Profile of President Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States (1865–1869). He assumed the presidency following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, inheriting the monumental task of reuniting the country after the Civil War.

He was a lifelong Democrat from Tennessee who was placed on Lincoln's 1864 "National Union" ticket to project bipartisan unity. He was the only Southern senator who refused to secede with his state when the Civil War began.

His presidency is widely regarded as a catastrophic failure. Johnson's deeply racist vision for Reconstruction allowed former Confederates to return to power and implement oppressive "Black Codes," essentially attempting to re-enslave the newly freed population in all but name.

He engaged in an unprecedented, bitter political war with the "Radical Republicans" in Congress. Johnson aggressively vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, leading Congress to override his vetoes—the first time in American history that Congress overrode a President on major legislation.

He was the first U.S. President to be impeached. After repeatedly clashing with Congress, Johnson violated the newly passed Tenure of Office Act by firing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. He was impeached by the House but survived conviction in the Senate by a single vote.

Despite his disastrous domestic legacy, his administration did achieve one massive foreign policy victory: Secretary of State William Seward's purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867 for $7.2 million.

"He inherited the victory of the Civil War and immediately surrendered the peace. Andrew Johnson's disastrous presidency allowed white supremacy to re-entrench itself in the South, delaying civil rights for a century."

Day 59 | Andrew Johnson: The Sabotage of Reconstruction

If Abraham Lincoln’s presidency represents the greatest triumph of the American experiment, Andrew Johnson’s presidency represents its most tragic missed opportunity. Born into severe poverty in North Carolina in 1808, Johnson never attended a day of school in his life. He worked as a tailor’s apprentice before running away to Tennessee, where his wife taught him how to read and write. Entering politics as a Jacksonian Democrat, Johnson possessed a furious, lifelong hatred of the wealthy, aristocratic Southern planter class. Yet, despite his hatred for the Southern elites, he was a staunch white supremacist who held a deep hostility toward the abolition of slavery.

When the Civil War erupted, Johnson was serving as a U.S. Senator from Tennessee. He became the only Southern senator to remain loyal to the Union, a courageous stance that made him a hero in the North and a traitor in the South. To send a message of national unity in the 1864 election, Lincoln’s Republican Party temporarily rebranded as the "National Union Party" and selected the War Democrat Johnson as the vice-presidential nominee. It was a purely political marriage of convenience that became a national nightmare when John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln just weeks into their second term.

Taking the oath of office in April 1865, Johnson initially promised to hang Confederate traitors, delighting the "Radical Republicans" in Congress who wanted to completely rebuild the Southern social order. But as soon as Congress went into recess, Johnson executed a staggering political betrayal. Operating under his own executive authority, he implemented "Presidential Reconstruction." He granted sweeping pardons to thousands of wealthy former Confederates, returning their confiscated land and allowing the very men who had just waged a treasonous war to retake control of Southern state governments.

Under Johnson's protection, the South immediately implemented "Black Codes," brutal laws designed to strip the newly freed African American population of their basic human rights, mobility, and econom...