Lincoln and His Administration

Vice Presidents

 
 

Lincoln’s Vice Presidents


See below for biographies of Lincoln’s Vice Presidents, Henry Hamlin and Andrew Johnson, from Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography.


HAMLIN, HANNIBAL (August 27, 1809-July 4, 1891), vice-president, United States senator, the son of Cyrus and Anna (Livermore) Hamlin, was born at Paris Hill, Maine. He was a descendant in the fifth generation from James Hamlin who settled in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, about 1639. His father, a twin brother of Hannibal Hamlin, the father of Cyrus [q.v.], had studied medicine at Harvard, but after taking up land in Maine, combined farming with the practice of his profession and the holding of sundry local offices. Hannibal grew up in the wholesome environment of a good New England home and attended the village school and Hebron Academy in preparation for college. The latter project had to be abandoned, owing to family misfortunes, and after trying his hand at surveying, printing, and school teaching for a brief period, he decided to study law. He was fortunate in being able to enter the office of Fessenden & Deblois of Portland, the senior partner of which firm, Samuel Fessenden [q.v.], was at once the leading lawyer and the outstanding antislavery advocate of the state. Hamlin was admitted to the bar in 1833 and in the same year settled at Hampden, not far from Bangor. He acquired a considerable practice, but his pronounced talent for party work soon diverted his attention to a political career. As a Jacksonian Democrat, he represented Hampden in the legislature from 1836 to 1841 and again in 1847. He served as speaker for three terms, 1837, 1839- 40. The legislature, during his first five years of service, was an especially valuable training school, containing many members afterwards distinguished in state and national affairs and dealing with such important matters as the financial demoralization of 1837 and succeeding years, the Aroostook boundary embroglio, the abolitionist agitation, and the internal-improvement craze. Hamlin's attitude was usually cautious and conservative.

In 1842 he was elected to Congress and served without special distinction from March 4, 1843, to March 3, 1847. He had decided anti-slavery leanings but, like many of his contemporaries, regarded slavery as an institution beyond the legislative authority of the national government. It is to his credit, however, that he opposed the attempts of its supporters to suppress free discussion. The growing importance of this question eventually produced a serious schism in the Maine Democracy, and in 1848 Hamlin was elected to the United States Senate to serve the balance of the term of John Fairfield, deceased, by the anti-slavery wing of the party. He was reelected in 1851 for a full term. Although a popular campaign orator, he preferred, as he afterwards stated, to be "a working rather than a talking member" of the Senate. As chairman of the committee on commerce he was the author of important legislation dealing with steamboat licensing and inspection and ship-owners' liability. Though a supporter of Pierce in 1852, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the Democratic policy toward slavery, and in 1856 went over to the Republicans. His speech of June 12, 1856, in which he renounced his Democratic allegiance, was widely quoted for campaign purposes and was one of his most effective utterances (Congressional Globe, 34 Congress, 1 Session, pp. 1396-97). In the same year he was elected governor of Maine in an exciting contest which marked the beginning of a long period of Republican predominance. He served only a few weeks as governor, resigning from the Senate January 7, 1857, only to resign the governorship in the following month in order to begin a new term in the Senate. He became increasingly prominent in the anti-slavery contest, and the political needs of 1860 made him a logical running-mate for Lincoln. He again resigned from the Senate on January 17, 1861.

As vice-president during the Civil War, he presided over the Senate with dignity and ability, was on cordial terms with President Lincoln, and performed a great variety of wartime services for his former constituents in Maine. He was a strong advocate of emancipation and became identified with the "Radicals" of Congress . . : his nomination in 1860 had been due largely to party exigencies, his failure to receive a renomination in 1864 may be attributed to the same causes. After retirement from the vice-presidency, he served for about a year as collector of the port of Boston, resigning because of his disapproval of President Johnson's policy. After two years as president of a railroad company constructing a line from Bangor to Dover, he was reelected to the Senate, serving from March 4, 1869, to March 3, 1881. He was associated with the Radical group in reconstruction matters, supported Republican principles in economic issues, and steadily maintained his hold on the party organization of his native state. He was an influential opponent of the third-term movement for Grant in the convention of 1880. After retirement from the Senate he served as minister to Spain for a brief period (1881-82), an appointment of obviously complimentary character, without diplomatic significance. He spent his last years in Bangor, enjoying a wide reputation as a political Nestor and one of the last surviving intimates of President Lincoln.

Hamlin is usually grouped with the members of that remarkable dynasty of Maine statesmen beginning with George Evans and ending with Eugene Hale, all of whom he knew and some of whose fortunes he undoubtedly influenced. As a party manager and leader he did not display the unflinching courage and determination of William Pitt Fessenden or Thomas B. Reed, nor that mastery of a wide field of legislation possessed by George Evans or Nelson Dingley. He had, however, a great fund of shrewd common sense and a gift of stating things in clear and understandable phrase. When as chairman of the committee on foreign relations he urged the acceptance of the Halifax fisheries award in the interest of international arbitration and when, on the floor of the Senate, he opposed the Chinese exclusion law as a violation of treaty obligations (Congressional Record, 45 Congress, 3 Session, pp. 1383-87), he displayed genuine statesmanship. It is also worth mention that if he quarreled with President Hayes over patronage and expressed his contempt for civil-service reform, he at least opposed the infamous "salary grab" and refused to take his share of the loot.

