We're now on the 17th day of my daily presidents threads celebrating the 250th anniversary of the USA.Today we have Andrew Johnson (12/29/1808 - 7/31/1875), who served as president from 1865 to 1868, finishing out Lincoln's term after his assassination. He prior had served as a senator, representative, and governor of Tennessee. He was the first president to be impeached, and only survived impeachment (35 - 19) by one vote, the closest of any president so far.Notable actions or events during his presidency include Reconstruction, the undermining of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the 14th Amendment, the Tenure of Office Act, the Purchase of Alaska, and the Second Franco-Mexican war, What do you think of the angry drunk?
>>18513625Principled but not very smart guy with horrible political judgement and he was probably in a hopeless situation as an unelected Southerner and Democrat president in a Republican administration. He never had any real authority as chief executive and Edwin Stanton was the real president during his administration.
>Johnson was born in North Carolina in 1808 but moved to Tennessee as a young man. He grew up in poverty and was illiterate until age 16 when his schoolteacher and future wife taught him to read and write. Johnson eventually emerged as a stump speaker who championed the interests of the lower classes in his state against the plantation elites--more than a few times, his speeches were punctuated with the sound of a gun being cocked.>He was elected to the Senate in 1858 and during the Civil War gained notoriety for refusing to secede along with his state. Lincoln rewarded Johnson by making him war governor of occupied Tennessee, which he did ably in a perilous situation, and in 1864 was put on the Republican ticket as vice president as a bipartisan gesture. But Johnson was ill-equipped for the presidency, a Southerner who did not understand the North, a Democrat in a Republican administration, and some kind of disaster was bound to result.
>>18513625The guy's principle deficit was his Southern cracker/white trash background, which was something he also wore as a badge of honor. He didn't really change Lincoln's main postwar program that much, but his being a Democrat obviously resulted in a clash with the Cabinet and Congress, and unlike Lincoln he had horrible political skills and treated everything as a drunken fistfight. Johnson was neither fish nor fowl and managed to get on everyone's bad side, he earned the enmity of the South as a Unionist and for his lifelong hostility to the planter class, and the enmity of the North for being a states rights Democrat who had no interest in black freedom.
>>18513689Lincoln had excellent political skills and wanted to bridge the sectional chasm. Johnson was not all that, he had a super-combative personality and always saw the poorer whites in the South as the real oppressed class rather than the blacks.
>>18513625Johnson was put on the ticket entirely to get Northern Democrats to vote for Lincoln, nobody considered him presidential material and the idea of Lincoln dying in office was apparently never considered either. He couldn't work with Republican Congressmen, tried working with Democrats instead, but the Republicans had a veto-proof majority. The Democrats didn't entirely trust him for having run on Lincoln's ticket and the Republicans were angered when he kept vetoing Reconstruction legislation.
>>18513625He was not a good president. He failed. But I do not think he is worse than Buchanan.And he did stand up to the new at the time Tenure of Office Act. The Radical Republicans impeached him for removing the Sec. of War from his cabinet because of the act. (I think Johnson was the main target of the act)But to be constitutional the act would have required a constitutional amendment. (I think the Supreme Court eventually confirmed that) Basically, Congress impeached him for defending the Constitution (separation of powers) because their act was unconstitutional. (or so Johnson argued) iirc Johnson was saved from conviction by one vote in the Senate which was more than 2/3 Republican at the time.I don't think anything changes if someone other than Johnson had been Lincoln's VP and became President. The North was never willing to do what it would take to make Reconstruction succeed. As hard as Grant tried, he failed. I doubt even Lincoln would have success if he had lived. (though his idea for Reconstruction may have significantly differed from the Radical Republican approach?) It would have taken a massive military presence in the South with an unknown financial cost. How long would that have been supported?
He was bad but to pin the failure of Reconstruction on him is ahistorical and extremely lazy thinking imo.
>>18513756>>18513625Andrew Johnson's nextHe had some slight defectsCongress each would impeach.And so the country now elects...
>>18513625Everyone said he's the worst so I'll play devils advocate. Unfairly negative. He earned massive points for vetoing postwar military occupation, vetoing the 14th Amendment, firing Edwin Stanton, and granting Confederate amnesty. His only major deductions were the costly Alaska purchase and interfering with the French in Mexico. If you value strict constitutional limits over centralized state building, his bad reputation is just textbook propaganda.
Johnson’s handling of the start of Reconstruction is, in my opinion, an even bigger failure, tacked onto a president with a lot more modest successes. In large part because Johnson was also notoriously awful to work with even outside of political/ideological issues, being infamous for getting into long shouting matches with his cabinet and Congress.All of that said, I do agree with that take that even though Johnson is the single worst president who is on-topic for /his/ it’s much more of a tragedy than anything. Had he had the exact same series of accomplishments and failures during a presidential term 15-20 years later, he probably would have been considered middling or even slightly above average. But his mishandling of Reconstruction from the beginning set the stage for the entire next century of racial politics (at minimum), and in the worst ways.
