1846
• Veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 other
  Congress overrode it, the first override of a major bill in American history 1866
• Alaska Purchase other
  Seward negotiated it and Johnson sent it to the Senate 1867
• Christmas Day Amnesty Proclamation other
  Unconditional pardon for everyone who had fought for the Confederacy 1868
• The Greeneville tailor shop building
  Preserved inside the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site 1826

• December 29, 1808 aged 0 Born in Raleigh, North Carolina His father died when he was three. The family had nothing.
• 1824 aged ~16 Runs away from his tailoring apprenticeship at 15 Selby advertised ten dollars for the return of Andrew and his brother William.
• May 17, 1827 aged 18 Marries Eliza McCardle in Greeneville She was 16, the youngest woman ever to marry a future president. She taught him arithmetic.
• 1861 aged ~53 Refuses to leave the Senate when Tennessee secedes The only senator from a seceding state to stay. The Confederacy seized his house.
• August 8, 1863 aged 54 Frees the people he had enslaved Black Tennesseans have marked the date ever since. He rehired them as paid servants.
• March 4, 1865 aged 56 Sworn in as vice president after a night of drinking The speech was rambling and near-incoherent. Hamlin cut it short and administered the oath.
• April 15, 1865 aged 56 Becomes president hours after Lincoln dies
• May 16, 1868 aged 59 Acquitted in the Senate by one vote Ten Republicans voted with the Democrats. Conviction fell a single vote short of two thirds.
• July 31, 1875 aged 66 Dies at his daughter's home in Carter County, Tennessee Five months into a Senate term. He was buried wrapped in a flag with the Constitution under his head.

• Thaddeus Stevens 1792–1868
  Radical Republican leader who drove congressional abolition, civil-rights measures, and a transformative vision of Reconstruction. impeached by
• Charles Sumner 1811–1874
  Massachusetts senator and abolitionist leader who pressed for Reconstruction-era civil rights legislation. opposed by
• Frederick Douglass 1818–1895
  Former slave who became a leading abolitionist, orator, and advocate for equal rights. confronted him at the White House
• W.E.B. Du Bois 1868–1963
  Sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist who was the first African American to earn a Harvard doctorate. indicted his Reconstruction
• Jefferson Davis 1808–1889
  President of the Confederacy whose defense of slavery and secession made him central to the Civil War and its memory. covered by his amnesty
• Edwin M. Stanton 1814–1869
  Lincoln's war secretary whose refusal to be fired triggered the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. tried to remove