# Andrew Johnson Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) was the 17th President of the United States (1865–1869), elevated to the office by [[Abraham Lincoln]]'s assassination on April 14, 1865, just six weeks after his own inauguration as Vice President. Born into poverty in Raleigh, North Carolina, Johnson never attended school; his wife taught him to read and write after their marriage. He built a political career in eastern Tennessee as a Jacksonian Democrat and self-styled champion of poor whites against the planter aristocracy, serving as a state legislator, five-term U.S. Representative (1843–1853), Governor of Tennessee (1853–1857), and U.S. Senator (1857–1862). When Tennessee seceded in June 1861, Johnson was the only Southern senator to remain loyal to the Union — a decision that made him a hero in the North and a traitor in the Confederacy. Lincoln appointed him Military Governor of Tennessee in March 1862, and in 1864, the National Union Party (a wartime coalition of Republicans and War Democrats) placed Johnson on Lincoln's re-election ticket as a unity gesture to border-state and War Democrat voters. Johnson's presidency was defined entirely by his war against Reconstruction. Despite having been a Unionist, Johnson was an unreconstructed white supremacist who made his racial views explicit: "This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men," he wrote in 1866. During Congress's recess in the summer of 1865, Johnson implemented a lenient "Presidential Reconstruction" program: he issued mass pardons to ex-Confederates (ultimately pardoning approximately 13,500 individuals, including senior military and political leaders), appointed provisional governors who were themselves former Confederates, and allowed Southern states to re-establish governments that promptly enacted [[Black Codes]] — laws designed to re-create slavery's labor discipline through vagrancy statutes, apprenticeship laws, and restrictions on Black mobility, landownership, testimony, and assembly. When Congress returned and passed the [[Civil Rights Act of 1866]] and the Freedmen's Bureau extension, Johnson vetoed both, explicitly arguing that extending citizenship rights to Black people was an unconstitutional assault on states' rights and white supremacy. Congress overrode both vetoes — the first time in American history that major legislation was enacted over a presidential veto — and then passed the [[Fourteenth Amendment]], which Johnson opposed and actively campaigned against during the disastrous [[1866 Midterm Elections]], where his "Swing Around the Circle" speaking tour devolved into public shouting matches with hecklers and produced a two-thirds Republican supermajority in both chambers. Congress responded by passing the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 over Johnson's veto, imposing military government on the former Confederate states, requiring Black male suffrage as a condition of readmission, and effectively stripping Johnson of control over Southern policy. Johnson continued to obstruct: he fired Secretary of War [[Edwin Stanton]], the Radical Republicans' ally in the Cabinet, in violation of the Tenure of Office Act (a law passed specifically to prevent him from doing so). The House impeached Johnson on February 24, 1868, on eleven articles centered on the Stanton firing and his broader pattern of obstructing congressional Reconstruction. The Senate trial ended on May 26, 1868, with acquittal by a single vote — 35 guilty to 19 not guilty, one vote short of the two-thirds needed to convict. Seven Republican senators voted to acquit, most of them moderates concerned about the precedent of removing a president for policy disagreements rather than criminal conduct. Johnson served out his term, was denied the 1868 Democratic nomination (which went to Horatio Seymour), and returned to Tennessee. He won election to the U.S. Senate in 1875 — the only former president to serve in the Senate after leaving the presidency — but died of a stroke on July 31, 1875, just months into his term. ## Right-wing relevance Andrew Johnson is a load-bearing figure in right-wing political history, and his presidency's consequences reverberate through every subsequent era. His obstruction of Reconstruction is the proximate cause of the failure of the First Reconstruction and the imposition of nearly a century of [[Jim Crow Era]] white supremacist governance across the South — the structural condition that the [[Southern Strategy]] later mobilized into the modern conservative coalition. Johnson's mass pardons restored the Confederate planter class to political and economic power; his tolerance of Black Codes allowed Southern states to construct a racial caste system that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were supposed to prevent; and his firing of military commanders who enforced congressional Reconstruction undermined federal authority in the South. The pattern Johnson established — a president using executive power to protect a racial hierarchy against congressional civil rights legislation — is the template for the executive obstruction of civil rights enforcement that recurred under successive administrations through the 1960s and that the [[Civil Rights Movement]] had to overcome. Johnson's impeachment is equally significant as the template event for every subsequent presidential impeachment crisis. The acquittal — and the reasoning behind it, that removing a president for policy obstruction rather than criminal conduct would dangerously weaken the office — established the high bar for conviction that has protected every subsequent president from removal. The contemporary right explicitly invokes Johnson as a [[Donald Trump]] precedent: a populist outsider, impeached on legalistic grounds by an institutionalist Congress that opposed his agenda, acquitted by a narrow margin. The parallel is structurally real — both Johnson and Trump were impeached essentially for abusing executive power to obstruct institutional processes they opposed — even if the moral and political contexts differ fundamentally. Johnson's impeachment also produced lasting constitutional consequences: the Tenure of Office Act was repealed in 1887 and definitively overturned by the Supreme Court in Myers v. United States (1926), which established the president's broad power to fire executive-branch officials — a principle that the modern unitary executive theory championed by the [[Federalist Society]] and [[Project 2025]] extends to its logical extreme. ## Key policies and episodes - **Presidential Reconstruction (May–December 1865).