What We Get Wrong - And Right - About Andrew Johnson, Part 1: His Career in Tennessee and His Rise to National Prominence

 

 

On January 21, 1861 Jefferson Davis, one of the Senators from Mississippi, rose in the Senate.

Davis had been a fixture in politics for more than fifteen years. He had been the son-in-law of the late President Zachary Taylor, had served as Frankin Pierce’s Secretary of War and had been favored by many in the party for the Democratic nomination for President in the previous election before the party had divided on sectional lines, assuring election to Abraham Lincoln. Davis had counseled moderation after the election but when Mississippi seceded on January 9^th, he felt he had no choice but to follow it.

He called it the ‘saddest day of his life’ as he offered his resignation and said he bore none of the Senators any personal ill will. The reaction in the Senate was divided on party lines with the Northern Democrats saying goodbye and Republicans being unmoved.

There was, however, one  Southern Democrat who was openly hostile and publicly savaged him, particularly given that Davis had graduated from West Point and has served in the Mexican War. “If I could no longer serve my mother country, I would return my sword to my scabbard,” this Democrat said. “I would never sheathe in the bosom of my mother. Never! Never!”

That man was Andrew Johnson and while Tennessee elected to leave the Union, Johnson chose to recognize Lincoln’s government and not the one that Davis would be elected to lead.

Seven years later Andrew Johnson would become the first President to face impeachment and would escape the two-thirds majority needed to be removed by a single vote.

 

While the standard for who the worst Presidents in history is ever evolving, there is a consensus among historians that among the worst and most ineffective we got came, not at all coincidentally, in the most turbulent and strife filled period in or nation’s history: the twenty years immediately preceding the Civil War and the period involving Reconstruction.

These distinctions are completely merited. From 1840 until 1860, America was in the midst of a national crisis, combined with a major fluctuation in its political system. One party was born and quickly died, third parties formed right and left, and one of them became the bulwark of our American system. Two of the major parties during this period – the Democrats and the Whigs – were so divided among sectional lines that coming to a consensus on the most explosive issue of the day was impossible. Both major parties needed multiple ballots to come up with nominees for their Presidency. Two of the men elected by the Whigs died in office; one within the first month, the other on the cusp of having to deal with a Compromise that he was opposed to morally. The former’s successor helped worsen the sectional crisis; the latter was condemned by  those in his own party for not helping one side.

Combined with the fact that no president between 1840 and 1860 served more than a single term or even sought renomination from their own party in the aftermath, at a time when the country needed strong leadership, it was guided by men the nation saw as weak and ineffectual – because, for the most part, they all were.

There is also great value that the immediate successors in the aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination  -until, say, the mid-1880s -  were also weak and ineffectual in a time of crisis. In the aftermath of war, America was similarly torn between healing and punishment, helping the freedman and blaming him, wanting full justice and just wanting the whole horrid mess to go away. Furthermore, immense corruption infiltrated the political system on every single level in figures of both parties – it wasn’t called ‘The Gilded Age’ by Twain as a compliment. Combined with a national depression that hit the nation in the 1870s as well as the unbridled rise of capitalism known as the robber barons,  politicians were bought and paid for every day. During this period there was another divide in one of the major parties as a reaction to the corruption at large.

That’s why, while I do acknowledge that Presidents are human and have to deal with the present judgment and not history’s, I am inclined to agree that almost every President during this period was among the worst or near the bottom in the judgment of history. That being said, I sometimes wonder if we have gone out of our way to unfairly malign Andrew Johnson.

I’ve written in passing about Johnson once before. I need to make it clear the man was probably not qualified to be President, and that his views were more in capable of being out of his desire to preserve the Union. But in recent years I’m come to a certain sympathy with Johnson that I don’t have with almost all the other Presidents of this era.

Johnson from the moment he became President was a doomed man by both political parties. The Republicans, led mostly by Radicals, hated him because he was a Democrat and was never onboard with their agenda for a post-Civil War America. Most of Lincoln’s cabinet distrusted him out of their own ambition or because they disagreed with his politics. The Democrats disliked him because he had chosen the enemy. He was in a situation where no one wanted him to succeed at the worst possible time in the aftermath of our nation’s greatest crisis.

