Sparks Commentary: Andrew Johnson: The man who botched Reconstruction

An anecdote about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth …

On April 14th, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Lincoln was at the height of his glory, having just won the American Civil War. Lincoln had just begun his second term a month earlier. But John Wilkes Booth had robbed Lincoln of the opportunity to finish out his second term. As a Confederate sympathizer, Booth hated Lincoln’s support for African American civil rights, and thus shot the President of the United States at Ford’s Theatre. Booth had also wanted to kill the vice president, a relative unknown named Andrew Johnson. Booth then believed that the vice president would be at Kirkwood House while he (Booth) was surreptitiously shooting the president at Ford’s Theatre. Thus, Booth had assigned George Atzerodt to kill Johnson at Kirkwood House. As Wikipedia puts it, “Atzerodt was to go to Johnson's room at 10:15 pm and shoot him.[footnote] On April 14, Atzerodt rented the room directly above Johnson's; the next day, he arrived there at the appointed time and, carrying a gun and knife, went to the bar downstairs, where he asked the bartender about Johnson's character and behavior. He eventually became drunk and wandered off through the streets, tossing his knife away at some point. He made his way to the Pennsylvania House Hotel by 2 am, where he obtained a room and went to sleep.[footnotes]” (Source: Their page on the “Assassination of Abraham Lincoln”)

George Atzerodt, the man whom John Wilkes Booth had tasked with killing Andrew Johnson

… and the related attempt by one of his co-conspirators to kill Andrew Johnson

Wikipedia then notes that “Earlier in the day, Booth had stopped by the Kirkwood House and left a note for Johnson: ‘I don't wish to disturb you. Are you at home? J. Wilkes Booth.’[footnote] One theory holds that Booth was trying to find out whether Johnson was expected at the Kirkwood that night;[footnote] another holds that Booth, concerned that Atzerodt would fail to kill Johnson, intended the note to implicate Johnson in the conspiracy.” (Source: Same as above) Whatever Booth’s reasons, it is clear that George Atzerodt had failed to kill Andrew Johnson. It is also clear that George Atzerodt was subsequently caught, and tried by a military tribunal. He was later hanged, along with three others, for the conspiracy to kill these public officials. Booth himself had died in an earlier firefight with federal troops. But Andrew Johnson was still alive. Thus, when Abraham Lincoln died in the White House on April 15th, Andrew Johnson became the 17th President of the United States. Fortunately for Andrew Johnson, he was never much suspected of being involved in the assassination plot – nor should he have been, since he was innocent of that. And he wisely allowed the conspirators to be hanged – including George Atzerodt, the man whom Booth had tasked with killing Andrew Johnson. But only three years later, President Johnson would become the first president to be impeached. How did all of this happen? And where did this man come from? That is what this post will be trying to explain.

Andrew Johnson

Some background on Andrew Johnson, who had been a pro-Union Southerner

Andrew Johnson was born in 1808 in North Carolina, which would later become a Confederate state. Later on, Andrew Johnson moved to Tennessee, which would also become a Confederate state. In fact, Andrew Johnson’s Southern roots were part of what eventually placed him on Abraham Lincoln’s presidential ticket in 1864. Johnson was meant to appeal to Southern Unionists, and help Lincoln’s campaign by so doing. Andrew Johnson purchased his first slave in 1843, when Johnson was still in his thirties. Johnson also served as a Tennessee state politician, and as a United States Representative from Tennessee. Johnson later served as the Governor of Tennessee, and as a United States Senator from Tennessee. In some of these positions, he had been an Independent; in others, a Democrat, and in others, a member of the “Working Man’s Party.” But, in 1860, the Republican Abraham Lincoln initially picked someone else as his running mate. That is, Hannibal Hamlin, not Andrew Johnson, would eventually serve as the vice president during Lincoln’s first term of office. Andrew Johnson seems not even to have been considered for the job back in 1860. Rather, Hannibal Hamlin was instead chosen because he was a New Englander, in contrast to the Northwestern Lincoln. However, Andrew Johnson would again rise to prominence, when the Civil War began. As Wikipedia notes, Johnson was “the only sitting senator from a Confederate state who did not resign his seat upon learning of his state's secession.” (Source: Their page on “Andrew Johnson”) In 1862, President Lincoln chose Andrew Johnson to be his military governor of Tennessee. By then, Tennessee was fighting for the Confederacy, so Lincoln thus chose the state’s former governor to restore Union (at that time, Northern rule) to the state. In 1864, President Lincoln was running for a second term, against the anti-war candidate George McClellan. Union victory depended upon the president’s re-election. But, as mentioned above, Lincoln now wanted to appeal to Southern Unionists. Thus, Lincoln dropped Hannibal Hamlin from his presidential ticket, and instead turned to Andrew Johnson as his new running mate. To make a long story short, Lincoln was elected as a Republican, making Andrew Johnson his new vice president. They were both then part of the “National Union Party,” which then included Lincoln’s Republicans. And, when Lincoln was assassinated one month into his second term, Andrew Johnson then succeeded him as president in 1865.

Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, 1865

Would Abraham Lincoln have handled Reconstruction differently than Andrew Johnson?

We can only speculate as to how Abraham Lincoln would have handled the postwar Reconstruction. But there are a few clues, from a speech that Lincoln gave shortly before he was murdered. Lincoln intended to be fairly lenient with the South, and gave a detailed preliminary plan for postwar Reconstruction. The North had just won the Civil War, so the crowd probably then expected Lincoln to celebrate the moment with a victory speech. This carefully reasoned analysis of “Reconstruction” wasn’t exactly what the crowd wanted. But, sadly, Lincoln never got the opportunity to follow through on these postwar plans – because he was murdered by John Wilkes Booth less than a week later. The task instead fell to his Southern-born successor Andrew Johnson. We know that Andrew Johnson had stayed loyal to the Union, and that he (at times) had even opposed slavery. This is surprising, because he had convinced President Lincoln to postpone the abolition of slavery in Confederate Tennessee. But we also know that, despite all of these things, Andrew Johnson was a committed racist. He did not want to see racial equality enacted in this country. On the other hand, he was also angry with the South for having rebelled against the Union, and endeavored to punish them for this violent rebellion in the years that followed. Thus, strangely enough, we have reason to believe that his Reconstruction policies were harsher than Lincoln’s would have been. As a Southern Unionist, he hated the Confederates even more than the Northerners did. Therefore, what we get from Andrew Johnson is a strange combination of anti-Confederate and anti-Black feelings, and a Reconstruction policy based on both of these antipathies.

Illustration of Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial in the Senate

Only three years after taking office, Johnson became the first president to be impeached

The degree of Andrew Johnson’s anti-Black feelings offended Northerners, and his anti-Confederate feelings likewise offended Southerners. In 1866, he fully broke with the Republicans. Eventually, he would also break with the broader “National Union Party,” and return to being a Democrat while he was still president. Thus, Andrew Johnson seems to have pleased practically no one as president. In 1868, Andrew Johnson then became the first president to be impeached. This was for alleged “high crimes and misdemeanors.” As Wikipedia puts it, these allegations were afterwards specified in “eleven articles of impeachment adopted by the House on March 2 and 3, 1868. The primary charge against Johnson was that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act. Specifically, that he had acted to remove from office Edwin Stanton and to replace him with Brevet Major General Lorenzo Thomas as secretary of war ad interim. The Tenure of Office Act had been passed by Congress in March 1867 over Johnson's veto with the primary intent of protecting Stanton from being fired without the Senate's consent. Stanton often sided with the Radical Republican faction and did not have a good relationship with Johnson.” (Source: Their page on the “Impeachment of Andrew Johnson”) Ulysses S. Grant, then the Commanding General of the U.S. Army, had briefly served as the Acting Secretary of War. When Edwin Stanton was forced to resign, Stanton was then formally replaced by John Schofield. But back to the impeachment. Contrary to popular myths about impeachment, presidents are not “automatically” removed when they are impeached by the House of Representatives. They also have to be convicted by the Senate, before this removal is constitutionally allowed to take place. Andrew Johnson was indeed impeached by the House, and he was almost convicted by the required two-thirds majority in the Senate. But “almost” is the operative word here, because his opponents fell one vote short of the necessary two-thirds majority. Thus, Johnson remained in office anyway, but his presidency was effectively dead at that point. Johnson sought re-election at the 1868 Democratic National Convention – not Republican, but Democratic. But Horatio Seymour was instead nominated as the Democratic candidate. And, in the end, the election went to his former allies, the Republicans. The Northern general Ulysses S. Grant succeeded Andrew Johnson as the new president. Thus, the task of Reconstruction passed from Andrew Johnson to General Ulysses S. Grant.

Andrew Johnson

Conclusion: Andrew Johnson was a terrible president, and badly botched Reconstruction

In so many ways, Andrew Johnson thus seems to have been a terrible president. In his brief term, he seems to have alienated just about everyone. Although Andrew Johnson’s presidency survived the high-profile attempt to remove him from office, it was just one more nail in his political coffin. Andrew Johnson served less than one term as president, and was instead forced to return to the Senate – the only person ever to have done so after serving as president. Andrew Johnson died of a stroke in 1875, while his successor Ulysses S. Grant was still president. By contrast, Ulysses S. Grant served out two full terms (not one, but two), and left office the following year in 1876. Andrew Johnson is today partly remembered as “the man who botched Reconstruction,” and he deserves this reputation. He is also remembered as the man who succeeded Abraham Lincoln upon his assassination, and also as the first president to be impeached. Nonetheless, Andrew Johnson became little more than a footnote to President Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. This is understandable, because Johnson isn’t one of the more famous presidents in American history. But this story left its mark upon the story of postwar Reconstruction, and of the United States more generally.

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The Presidents