Personally Hamlin had many attractive qualities and retained the loyalty and affection of a host of supporters. Senator Henry L. Dawes, who knew him well, described him as "a born democrat," an interesting conversationalist, and an inveterate smoker and card player. He also mentioned as characteristic of the man that he wore "a black swallow-tailed coat, and ... clung to the old fashioned stock long after it had been discarded by the rest of mankind" (Century Magazine, July 1895). Hamlin had a stocky, powerful frame and great muscular strength. His complexion was so swarthy that in 1860 the story was successfully circulated among credulous Southerners that he had negro blood. He was a skillful fly fisherman and an expert rifle shot. He was twice married: on December 10, 1833, to Sarah Jane Emery, daughter of Judge Stephen A. Emery of Paris Hill, who died April 17, 1855, and on September 25, 1856, to Ellen Vesta Emery, a half-sister of his first wife. Charles Hamlin [q.v.] was his son.


[C. E . Hamlin, The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin (1899), a biography by his grandson, exaggerates Hamlin's importance in national affairs, but is useful in its presentation of Maine party history and occasional documents of personal interest.

See also H.F. Andrews, The Hamlin Family (1902), and Howard Carroll, Twelve Americans (1883).

The biographical literature of the period contains many references and the newspapers, probably because of Hamlin's association with Lincoln, published an unusually large amount of obituary material. See especially New York Tribune, July 5, 9, 10, 1891.]

W. A. R .



JOHNSON, ANDREW (December 29, 1808-July 31, 1875), seventeenth president of the United States, was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, the younger son of Jacob Johnson and Mary (or Polly) McDonough. Jacob Johnson, a bank porter and sexton in Raleigh, "an honest man, loved and respected by all who knew him" (Winston, post. p. 7), died in 1811, leaving his two sons in a condition of poverty not relieved by the second marriage of their mother. Apprenticed to a tailor and at one time advertised as a runaway, Andrew Johnson in 1826 moved, together with his mother and his stepfather, to Tennessee where, after some wandering, he finally settled at Greeneville. He married, May 17, 1827, Eliza McCardle, the daughter of a Scotch shoemaker, who assisted him in the improvement of his reading and writing, and whose gentle temper and unfailing courage were of deep importance to her husband throughout their long life together. They had five children, Martha, Charles, Mary, Robert, and Andrew. Even before he left North Carolina, Johnson, who was denied formal schooling, had begun to educate himself with the aid of The American Speaker, which contained specimens of the oratory of Pitt and Fox (Savage, post, p. 23). His eagerness to acquire knowledge and to argue was stimulated by individuals of greater culture who took an interest in the young tailor and by contacts with Greeneville College and Tusculum Academy which were near-by. Although he was not a student of either institution he did take part in their debates. In the course of time, by his thrift in the management of the tailor-shop which he established in Greeneville, he accumulated a small estate. Of medium size and height, dark-complexioned, with black eyes and hair, Johnson, as he progressed in his career, maintained a scrupulous neatness of appearance and, in ordinary conversation, a courtesy of manner. Powerful as a speaker, in his early years he was often crude both in his thought and in his diction. Like many other public men, he had to meet the charge of religious infidelity. He professed sympathy with the tenets of Christianity, but was not associated with any church.

His political career began with his election as alderman of his little town. This was brought about, one of his early biographers has said, by reason of his championing the cause of the working men of Greeneville against the aristocratic element of the town (Savage, p. 19). He was twice reelected alderman and was then chosen mayor. In 1835 he was elected to the legislature of Tennessee from the district composed of Greene and Washington Counties. Defeated in 1837, he was reelected in 1839. In 1840 he was a candidate as elector-at-large on the Democratic ticket, canvassing for Van Buren; and the next year he was elected to the state Senate. In 1843 Johnson was elected to the Twenty-eighth Congress as a representative of the first district of Tennessee. He served continuously in the House of Representatives for ten years. Then, gerrymandered out of his district by a Whig legislature, he ran for the governorship and was successful. He was reelected governor in 1855. Two years later he was able to command election by the legislature to the United States Senate.

Although he attracted the favorable notice of men as different in their views as James K. Polk and John Quincy Adams, Johnson had climbed these many steps in the political ladder with little of the support that others had received from older or more prominent men: it was rather by his own demonstration of his political capacity than through any outside help that he made his ascent. In 1835, when he entered the legislature, the debates of that body, upon which lay the obligation to enact laws for carrying into effect the provisions of the new Tennessee constitution of 1834, were particularly educative for a new and untrained representative. After some hesitation and uncertainty, Johnson identified himself with the regular Jacksonian Democratic party. Throughout his early career he nearly always voted in strict regularity upon party questions, but he quarrelled with so many of the Democratic leaders (Winston, p. 50) that it is not strange that he lacked friends. To an earnest support of Democracy he added a point of view that was his own-a violent antipathy to any superiority claimed by right of birth or wealth. In this he was influenced, possibly, by baseless gossip which questioned whether Jacob Johnson was really his father. Perhaps he caught something from the various "workingmen's parties" of the day. At any rate, as the self-constituted friend of the working class, he again and again attacked those who seemed to speak or act in disparagement of the laboring man.

