Remembering Andrew Johnson
On July 31, 1875 (149 years ago today) Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States, died at his home in Elizabethton, Tennessee at the age of 66. He died as the result of a stroke.
Johnson's presidency is perhaps best encapsulated in this summary of his biography in the American Presidents Series by Harvard professor Annette Gordon-Reid:
"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, has written about 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."
Johnson almost didn't become President. He was supposed to be assassinated on the same night as Lincoln, but he escaped attack when his would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, failed to go through with the plan and got drunk instead. Johnson had been nominated as the vice presidential candidate in 1864 on the National Union Party ticket as part of Lincoln's plan to show unity and to show that he was first and foremost concerned with preserving the union, even above ending slavery. Johnson was a pro-union man, and remained one even after the war began. But he was also in favor of slavery. He and Lincoln were elected in 1864, inaugurated in early 1865 (Johnson got drunk at his inauguration according to many reports) and a month later Johnson assumed the presidency upon Lincoln's assassination.
As president, Johnson implemented his own form of Presidential Reconstruction, a series of proclamations directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections to re-form their civil governments. It wasn't the reconstruction that Lincoln had articulated and certainly not the one the abolitionist "Radical Republicans" had in mind. These proclamations along with Johnson's rush to bring the former Confederate states back into the union without due regard for freedmen's rights and his vetoes of civil rights bills embroiled him in a bitter dispute with the Radical Republicans who became infuriated with Johnson's lenient policies. The Radicals in the House of Representatives impeached him in 1868 (a first for a U.S. president), charging him with violating the Tenure of Office Act, when he sought to remove his Secretary of War without Senate approval. His trial in the Senate ended in an acquittal by a single vote.
After his term as President ended, Johnson traveled extensively throughout the country to reiterate his views, especially on reconstruction. He campaigned for re-election to the U.S. Senate in 1869, but lost by a narrow margin. In 1872 he ran for election to fill Tennessee's new at-large seat in the House of Representatives. He lost in this election as well. In 1873 Johnson contracted cholera during an epidemic but soon recovered. He also suffered financial losses of about half of his assets when the First National Bank went under. In 1874, the Tennessee legislature elected him over five other candidates to the U.S. Senate. In his first and last speech in the Senate, Johnson spoke eloquently in opposition to President Ulysses Grant's military intervention between rival governments in Louisiana. He is the only former president to serve in the Senate after serving as president.
During a Congressional recess, Johnson died from a stroke near Elizabethton, Tennessee, on July 31, 1875. When he was buried, his body wrapped in an American flag and a copy of the U.S. Constitution was placed under his head, according to his wishes.
Andrew Johnson National Historic Site is located in Greeneville, Tennessee, and maintained by the National Park Service. The site includes two of Johnson's homes, his tailor shop, and his grave site within the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery. The cemetery also includes the interments of Johnson's wife, Eliza McCardle Johnson, and son Brigadier General Robert Johnson. The site was designated a U.S. National Monument in 1935 and redesignated a National Historic Site on December 11, 1963.
Today the site totals sixteen acres in area, and has three separate units. These units are the Andrew Johnson Visitor Complex, the Andrew Johnson Homestead, and the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery. Visitors receive a copy of the admission ticket to Johnson's impeachment hearing. Every year on May 26, visitors vote on whether or not Johnson should have been removed from office. The Andrew Johnson Visitor Complex consists of the visitor's center, the museum, and Andrew Johnson's tailor shop. The visitor center shows a 13.5 minute film about Johnson and his time in Greeneville. The one-story/one room tailor shop remains much as it was in Andrew Johnson's day. It is surrounded by a memorial building built by the state of Tennessee in 1923 to prevent wear and tear upon the tailor shop.
The Andrew Johnson Homestead is maintained to look as it did when Andrew Johnson and his wife lived there from 1869 to 1875. Johnson had purchased the home in 1851. During the war years, the house was occupied by soldiers. It required renovations when the family returned to the house after Johnson's leaving the presidency in 1869. It is a Greek Revival two-story brick house.
The Andrew Johnson National Cemetery was established in 1906. Andrew Johnson owned twenty-three acres outside Greeneville on Signal Hill. Upon his death in 1875, Johnson was buried on the property. On June 5, 1878, the city erected a 28-foot marble statue in his honor by Johnson's grave. The monument was considered so dominant that the hill's name was changed to "Monument Hill". Johnson's daughter Martha Johnson Patterson, who inherited the property, willed on September 2, 1898 that the land become a park. She further pushed in 1900 to make the site a national cemetery, so that instead of the Johnson family's maintaining it, the federal government would. The United States Congress chose to make the site a National Cemetery in 1906, and by 1908 the United States War Department took control of it. On May 23, 1942 control of the cemetery was shifted to the National Park Service.