Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 - July 31, 1875) was the 17th (1865-1869) President of the United States. He became President when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Johnson presided over the Reconstruction of the United States following the American Civil War.

Johnson's conciliatory policies towards the defeated rebels and his vetoes of civil rights bills embroiled him in a bitter dispute with the radical faction of Congress, leading the House of Representatives to impeach him in 1868, becoming the first President to be impeached. He was subsequently acquitted by a single vote in the Senate.

Johnson was a Representative and a Senator from Tennessee and a Vice President and 17th President of the United States. He was born in Raleigh, North Carolina on December 29, 1808. He was self-educated. At the age of 13 he was apprenticed to a tailor. He moved to Tennessee in 1826, where he continued his employment as a tailor. He served as an alderman in Greeneville, Tennessee from 1828 to 1830, and mayor of Greeneville from 1834 to 1838. He was a member of the State house of representatives from 1835 to 1837 and 1839 to 1841. He was elected to the State senate in 1841, and elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-eighth and to the four succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1843 to March 3, 1853. He was chairman of the Committee on Public Expenditures (Thirty-first and Thirty-second Congresses).

Johnson did not seek renomination, having become a gubernatorial candidate. He was Governor of Tennessee from 1853 to 1857, and was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate and served from October 8, 1857 to March 4, 1862, when he resigned. He was chairman of the Committee to Audit and Control the Contingent Expense (Thirty-sixth Congress). Johnson was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as Military Governor of Tennessee in 1862. He was elected Vice President of the United States on the Republican ticket headed by Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and was inaugurated March 4, 1865. He became President of the United States on April 15, 1865, upon the death of Abraham Lincoln.

Wide differences arising between the President and the Congress, a resolution for his impeachment passed the House of Representatives February 24, 1868. On March 5, 1868 a court of impeachment was organized in the United States Senate to hear charges against the President. Eleven articles were set out in the resolution and the trial before the Senate lasted three months, at the conclusion of which he was acquitted (May 16, 1868) by a vote of thirty-five for conviction to nineteen for acquittal, the necessary two-thirds vote for impeachment not having been obtained. He retired to his home in Tennessee upon the expiration of the presidential term on March 4, 1869.

Johnson was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the United States Senate in 1869 and to the House of Representatives in 1872. He was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1875, until his death near Elizabethton, Carter County, Tennessee, July 31, 1875. Internment was in the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery, Greeneville, Greene County, Tennessee.

Related articles

• U.S. presidential election, 1864

External references

• Newspaper clippings, 1865--1869: http://www.impeach-andrewjohnson.com/
• Johnson's obituary[?], from the New York Times: http://starship.python.net/crew/manus/Presidents/aj2/aj2obit