There soon came to be a general acceptance of the belief that his ideas were radical. East Tennessee, in which lay Johnson's home, was rather adapted for small farms than for extensive agriculture, and, in comparison with the other parts of the state, had few negro slaves. Hence Johnson advocated a change, within the state, to the "white basis" of representation, instead of the established count of five slaves as three whites. He supported the formation of East Tennessee, with perhaps those parts of the neighboring states where slavery was weak, into a new state. Yet he claimed to be orthodox on the subject of slavery, violently attacked John Quincy Adams, and reprehended the Abolitionists on all occasions. He suggested that the executive patronage should be apportioned by states, and urged amendments to the Constitution which should provide for the election instead of the appointment of federal judges, the election of senators by popular vote, and the abolition of the electoral college in the choosing of the president. He opposed governmental support of the Smithsonian Institution, and in general advocated retrenchment and economy, himself practising with extraordinary care the principles that he preached.

Of all the measures that came before Congress during this period, Johnson identified himself as the special advocate of one, the so-called "homestead" law, which looked to the granting of land, in limited quantity, to actual settlers, without price or at a nominal price (St. George L. Sioussat, in Mississippi Valley Historical Review, December 1918, pp. 253-87). In Tennessee, it should be noted, the United States had only a residuary title to the public lands and in the course of time parted with that; and there was, therefore, no opportunity for the operation, upon lands within the state, of a federal homestead law. Johnson managed skilfully to combine the promotion of a policy dear to the frontier states with an appeal to the interest of the laboring classes in the East. By the time that he retired from Congress in 1853 he had seen a homestead bill pass the House of Representatives, and had received a few votes as a presidential nominee at a session of the Industrial congress, a body which expressed the radical ideas of the "land reformers" of the East (New York Daily Tribune, June 9, 1851).

His election as governor of Tennessee in 1853 clearly evinced his popularity outside his own district. During his first term he secured legislation providing for the levying of a tax in support of education, the first of the sort in the state, caused the establishment of a state board of agriculture and a state library, and, at the same time, he stood for sound finance. His reelection in 1855 over the candidate of the American or Know-Nothing party marked a triumph over the forces of religious and political intolerance.

He was not in Congress at the time of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but that legislation he accepted; and in the campaign of 1856 he supported, as usual, the regular nominees, though Buchanan, whom he thought the weakest of the Democratic candidates, was his "last choice" (to A. O. P. Nicholson, June 27, 1856, New York Historical Society). In the Senate, he voted for Jefferson Davis's resolutions of February 2, 1860, which declared against the power of either Congress or a territorial legislature to annul the right of citizens to take slaves into the common territory, and asserted it to be the duty of the federal government to afford to such property the needed protection (Congressional Globe, 36 Congress, 1 Session, p. 658). His chief interest, however, was in the homestead bill and he resented the veto by President Buchanan of the partial measure passed by the Thirty-sixth Congress. 

To the national convention of the Democratic party which met in Charleston in April 1860, the Tennessee delegation, in accordance with the prior action of the state convention held at Nashville, presented the name of Johnson as a candidate for the presidential nomination. Although he had expressed bitter dislike of Douglas, there is evidence that Johnson would have been content to go upon the ticket of 1860 as candidate for vice-president with Douglas if the party had remained united (to Robert Johnson, April 12, 1860, Johnson Manuscripts, Huntington Library); but after the schism of that year he supported, without enthusiasm, the candidacy of Breckinridge and Lane. His attitude was that of compromise, and on December 13, 1860, with this end in view, he proposed amendments to the federal Constitution similar to those put forward by Crittenden.

On December 18, 1860, however, at the very time when the secession convention of South Carolina was meeting in Charleston, addressing the Senate, he declared himself for the Union; and when the other Southern senators withdrew, he alone remained. The importance of Johnson's action was at once observed. The North welcomed a powerful ally and saw in him another Andrew Jackson devoted to the preservation of the Union. To the Southern extremists his course was that of a traitor. This speech Johnson followed up with others on February 5 and March 2, 1861, which, by reason of his vehement denunciation of his Southern critics and his sturdy insistence that the Union must be preserved, thrilled the North (Winston, pp. 173, 186, New York Times, March 4, 1861). In the Congress which met in special session in July, Johnson introduced, July 24, an important resolution, which passed the Senate. By this the purposes of the war were declared to be, not conquest or subjugation, or interference with the rights or established institutions of the Southern states, but the defence and maintenance of the supremacy of the Constitution and the Union. This he supported in a powerful speech (Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 1 Session, pp. 243, 288-97). During the winter of 1861-62 he devoted much of his time to the work of the joint committee on the conduct of the war.

In March 1862, while still a senator, Johnson was appointed by President Lincoln military governor of Tennessee, with instructions to reestablish the authority of the Federal government in the state. During the adjournment of Congress in the spring of 1861, Johnson had spoken in behalf of the Union in East Tennessee but his efforts did not avail to save the state. It was the irony of fate that East Tennessee, strongly Unionist in sympathy, was overrun by the Confederates and placed under martial law. Both Johnson and William G. Brownlow [q.v.], who for years had been his Whig rival and bitter enemy, but whom the course of affairs was now forcing into cooperation with him, begged for military succor from the North; and their plea received Lincoln's warm-hearted support, the approval of General McClellan, and promises from General Buell. Yet East Tennessee remained under Confederate control until the summer of 1863. By February 25, 1862, after the overwhelming success of Grant at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the flight of the Confederate state government to Memphis, and the complete overthrow of organized Confederate armies in the western part of the state, Buell, with the United States forces, was in Nashville. These facts explain why it was in the secessionist western part of the state, and not as had been hoped in Unionist East Tennessee, that Johnson, as military governor, began his attempt at the restoration of his state.

