Andrew Johnson's main legacy was struggle and controversy. He was a southern Democrat. He supported slavery, but did not support the Confederacy. He was only Southern senator who kept his seat after the southern states seceded, and Abraham Lincoln appointed him military governor of the rebel state of Tennessee. In his bid for a second term, Lincoln decided to run as a not as a Republican, but in the interests of national unity on a new Union Party ticket. Lincoln chose Johnson as his running mate. He was the first president to be impeached.
Andrew Johnson was in over his head as our second highest elected figure. He lacked tact, political skill, and had absolutely nothing in common with the snooty, well-educated Republicans who surrounded Lincoln. The imperious Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War could not abide Johnson, and their mutual animosity would one day lead to Johnson's impeachment.
Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1808 of a poor family, Johnson was apprenticed as a tailor at the age of 10. He moved to Tennessee in 1826 and one year later he married Eliza McCardle, who gave her illiterate husband the only education he had had up to that time by teaching him to read and write.
Johnson enjoyed success in his Tennessee public life. He held a seat in the Tennessee state legislature and senator, eventually serving ten years as a U.S. congressman. Later as governor of Tennessee from 1853 to 1857, his legislature voted him into the U.S. Senate. In 1865, having just moved into his hotel suite reserved for the Vice President, Johnson probably resigned himself to the obscurity of American vice presidents, his vice presidency being more so in that he was not in the same political party of the President.
Everything changed when after only weeks into his second term Lincoln was assassinated by southern sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth. With the Civil War over and the South in ruins, Johnson inherited the unresolved mess of reconstruction. It was Lincoln's wish that the south be gently ushered back to full participation in the national government. Johnson, however, took a rather more direct measure. On May 29,1865, while Congress was out of session, Johnson issued a proclamation of amnesty, welcoming the seceded southern states back to the union, no strings attached.
Johnson's amnesty proclamation outraged Radical Republicans in Lincoln's cabinet, the Senate and the House. The Republicans had other plans for their continued domination of Congress and their punitive rule of the defeated south. The Radical Republicans pulled out all the stops in the following year's mid-term elections, viciously attacking President Johnson's reconstruction intentions. They were successful. The newly elected congress returned with a two-thirds Republican majority.
Thus began a power struggle between the President and his Radical Republican enemies in the Congress. In March of 1867, Congress passed a radical and punitive southern Reconstruction Act. Adding insult to injury, over presidential veto, Congress passed a "Tenure of Office Act" forbidding the President to dismiss certain political office holders who were originally confirmed by the Senate.
Johnson believed the Tenure of Office Act was an unconstitutional infringement on the executive privilege. He decided to fire Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. The senate, citing the new law, voted against removal of Stanton. Johnson nevertheless demanded Stanton's resignation, but Stanton held out when he heard of impending impeachment proceedings against the president.
As stated previously, Andrew Johnson was not a personable and sympathetic character. As president, he was stubborn and imperious and lacked the will and ability to compromise with his enemies. His harsh and vindictive treatment by the Congress nevertheless won him some sympathy with the public. He was spared the disgrace of being thrown out of office by a single vote.
Johnson served out the remainder of his term as a do-nothing lame duck. He failed to win the Democratic nomination in the 1870 presidential election, but returned to the U.S. Senate in 1874. Johnson held his U.S. Senate seat for just one session. He died of a stroke in 1875.As a footnote to Johnson's impeachment, the "Tenure of Office Act" was never declared unconstitutional. At the urging of a succession of U.S. Presidents, Congress finally repealed the act in 1887 during Grover Cleveland's presidency.