Much as I think Kennedy is overrated by people because of his potential, I think Andrew Johnson was reviled – contemporarily and by history – because he was unable to succeed at what was surely impossible: creating the version of Reconstruction Lincoln had in mind. That Lincoln himself probably could not have done any better than what actually happened is something that has taken a long time for historians to realize: it’s worth noting that Johnson was damned at the time for sticking to the model of forgiveness for the South than Lincoln was leaning towards at the end of the war.

Our country has been facing its own existential crisis in the last several years, and too many are looking back in the past and saying with the evidence of hindsight what should have been done then would naturally fix what is wrong today. They took that approach in recent months when they said it was a mistake for Ford to pardon Nixon when it was the best thing for the nation to heal. It does not shock me now that many are arguing that the problems we are facing in the runup to next year’s election are, in part, because of actions that took place in the aftermath of the Civil War. Combined with the progressive attitude held by many that the best solution for so many of today’s problem would have been just to let the South secede and be done with it, I think it is critical to look at the complicated political career of Andrew Johnson. Yes, he was the first President to be impeached, but there is an argument – more convincing than in some others – that the reason to remove Johnson was far more due to political reasons then because of abuse of power.

There are clearly parallels today with what happened in his administration to what is going on right now. But the difference is Johnson spent much of his career in politics in isolation from both major parties and as a result, could never be fully embraced by either. We cannot even say with certainty which party he represented when he was President, which in itself was a subject of much of the distrust many held of him throughout his entire career.

So let’s start this series with Andrew Johnson’s rise to political prominence, and how he came to be Vice President in the first place. (I have dealt with this issue before in a previous article, but it’s worth repeating here if you haven’t read it.)

Andrew Johnson was the only President who never attended school in any form. He began his career in politics in Greenville, Tennessee as alderman and mayor before being elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1835. While he revered Andrew Jackson, he did not vote consistently either with the newly formed Whigs or the Democrats. He was defeated from his office in the House in 1837. He would not lose another election for nearly thirty years afterwards.

In 1840 Johnson was selected as part of Tennessee’s electoral college, and while Van Buren was trounced by William Henry Harrison that year, Greene County stayed Democratic. He was first elected to Congress in 1842, as a reaction to widespread dislike to John Tyler. Johnson was in a way a maverick in politics. While he believed like many Southern Democrats, the Constitution had no power to abolish slavery he had difficulty getting along with Democratic Presidents. He supported James Polk’s decision to fight the Mexican War and opposed the Wilmot Proviso, seen as a litmus test in Congress as to ones position on slavery. He also believed in the Homestead act.

Yet Johnson also believed in ideas that were progressive, almost radical for the 19^th century. During the 1849-1850 session, he pressed for resolutions for the popular election of Senators, the President by popular vote, and to limit the tenure of Federal judges to twelve years. All were defeated.

In 1852, Johnson’s district was redrawn by the Whigs and he did not seek reelection to Congress. The following year, he ran for Governor of Tennessee, which the Whigs had dominated the past two elections and still controlled the state legislature. Though Johnson won election, he had little power: he could propose legislation but not veto and most appointments were made by the Whig-controlled legislature.  He managed to establish an agency to provide uniformity of weights and measures, found Tennessee’s public library and it’s first public school system.

By the time Johnson ran for reelection in 1855, the Whigs were in the midst of their national decline. However, they were still in control of Tennessee. The major issues of the campaign were slavery, temperance and the nativist position of the Know-Nothing Party. Johnson only favored the first; his opponent was equivocal on the other two. Johnson won in what was considered an upset.

When the election of 1856 approached, Johnson was named a ‘favorite son’ of Tennessee by the Democrats but had no real chance of nomination at the convention. Reluctantly he supported the ticket of James Buchanan and John C. Breckenridge. Johnson was right to distrust both men: Buchanan is by far the worst President of all time and Breckenridge, a Southern Democrat, would leave the Union along with the south.