In the midst of a community which hated and despised him, forced by the nature of things to exercise arbitrary power that was dependent absolutely upon military force, Johnson faced yet other difficulties. The political purpose of his mission was at times entirely subordinated to those strategic principles which the higher military commanders on the ground felt should govern at the time, and Johnson was constantly at odds with the military authorities (Hall, post, pp. 50-87). There were successive waves of alarm lest the Confederates should repossess themselves of the capital and the state. Throughout these crises Johnson exhibited great intrepidity. At length, after the defeat of the Confederate armies, he found it possible to bring about, partly with the aid of the East Tennesseans, a restoration of civil government in the state. Tennessee was thus a sort of laboratory experiment for the reconstruction of the Union: Johnson's regime antedated Lincoln's emancipation proclamations of September 22, 1862, and January 1, 1863, in the latter of which Tennessee was not included, and also the President's plan of reconstruction set forth in the proclamation of December 8, 1863. By January 1865, Johnson had the satisfaction of reporting to Lincoln the passing, by a constitutional convention that was, indeed, very irregular in its composition, of amendments that would bring about the abolition of slavery in the state. These were later ratified by popular vote. This restoration by state action foreshadowed the later policy of Johnson as president.

While Johnson was still engaged in his courageous efforts in Tennessee, Lincoln was renominated by the National Union Convention; and the same considerations which led that body to drop the party name Republican made Johnson a valuable asset as nominee for vice-president. His nomination was a recognition of the services of the militant Unionists of the South and helped to relieve the party of the purely sectional character which had at first attached to the Republicans. The strain of the campaign, superimposed upon that which he had long borne as the administrator of his state, exhausted Johnson. His health was impaired, and only Lincoln's urgent request hurried him to Washington in time for the inaugural ceremonies. The result was most unfortunate, for Johnson, when he took the oath of office, was under the influence of liquor (Oberholtzer, post, I, 4; Beale, post, pp. 12-17). No doubt the faux pas was due to illness and exhaustion, but it gave malice something to feed upon. On the morning of April 15, 1865, the day after Lincoln's assassination, Johnson, who had paid a brief visit to Lincoln's bedside (Winston, p. 268), was officially informed by the cabinet of his accession to the presidency. In a simple ceremony, in which Johnson bore himself with dignity, the oath of office was administered by Chief Justice Chase. Later in the day Johnson announced that he would retain the cabinet as then constituted and would continue Lincoln's policies.

The assassination, coming as it did in such close sequence to the collapse of the Confederacy, produced in the North, in addition to the universal grief, a vindictive rage upon which it is impossible to look back without regret. Although no enemy now threatened, the surviving conspirators against Lincoln were tried by military commission, and four of them were hanged. The execution of Mrs. Surratt later gave rise to a violent controversy, in which Johnson maintained that he had been prevented from seeing the recommendation of mercy made by the court (Winston, pp. 283-91). Jefferson Davis and other eminent Southerners were charged with complicity in the murder of Lincoln, and imprisoned. Later Davis was indicted, not for any part in the plot but for treason; after two years he was released on bond. At first Johnson was as bitter as any. "Treason," he is reported to have said, "must be made infamous, and traitors must be impoverished" (G. W. Julian, Political Recollections, p. 257). The South viewed his accession with apprehension the North approved. Johnson, however, soon freed himself from hysteria.

Among the first steps to bring back a return to the conditions of peace was the disbandment of as much as possible of the Federal army. In a series of proclamations, executive orders, and general orders, the external blockade was rescinded, and the trade of the Southern states was reopened. The most pressing problem, however, was the reestablishment of government in the states that had seceded. Johnson did not have to invent a plan, for the work had already been started by Lincoln in the amnesty proclamation of December 8, 1863. He had promised to recognize in any of the states , other than Virginia, such a government as should be established by persons, not less in number than one-tenth of the votes cast in the presidential election of 1860, who should take an oath of loyalty and who should be qualified voters under the state law. Against Lincoln's plan Congress had advanced the Wade-Davis bill of July 1864, to which Lincoln had given a "pocket veto," though he had accepted the scheme as possibly constituting an alternative plan. Lincoln had proceeded to promote the restoration of loyal governments in Louisiana and Arkansas; while Johnson himself had had in hand the reconstruction of Tennessee. In the Pierpont government, effective principally for the tearing of West Virginia from the Old Dominion, there was a tenuous basis for a government in Virginia. The executive order of May 9, 1865, which recognized Francis H. Pierpont as governor of Virginia, was the first important pronouncement of the new administration. Lincoln had dismissed the idea, which for a moment was in his mind, that the old Confederate state governments might be used; and General Sherman's similar concession in his convention with General Joseph E. Johnston had been promptly repudiated in the first days of the new President.