** During Congress's recess, Johnson implemented a lenient reconstruction program: amnesty proclamations pardoning all Confederates who took a loyalty oath (with exceptions for high-ranking officials and large property holders, who could apply for individual pardons — and approximately 13,500 did, with Johnson granting virtually all of them). He appointed provisional governors, many of them former Confederates, and allowed Southern states to reconstitute governments with no requirements for Black suffrage or civil rights protections. The result was the rapid return of the antebellum power structure. - **Black Codes toleration (1865–1866).** Johnson made no effort to prevent Southern states from enacting Black Codes — comprehensive legal systems designed to restrict freedpeople's labor, movement, property rights, and legal standing. Mississippi's code, the first and most severe, required Black workers to sign annual labor contracts or face arrest for vagrancy, prohibited Black landownership in some areas, and imposed apprenticeship requirements that effectively re-enslaved Black children. Johnson's acquiescence signaled to the South that federal authority would not protect Black rights. - **Civil Rights Act veto (March 27, 1866).** Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States and prohibited racial discrimination in civil rights. His veto message argued that the bill was unconstitutional because it extended citizenship to people "of the African race" and infringed on states' rights to define their own citizenship. Congress overrode the veto on April 9, 1866 — the first time major legislation was enacted over a presidential veto — marking the beginning of Johnson's complete political marginalization. - **Fourteenth Amendment opposition (June 1866–1868).** Johnson actively opposed the Fourteenth Amendment, which constitutionalized birthright citizenship, equal protection, and due process. He encouraged Southern states to reject it (ten of eleven former Confederate states initially refused to ratify), and he made opposition to the amendment the centerpiece of his [[1866 Midterm Elections]] campaign. The amendment was ratified in July 1868 only because the Reconstruction Acts required Southern states to ratify it as a condition of readmission to the Union. - **"Swing Around the Circle" tour (August–September 1866).** Johnson undertook a national speaking tour to campaign against Republican congressional candidates in the [[1866 Midterm Elections]], the first time a sitting president had actively campaigned against members of Congress. The tour was a political disaster: Johnson engaged in shouting matches with hecklers, compared himself to Christ, and appeared intoxicated at several stops. Republicans won a veto-proof two-thirds supermajority in both chambers, enabling them to override every subsequent Johnson veto and pass the Reconstruction Acts. - **Tenure of Office Act violation and impeachment (February 1868).** Johnson fired Secretary of War [[Edwin Stanton]] in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, which Congress had passed specifically to prevent him from removing officials sympathetic to Reconstruction. The House impeached Johnson on eleven articles on February 24, 1868. The Senate trial resulted in acquittal by a single vote (35-19) on May 26, 1868. The acquittal established the practical precedent that presidential removal requires more than policy disagreement, shaping every subsequent impeachment from Nixon through Clinton through Trump. - **Alaska Purchase (October 18, 1867).** Secretary of State [[William Seward]] negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, derided at the time as "Seward's Folly." The purchase was Johnson's most consequential non-Reconstruction action and one of his few unambiguous policy successes, adding 586,000 square miles to the United States. - **Veto of the Reconstruction Acts (March 1867).** Johnson vetoed the Reconstruction Acts, which divided the former Confederacy into five military districts and required Black male suffrage as a condition for readmission. Congress overrode the veto immediately, establishing military Reconstruction over Johnson's objection. Johnson then obstructed implementation by replacing military commanders who enforced the acts aggressively. ## Connections - [[Abraham Lincoln]] — Johnson's predecessor; Lincoln's assassination elevated Johnson to a presidency he used to betray the Reconstruction that Lincoln's war had made possible - [[Ulysses S. Grant]] — Johnson's successor and his nemesis during the Stanton affair; Grant broke with Johnson over Reconstruction and won the [[1868 Presidential Election]] as the anti-Johnson candidate, carrying the promise of congressional Reconstruction's enforcement - [[Thaddeus Stevens]] — Pennsylvania Representative and leader of the Radical Republicans who drove Johnson's impeachment; Stevens represented the congressional commitment to racial equality that Johnson spent his presidency opposing - [[Edwin Stanton]] — Secretary of War whose firing triggered Johnson's impeachment; Stanton was the Radical Republicans' ally in the Cabinet and the key figure enforcing congressional Reconstruction policy within the executive branch - [[William Seward]] — Secretary of State who served under both Lincoln and Johnson; negotiated the Alaska Purchase and survived assassination on the same night as Lincoln's murder - [[Donald Trump]] — The contemporary right draws explicit parallels between Johnson's and Trump's impeachments: both characterized as populist outsiders targeted by institutional opponents on legalistic grounds, both acquitted by narrow margins ## See also - [[Reconstruction and Its Overthrow]] — Johnson's obstruction is the central cause of Reconstruction's failure; his mass pardons and tolerance of Black Codes restored Confederate power structures that persisted for a century - [[Southern Strategy]] — The modern Republican strategy of mobilizing white racial resentment traces directly to the racial order that Johnson's sabotage of Reconstruction allowed to solidify - [[White Supremacy]] — Johnson is the most explicitly white-supremacist president in American history; his racial ideology drove every major policy decision of his administration - [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] — The legislative descendant of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that Johnson vetoed; the century between the two acts is a direct consequence of Reconstruction's failure - [[Compromise of 1877]] — The formal end of Reconstruction, completing the abandonment that Johnson initiated - [[1866 Midterm Elections]] — The election that repudiated Johnson and gave Republicans the supermajority to override his vetoes and impose congressional Reconstruction - [[Federalist Society]] — The modern unitary executive theory has roots in the post-Johnson legal debates over presidential removal power that his impeachment catalyzed