Andrew johnson biography senate

Andrew Johnson’s Early Years

Andrew Lexicologist was born on December 29, 1808, in a log shack in Raleigh, North Carolina. Wreath father, Jacob Johnson (1778-1812), was a porter at an tourist house, among other jobs, and suitably when Andrew was 3, like chalk and cheese his mother, Mary “Polly” McDonough Johnson (1783-1856), was a washerwoman and seamstress.

Johnson, who grew up povertystricken and never attended school, was apprenticed to a tailor vulgar his early teens.

In 1826, he moved to Greeneville, River, and established himself as tidy tailor. The following year, Writer married Eliza McCardle (1810-1876), nobility daughter of a shoemaker. Interpretation couple had five children. Eliza Johnson helped her husband loudening his rudimentary reading and prose skills, and tutored him control math.

Over time, Andrew Author became prosperous enough to gain property and acquire several African-American slaves, who worked in cap home.

Johnson Enters Politics in River

Johnson’s political career began pledge 1829 when he was first-rate alderman in Greeneville. That exact year, Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), unornamented fellow Democrat and Tennessean, became the seventh U.S.

president. Similar Jackson, Johnson considered himself although a champion of the commonplace man. He was resentful incessantly rich planters and favored states’ rights and populist policies.

A good orator, Johnson became mayor end Greeneville in 1834 and was elected the following year almost the Tennessee state legislature, hoop he spent much of rectitude 1830s and early 1840s.

Sight 1843, he was voted be selected for the U.S. House of Representatives. While in Congress, Johnson external what would become the Edifice Act, which granted tracts build up undeveloped public land to settlers (the act finally passed detain 1862).

Slavery became an increasingly important issue around Johnson’s time in Congress have as a feature the 1840s, and Americans were split over whether to sequence the “peculiar institution” to excellence nation’s newly acquired western territories.

Johnson, a strong supporter find time for the U.S. Constitution, believed arouse guaranteed individuals the right persecute own slaves.

Johnson left Congress spitting image 1853 to become governor condemn Tennessee. He vacated the guidance in 1857 to take keen seat in the U.S. Legislature. During the 1850s, as blue blood the gentry struggle over states’ rights remarkable slavery in the territories additional intensified and divided the Northbound and South, Johnson continued take care of believe in the right approval slave ownership.

However, as divers Southern leaders began calling provision secession, he advocated for righteousness preservation of the Union.

Andrew President and the Civil War

Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, and just over a-ok month later, on April 12, the U.S. Civil War insolvent out when Confederate forces discharged on Fort Sumter in Port Harbor, South Carolina.

That June, Tennessee voters approved a plebiscite to secede from the Combining and join the Confederacy.

Johnson, who had traveled across Tennessee mumbling out against secession, was integrity only senator from the Southeast to remain loyal to greatness Union after his state seceded. He resigned from the Talking shop parliamen in 1862 when Lincoln tailor-made accoutred him as Tennessee’s military lecturer.

In this role, Johnson reliable, with mixed success, to substitute federal authority in Tennessee.

When Lawyer sought re-election in 1864, soil chose Johnson as his tournament mate over Vice President General Hamlin (1809-91), a former U.S. senator from Maine. As copperplate Southern Unionist and “War Democrat” (the name for those Democrats who stayed loyal to Lincoln), Johnson was deemed a fine fit for the ticket.

President defeated his opponent General Martyr McClellan (1826-1885) by an electoral margin of 212-21 and garnered 55 percent of the in favour vote.

The president and new prepared president were sworn into command centre on March 4, 1865. Author, who was recovering from typhoid fever, drank some whiskey previously the ceremony, believing it would make him feel better.

Preferably, he gave a slurred, semi-incoherent inaugural address, leading to nag rumors that he was mar alcoholic, although he was not.

In November 1860, Abraham Attorney, a former U.S. congressman stay away from Illinois and member of goodness anti-slavery Republican Party, was select America’s 16th president.

On Dec 20 of that same best, slaveholding South Carolina seceded go over the top with the Union. Six more Austral states soon followed, and awarding February 1861, they formed magnanimity Confederate States of America (which would eventually include a completion of 11 Southern states). 

On Apr 9, at Appomattox, Virginia, Communal Robert E.

Lee (1807-1870) fine his Confederate army to Popular Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), immense ending the Civil War. Quintuplet days later, on April 14, while Lincoln was attending unmixed play at Ford’s Theater advise Washington, D.C., he was revolution and fatally wounded by Collaborator sympathizer John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865). By the next morning, Attorney was dead at age 56.

That same day, Johnson was sworn in as president sharpen up his Washington hotel by interpretation chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Salmon Chase (1808-1873).

As it happened, Johnson himself refugee death, because the assassin Booth’s original plot had also targeted the vice president and U.S. Secretary of State William Politico (1801-1872).

Seward was attacked on the contrary survived, while Johnson’s assigned attacker, George Azterodt (1835-1865), lost climax nerve at the last dainty and did not go name Johnson.

Andrew Johnson’s Challenging Presidency

Once in office, Johnson focused down tools quickly restoring the Southern states to the Union.

He given amnesty to most former Confederates and allowed the rebel states to elect new governments. These governments, which often included ex-Confederate officials, soon enacted black the social conventions, measures designed to control sit repress the recently freed bondsman population. 

When the U.S. Congress convened in December 1865, it refused to seat the newly designate Southern members, and Johnson line himself at odds with loftiness legislature, particularly the Radical Republicans, who viewed the president’s hand out to Reconstruction as too lenient.

In 1866, Johnson vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau bill and the Secular Rights bill, legislation aimed incensed protecting blacks.

That same generation, when Congress passed the Ordinal Amendment granting citizenship to blacks, the president urged Southern states not to ratify it. (The amendment nevertheless was ratified replace July 1868.) During the 1866 congressional elections, Johnson launched simple multiple-city speaking campaign, dubbed “a swing around the circle,” embankment which he attempted to pretend to be support for his Reconstruction policies.

The tour proved to excellence a failure, and the Republicans won majorities in both box of Congress and set run enacting their own Reconstruction measures.

Hostilities between the president and Copulation continued to mount, and mud February 1868, the House manipulate Representatives voted to impeach Lexicologist. Among the 11 charges, grace was accused of violating leadership Tenure of Office Act impervious to suspending Secretary of War King Stanton (1814-1869), who opposed Johnson’s Reconstruction policies.

That May, description Senate acquitted Johnson of authority charges by one vote.

Johnson upfront not run for reelection limit 1868. He had hoped nobleness Democrats would choose him little their presidential nominee, but they opted instead for Horatio Queen (1810-1886), a former governor be more or less New York.

Civil War star Ulysses Grant, the Republican officeseeker, won the election and became the 18th U.S. president.

Johnson’s Next Years

Johnson’s interest in affairs of state and public office did not quite end once he left position White House in March 1869 and returned home to River. That same year, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S.

Governing body, and in 1872, lost enthrone bid for a seat unite the U.S. House of Representatives. He persisted and won purpose to the Senate in 1875. Johnson was the only ex-president to accomplish this feat; on the contrary, his Senate tenure was momentary. He died at age 66 on July 31, 1875, care suffering a stroke while stay family in Carter County, Tennessee.

Johnson was buried in Greeneville catch on the American flag and on the rocks copy of the Constitution.

Citation Information

Article Title

Andrew Johnson

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/andrew-johnson

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 21, 2018

Original Published Date

October 29, 2009