On May 29 Johnson set forth in two documents his continuation of Lincoln's plan. The first was a general proclamation of amnesty which, in contrast with Lincoln's simple paragraph, now listed fourteen classes of persons who must make special applications for pardon. Of these excepted classes, one included all persons the estimated value of whose taxable property was over $20,000. This was not so much reminiscent of Johnson's steady hostility to the aristocrats as an expression of his belief that the well-to-do had led the humbler classes of the South into secession. The second of the proclamations of May 29 had in view the establishment of a loyal government in North Carolina, and was followed by similar proclamations for the other states. In none of these was there any demand of a necessary proportion of loyal voters, such as Lincoln's one-tenth; in none was there any requirement of specific action by the conventions or legislatures to be established in the states. There was, however, a clear statement that it was the function of the state to determine who should vote and who should hold office.

During the summer and autumn of 1865, under the supervision of Johnson's provisional governors, elections were held for state conventions; upon the adoption of the new constitutions state governments were organized through the work of legislatures; and under stimulation from the President the ordinances of secession were repealed, slavery was abolished, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified by all the Southern states but Mississippi, and the Confederate state debts were repudiated. Unfortunately the new governments failed to adopt Johnson's suggestion that the suffrage be extended to a few highly qualified negroes; and the police regulations intended to preserve order among the emancipated negroes were interpreted in the North as revealing an intention to restore slavery in fact. The organization of bodies of militia in the South was also viewed with suspicion and the reappearance in public life of many who had been active secessionists was bitterly resented. On the other hand, the Southerners disliked the presence of negro troops and complained of the interference of the Freedmen's Bureau. The North received the most conflicting reports as to what was going on in the South.

One must fairly conclude that, by the time the Thirty-ninth Congress met (December 4, 1865), Johnson had accomplished much. The President's message, which was written by George Bancroft but expressed very definitely the ideas of Johnson himself (W. A. Dunning, in American Historical Review, April 1906, pp. 574 ff.; C. R. Fish, Ibid., July 1906, pp. 951-52), was dignified and conciliatory in tone and won favorable comment on both sides of the Atlantic. The states and the Constitution, the President said, were mutually indispensable. The true theory was that all pretended acts of secession were, from the beginning, null and void. The states had been in a condition where their vitality was impaired, but not extinguished; their functions were suspended but not destroyed. The states should be invited to participate in the high office of amending the Constitution, and a ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment had been exacted as a pledge of perpetual loyalty and peace. It was for the Senate and the House each to judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members. As to the extension of suffrage to the negro, he said that was a power belonging exclusively to the states.

Although Congress was not openly aggressive, those who were to be its leaders had already resolved to block Johnson's plan. At the first meeting of the House the clerk passed over the names of the representatives of the new governments in the Southern states and the Senate likewise kept the Southerners waiting, despite the fact that Horace Maynard, one of the excluded representatives, had been a member of Congress from Tennessee until 1863 and the further fact that the President himself was a citizen of that state. Thaddeus Stevens [q.v.] of Pennsylvania, the author of the theory that the Southern states must come in as new states or remain conquered provinces, and one of the chief proponents of a policy of confiscation, moved and secured the establishment, with himself as chairman, of the famous joint-committee of fifteen, which as the "Central Directory" (Diary of Gideon Welles, II, 494) of the Radicals was to play a leading role throughout the period of reconstruction. The actions of Stevens, Sumner, Wade, and the other Radicals indeed merit the word "conspiracy" which Gideon Welles attached to them at the time (Ibid., III, 314), and which the defenders of Johnson have continued to employ; and it is easy to sense the dramatic element in the conflict of strong and fearless men such as Johnson and his foes; but their struggle, which seems at first sight to have been so largely personal, is seen with more mature vision to have been the expression of mighty conflicting forces. The Civil War had brought about an enormous expansion of the executive, as distinct from the legislative, power, which already had aroused the resentment of Congress. When the war came to a close and the conquered South had to be restored, the situation was further complicated and confused by the sentimental appeal which the condition of the freedmen made to the spirit of altruism, and, unfortunately, by the human passion of revenge. Over and above all these factors reigned a more practical consideration. The result of emancipation, the Republican leaders clearly saw, would be to increase the representation of the white South in Congress, while the tendency of the return of peace would be to restore to leadership the same element that had dominated Southern politics in former years. That Lincoln, had he lived, would have been given free rein by Congress and by the emancipationists is most improbable. What actually happened in 1865 was that fate threw the control of the executive department of the government, with its vast patronage, into the hands of a Southerner and a Democrat of the state-rights school. To the determined group of which Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner were the heads, the first consideration was the preservation of the rule of the Republican party; and this could only be assured, under the circumstances, by the use of the vote of the negroes in the Southern states, by writing into the Constitution new limitations on the power of the states, and by reducing to impotence, or, if that were impossible, by removing, a Democratic President.

Congress proceeded to pass an act for the extension of the Freedmen's Bureau, both as to duration and as to power. This received Johnson's disapproval, February 19, and the veto was sustained. With characteristic tactlessness, Johnson permitted himself, in a speech made on Washington's birthday, to indulge in bitter personalities that could only stir up ill feeling in Congress and lose him the support of the more conservative Republicans. With his second veto, that of the Civil Rights Act, delivered March 27, the breach between the President arid Congress became more serious. The bill was passed over the veto April 9. While Johnson has been criticized for not accepting this measure, it is clear that in accordance with his state-rights principles he could not conscientiously have done so; for the bill was intended to guarantee to the freedmen the preservation of their rights by the federal courts, against the infringement of these rights by state law. Before Congress adjourned the Fourteenth Amendment had been proposed to the states. This was intended to insure by constitutional change the maintenance of the principles of the Civil Rights Act. Congress also undertook through this amendment to enforce complete repudiation of the Confederate debt, and to prevent compensation for slave property. Moreover, while technically the Fourteenth Amendment did not force negro suffrage on the South, it established the alternatives of the enfranchisement of all male citizens or the reduction of representation in Congress. Tennessee had hastened, under the Brownlow regime, to ratify this amendment and was now admitted, but in grudging terms which drew a protest from Johnson. In June the joint-committee on reconstruction had made a very partisan report to Congress, embodying the results of an extensive investigation into conditions in the South.