But in the 1857 state legislative campaign. Johnson was named to the Senate by Tennessee Democrats. Johnson was popular among the small farmers and tradesmen who made up Tennessee’s electorate and even the planters and lawyers of the higher class admired him as a vote getter.

As the secession crisis gathered steam Johnson, who was wealthy and a slave owner was an advocate in the strongest sense of the Dred Scott decision. He had hoped to be a compromise candidate in 1860 as the Democratic Party, tore itself to shreds and split between the South and North, with the latter nominating Breckenridge for President and the latter nominating Stephen Douglas.

Despite his feelings on slavery, Johnson believed deeply in the union. Despite his support of Breckenridge for President, when Lincoln was elected he took to the Senate floor and gave a speech:

“I will not give up this government…No I intend to stand by it…and I invite every man who is a patriot to rally around the altar of our common country… and swear by our God, and all that is sacred and holy, that the Constitution shall be saved, and the union preserved.”

Two points. Johnson had alienated Southern leaders including Jefferson Davis by this point, so if he had back the Tennessean he would have had little power in the Confederacy. But he was also a savvy political mind. Lincoln had only received forty percent of the popular vote and he know if the South stayed in the Union, they would still have enough votes in the Senate to have their interests heard out by Lincoln.  The South chose not listen. Furthermore Johnson’s belied in the Union was absolutely sincere, something most of his fellow Southerners did not accept.

Johnson went home after his state took up secession. The question was put to a popular vote and a referendum. Johnson chose to campaign against both questions. During the campaign his life was threatened and there were actual assaults on him. He frequently campaigned with a gun on the lectern in front of him. When the vote took place, Tennessee would join the Confederacy in June of 1861. Certain he would be killed if he stayed, he fled through the Cumberland Gap, and he narrowly escaped with his life.

Johnson was the only member from a seceded state to remain in the Senate, and therefore early in the war had Lincoln’s ear. During Congressional recesses he would go to Kentucky and Ohio, vainly trying to convince any Union commander who would listen to conduct an operation into East Tennessee.

Johnson had arguably the safest congressional seat of any elected official, but in March of 1862 he took up an even more important post.  With much of the central and western parts of Tennessee recovered, Lincoln chose to use his power as commander-in-chief to appoint military governors over Southern territory the Union now controlled. Johnson was confirmed  by the Senate and given the rank of brigadier general. This came at a personal cost: his land and slaves were confiscated by the Confederacy and his home was made a military hospital.

After he departed the Senate, the Homestead Bill which had been his passion project since he had come to Congress was finally enacted. Along with legislation for land grant college and the transcontinental railroad, the Homestead bill is one of the major factors in the opening of the West to settlement.

As military governor, Johnson demanded loyalty oaths from public officials and shut down state newspapers run by Confederate sympathizers. Johnson and his family were in constant danger from the Confederacy in Nashville, often by cavalry raid by Nathan Bedford Forest. It wasn’t until the Confederate defeat at Murfreesboro in early 1863 that the city and Eastern Tennessee were back in Union hands.

When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect that year, Lincoln exempted Tennessee at the request of Johnson. However, despite his personal feelings, he finally realized that slavery had to end to preserve the Union. “If the institution of slavery…seeks to overthrow it(the Government) then the government has a clear right to destroy it. Reluctantly he supported the efforts to enlist former slaves into the Union Army, though eventually he would be responsible for the recruitment of nearly 20,000 black soldier to serve the Union.

Had Johnson’s tenure of public life simply ended at that point,  I imagine history would think of him more kindly. For all the positions he held that were clearly bigoted, his decision to stay with the Union when every other member of the Senate from the South was a profile in courage – and not merely political. Johnson endured any number of threats to his life both as Senator and as the War Governor to Tennessee, and constantly had the travel both under guard and armed himself. His sponsorship of The Homestead Act is a significant piece of legislation in the post-Civil War error and he almost never receives any credit for it. In a turbulent time for a state that could not have been more important to both sides, his belief that it needed to remain in the Union was a critical factor.

In the next article in this series, I will deal with the circumstances that led to Andrew Johnson becoming Lincoln’s Vice President and why it may have been as vital to the war effort politically in 1864 as any actions that took place on the battlefield.