Andrew Johnson

A Jacksonian Democrat, he rose through local offices, the Tennessee legislature, the U.S. House, the governorship, and the U.S. Senate. During the Civil War he remained the only Southern senator loyal to the Union and later served as Lincoln’s military governor of Tennessee. Chosen as Lincoln’s running mate in 1864, he became President after Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865.

Johnson’s lenient Reconstruction policies—rapid restoration of the Southern states with limited protections for the newly freed people—brought him into bitter conflict with the Radical Republicans in Congress. His vetoes of civil rights measures, opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment, and removal of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton led to his impeachment in 1868, the first of a U.S. president. Acquitted by a single vote in the Senate, he left office in 1869, later returned briefly to the Senate, and died in 1875.

The book examines Johnson’s self-made rise, his stubborn principles, his handling of Reconstruction, the constitutional drama of his impeachment, and his lasting historical reputation as one of the least successful presidents, whose decisions helped shape the long aftermath of emancipation and the Civil War.