That Congress and the radical Republicans were, for the time, in the ascendant, was made clear by the congressional elections which came towards the end of 1866. Disorders which arose in Memphis in May and in New Orleans in July reacted unfavorably upon Northern opinion. In July, Dennison, Speed, and Harlan, who had ceased to be willing to follow the President, resigned from the cabinet. In August an attempt to build up a Union party out of the loyal Democrats, the conservative Republicans, and the old Whigs seemed for a while promising; but Johnson's effort to win popular support on a tour through the eastern cities and the Middle West was robbed of whatever success it might have had by some of his own speeches, in which he made the mistake of slipping back into the political vernacular of his early Tennessee days, and of allowing himself to indulge in personal debate with members of the throngs that came to hear him. While this was bad enough, it was made far worse by the Republican newspapers, and the old charges of intemperance were assiduously though falsely revived (Schouler, History of the United States, VII, 1913, pp. 373-75). Though the President believed that he had aroused the people (Diary of Gideon Welles, II, p. 590), the event showed that the "swing around the circle" was a complete failure so far as its political purposes were concerned.

The original reconstruction law was vetoed by Johnson and passed over his veto on March 2, 1867; it was supplemented by the acts of March 23 and July 19, 1867, and March 11, 1868. By this legislation military government was reestablished in the Southern states, and the latter were required, if they would secure representation in Congress, to accept negro suffrage and to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. In most of the Southern states the intended result was obtained, and the amendment was added to the Constitution. Upon those states which were recalcitrant and delayed their action was laid the additional requirement of ratifying the Fifteenth Amendment; but the story of this goes over into the administration of Grant.

The passage over Johnson's vetoes, by ample majorities, of one law after another, fully demonstrated that he was no longer able to interfere with the legislative power. It is vastly to his credit that he performed faithfully, though with strict construction of the law, every duty that Congress laid upon him. The president was shorn of power in other respects: Congress invaded the executive realm. Indignant at Johnson's extension of pardon to many prominent ex-Confederates, the Radicals attempted through the Fourteenth Amendment to limit the president's pardoning power, by excluding the leading Confederates from office until Congress should grant them amnesty. The army appropriation act of 1867 which Johnson signed, with a protest (March 2, Richardson, VI, p. 472), stripped him of much of his authority as commander-in-chief of the army. The Tenure of Office Act, passed over his veto March 2, 1867, forbade the president to remove without the consent of the Senate an office holder appointed by and with the advice of the Senate. Cabinet officers were specifically included, but with the proviso, which was later to evoke violent controversy, that they should "hold their offices respectively for and during the term of the President by whom they may have been appointed and for one month thereafter, subject to removal" with the consent of the Senate (Statutes at Large, XIV, 430). Efforts to test in the courts the constitutionality of the various measures enacted by the Radicals were either denied by the Supreme Court itself on the ground that it would not interfere with political questions, or prevented through congressional action in regard to the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. As a necessary result, unless the President appealed to force, or the public turned to him and against Congress, his initiative and his usefulness as a constructive leader were at an end.

In August 1867, during one of the brief periods when Congress was not in session, Johnson took a step which made the Tenure of Office Act a vital issue. With unfortunate tolerance he had permitted the continuance in his cabinet of Edwin M. Stanton [q.v.], the secretary of war, who, although he for a time apparently had given cordial assent to Johnson's views and had expressed himself positively against the constitutionality of the Tenure of Office Act (Diary of Gideon Welles, III, 50-51), nevertheless had remained in the cabinet really for the purpose of serving as informer and adviser to the Radicals in Congress. At last Johnson asked Stanton to resign (August 5), and when the latter refused to do so, suspended him (August 12). Grant was commissioned secretary ad interim. On December 12, Johnson submitted to the Senate his reasons for suspending Stanton, in which, on January 13, 1868, the Senate refused to concur. The result was the reinstatement of Stanton, to whom Grant, in violation of the understanding which Johnson had with him, turned over the office. This caused an unseemly controversy between Grant and Johnson, in which the former appears to little advantage (Notes of Colonel W. G. Moore, American Historical Review, October 1913, pp. 109-18). The effect was to drive Grant into the arms of the Radicals. On February 21 Johnson formally removed Stanton, instructing him to turn the office over to General Lorenzo Thomas, ad interim. This Stanton refused to do; and the Senate, supporting him, declined to confirm the nomination of Thomas. An attempt to secure a judicial test of the matter miscarried, and Stanton remained in possession of his office at the War department, protected by Radical sympathizers and supporters against any attempt which might be made to displace him by force.

