Johnson, Andrew (Administration)

ANDREW JOHNSON HAD one of the strangest career paths to the U.S. presidency. As a senator for Tennessee, he was the only southern senator to refuse to accept his state's vote of secession and remained in the U.S. Senate. When Union troops took control of most of Tennessee in 1862, Lincoln appointed him military governor of the state. In 1864, Republican President Abraham Lincoln selected him as vice president, primarily to reach out to southerners and bring them back into the Union.

As a southern Democrat, most of the Republican Congress was already quite hostile to the new vice president. He did not help matters at his inauguration. He was given whiskey to help with a cold. His inaugural address came across as drunken and incoherent. The man who rarely touched alcohol got an instant reputation in Washington as an incompetent drunkard.

On April 15, 1865, Lincoln died from an assassin's bullet, only a few weeks into his second term. There has probably never been a more hostile relationship between Congress and a president from the outset, than when Johnson ascended to the presidency.

Johnson generally shared Lincoln's view that southerners should not be punished for the war. Rather the government should reach out to southerners to rebuild the Union and rekindle southern loyalty. Lincoln might have been able to convince the Radical Republican Congress to do this. Because he had led the nation through the war, he had an established reputation for being tough when necessary. As the leader of the Republican Party, he was in a good position to convince [Page 597]his fellow Republicans to follow his policies. By contrast, Johnson was a southern Democrat. His efforts for southern conciliation were viewed at best as a form of surrender in the face of victory. Others viewed his actions as an outright betrayal of those who had fought for the Union. Further, Lincoln's assassination had only increased congressional hostility and a demand for retribution against the south.

Johnson had always been a strict constructionist who believed in limited government. Although he had accepted emancipation, he wanted to leave it up to the states to decide how to treat the new freedmen. He saw military occupation of the south as a temporary measure and wanted to return to democratic government as soon as possible. Although southerners, both black and white, faced great poverty, Johnson believed that local solutions once government was restored were the best way to resolve the problems.

Johnson's critics pointed out that his policies left the new freedmen at the mercy of a hostile white majority, and that quick removal of the military would turn these states back to people who had been traitors just a few years earlier. The Radical Republicans who dominated both houses of Congress sought to maintain military dictatorship over the southern states, as both punishment for the war and to protect the newly freed slaves from mistreatment.

Johnson opposed almost all congressional measures designed to protect the rights of blacks, including the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed equal rights to the newly freed slaves. He also opposed extended military occupation. The Congress overruled most of his vetoes and the relationship between Congress and the White House remained hostile. In 1867 Congress also passed laws, over Johnson's veto, disbanding the civilian governments that Johnson had established in the south, thus retaining military authority over the region.

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