On February 25, 1868, with public excitement at a high point, Thaddeus Stevens and John A. Bingham appeared at the bar of the Senate and, in the name of the House of Representatives and of all the people of the United States, impeached the President of high crimes and misdemeanors in office. This was in fulfilment of a vote of the House of Representatives taken the day before. There had been talk of impeaching Johnson even before he sent in his first message; the first definite step had been taken in the short session of 1866-67; and in December 1867 a majority of the judiciary committee of the House of Representatives had recommended impeachment but had failed to carry the House. In February the matter had been transferred from the judiciary committee to Stevens' joint-committee on reconstruction. Johnson's removal of Stanton had now served to array with his foes many of the more conservative Republicans, who had been unable to accept the mass of irrelevant and in large degree fraudulent "testimony" which had been submitted to them up to this time. By March 4 the seven managers appointed by the House, Bingham, G. S. Boutwell, J. F. Wilson, Benjamin F. Butler, Thomas Williams, John A. Logan, and Thaddeus Stevens, were ready to lay before the Senate eleven articles of impeachment. Of these, nine were concerned directly or indirectly with the Tenure of Office Act and the removal of Stanton; the tenth charged the President with attacking Congress in his speeches; the eleventh, designed "to catch the votes of doubtful Senators," reverted to the Tenure of Office Act, but added "a mass of indirect allegations" of illegal actions on the part of the President (DeWitt, post, pp. 386-87).

The following day, March 5, Chief Justice Chase appeared in his judicial robes, and the Senate was organized as "a court of impeachment for the trial of the President of the United States" (Proceedings in the Trial of Andrew Johnson, etc., 1868). The trial really began on Friday, March 13, when in the crowded Senate chamber, with galleries packed, Henry Stanbery, who had resigned his position as attorney general to assume the defense of Johnson, announced that the President entered his appearance, in answer to the summons of the Senate, by his counsel. With Stanbery were associated Benjamin R. Curtis, T. A. R. Nelson of Tennessee, William M. Evarts, and Jeremiah S. Black; but Black soon withdrew, after Johnson had refused to yield to a most improper pressure exerted upon him, at this critical time, to decide in the Alta Vela case in favor of Black's clients (DeWitt, pp. 397-400, 470-71). His place was taken by William S. Groesbeck.

It did not take long for Johnson's counsel to demonstrate that the only question of real importance legally involved in the articles of impeachment was that of the Tenure of Office Act; but the managers, of whom the notorious Butler played the leading part, assisted by the majority senators who frequently overruled the efforts of Chase to preserve the semblance of a trial, turned the impeachment proceedings into what the historian James Schouler aptly called "a solemn theatrical fiasco" (History, VII, 116). The effort to include the charge that Johnson was guilty of complicity in the murder of Lincoln had been abandoned; but there was little else that was not laid at his door. Upon those whose vote was considered doubtful there was brought varied, severe, and improper pressure. When, on May 16, a vote was taken on the eleventh  article, and, on May 26, on the second and third articles, the result, 35 to 19, showed one less than the number necessary for conviction. Seven Republican senators had voted with the Democrats and the President stood acquitted. The other articles were not pressed.

After a warning from Stanbery as to the unwisdom of incautious utterance (Diary of Gideon Welles, III, 311), Johnson had maintained an admirable bearing throughout the period of the trial. Restless, at times he expressed the intention of appearing in person, but this he did not carry out. "The President," his private secretary wrote, "declares that the defence he desires to make in the impeachment trial is for the people—not merely for the Senate, and that he would care nothing for conviction by that body if he stands acquitted by the nation" (American Historical Review, October 1913, p. 132). The impeachment trial was very shortly felt to have been a blunder and the failure of it fortunate for the country. As Dunning wrote, in a masterly analysis of the trial, "The single vote by which Andrew Johnson escaped conviction marks the narrow margin by which the Presidential element in our system escaped destruction" (Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 303). In 1926 the Tenure of Office Act, which had been modified early in Grant's administration, and in large part repealed in 1887, was declared by the Supreme Court of the United States to have been unconstitutional (Myers, Administratrix, vs. United States, 272 U. S. Reports, 52-295).

From the adjournment of the impeachment trial to the end of Johnson's term as president was less than a year. While the trial was in its last days the National Union Republican convention had nominated for the presidency General Grant, whose personal popularity made him highly "available" to the Republicans. The Democratic convention finally nominated Horatio Seymour of New York. Johnson, though receptive, had made no effort to secure votes; he received 65 on the first ballot. Nearly all the measures by which Congress, in these last months of Johnson's term, continued to carry out its plan of reconstruction received his disapproval and were passed over his veto. Johnson duly proclaimed the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, but in his last annual message, that of December 9, 1868, he presented a summary of his criticism of the policy of Congress. At the same time he offered once more his old recommendations that the Constitution should be amended in regard to the election of the president, the senators, and federal judges; and he added a plan to fix the succession to the presidency in the event of vacancies in both that office and the vice-presidency. By proclamations put forth on July 4 and on Christmas Day, 1868, he extended his previous grants of amnesty until, without limitation, all who had participated in the "rebellion" were included. As he retired from the White House he issued a valedictory address, violent in its indictment of the congressional policy.

The management of diplomatic and financial affairs during his presidency Johnson left to his secretaries, Seward and McCulloch, who, with Gideon Welles, secretary of the navy, remained loyally in his cabinet. In foreign relations the chief accomplishments were the retirement of the French from Mexico, the purchase of Alaska, the restraining of the Fenian movement, and the negotiation with Lord Clarendon by Reverdy Johnson [q.v.] of a convention which was rejected by the Senate, all but unanimously, in the first days of Grant's presidency. In the field of finance, the one important stand which Johnson took independently of his secretary was unfortunate. There was a widespread feeling that it was unjust that bondholders should be able to demand and receive gold for their bonds, while the poor man had to take greenbacks. Johnson went further, urging that, in view of the fact that purchasers of bonds had paid for them in  paper notes worth in gold but half their face value, the payment of the interest for something over sixteen years ought to liquidate the principal.

Upon his return to his home in Tennessee, Johnson soon was drawn into the troubled currents of state politics. He tried to steer an independent course between the two extremes of the former Confederates and the radical Republicans of the Brownlow type. Although Tennessee had escaped congressional reconstruction, the problem of restoration was complex, involving not only the negroes but also the bitter animosities of the whites. In 1869 Johnson might have been elected to the Senate had he not been deserted by one who had been his confidential private secretary. In 1872 he entered upon a campaign for election to Congress as representative-at-large from Tennessee, but was unsuccessful. In 1874, although weakened by an attack of yellow fever which he had suffered several months before, he became once more a candidate for election to the United States Senate. This time his effort was successful; and on March 5, 1875, shortly after the Senate had met in special session in accordance with the call of President Grant, Andrew Johnson once more took his seat in the body which he had left in 1862. Death and the mutations of politics had removed many of his former enemies and of his faithful friends, but enough remained to give to the occasion of his return the dramatic element of a vindication. The low political ethics of the administrations of Grant had made Johnson's courageous honesty stand out in contrast; and soon after his election some of the leading newspapers contained expressions prophetic of the reversal of judgment upon him which was to come with the passing years (Stryker, pp; 808-811; Winston, p. 505). Before the session came to an end, Johnson delivered (March 22) a speech in which he severely attacked the course which Grant had pursued in Louisiana, denounced Grant's aspirations for a third term, and closed with the plea "Let peace and prosperity be restored to the land. May God bless this people; may God save the Constitution." The Senate soon adjourned, and Johnson returned to his home in Tennessee. Several weeks later, while on a visit to his daughter, Mrs. Stover, near Carter Station, he suffered a paralytic attack. He died July 31, 1875.

[Representative of early biographies is John Savage's campaign sketch, published in Our Living Representative Men (1860), expanded in The Life of Abraham Lincoln by H. J. Raymond; and the Life of Andrew Johnson by John Savage (1864), and further enlarged as The Life and Public Services of Andrew Johnson (1866), the edition cited in this sketch. Some light is thrown on the earlier part of Johnson's career by D. L. Swain, Early Times in Raleigh. Addresses Delivered  at the Dedication of Tucker Hall, and on the Occasion of the Completion of the Monument to Jacob Johnson (1867). James S. Jones, Life of Andrew Johnson (1901), gave, though inadequately, an account of Johnson's whole career. Hugh McCulloch, Men and Measures of Half a Century (1888) was one of the first important works, by a contemporary of real significance, to give a favorable estimate of Johnson's presidency, which up to that time had been described for the most part by his enemies. W. A. Dunning, Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction (1898), as the first examination of the reconstruction policies with the detached view of historical scholarship exerted a determining influence upon later writers. Influenced by Dunning is C. E. Chadsey, The Struggle between President Johnson and Congress over Reconstruction (1896). C. H. McCarthy, Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction (1901); J. W. Fertig, Secession and Reconstruction of Tennessee (1898); and J. R. Neal, Disunion and Restoration in Tennessee (1899), belong to the same period of writing. D. M. DeWitt, for the preparation of his penetrating monograph, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, etc. (1903), examined some of the private papers of Johnson. In 1905 the Library of Congress acquired the greater part of the Johnson papers. This collection, supplemented by that of Johnson's grandson, A. J. Patterson, also in the Library of Congress, and several of less importance in other repositories, now forms the indispensable basis for a study of Johnson's career. No adequate collection of his writings has yet been published. The Johnson papers in the Library of Congress were promptly investigated by Dunning, who published interesting results in "More Light on Andrew Johnson," American History Review, April 1906, pp. 574 ff., and shortly wrote the valuable volume, "Reconstruction, Political and Economic" (1907) in the American Nation series. A flood of new light was thrown by the publication of John T. Morse, Jr., ed., Diary of Gideon Welles (3 volumes, 1911), which had appeared before, in part, in the Atlantic Monthly. A timely word of caution as to the use of this has been given by H. K. Beale, in American History Review, April 1925, p. 547. The availability of the Diary and the Johnson papers enabled James Schouler in his History of the U.S., Volume VII (1913), to show the unfairness of some of the conclusions of James Ford Rhodes, in the latter's History of the U. S. from the Compromise of 1850, volumes V, VI (1904-06). To be commended, as based on a careful research, is C. R. Hall, Andrew Johnson, Military Governor of Tennessee (1916). Recent biographies are Robt. W. Winston, Andrew Johnson, Plebeian and Patriot (1928); L. P. Stryker, Andrew Johnson: A Study in Courage (1929); G. F. Milton, The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals (1930). Each contains an extensive bibliography; that of Winston's book is particularly helpful as a guide to the voluminous periodical literature which has grown up about Johnson. for the presidential term of Johnson, E. P. Oberholtzer, History of the U. S. since the Civil War, volume I (1917), volume II (1922), has the merit of an independent study. Other recent studies of value are H. K. Beale, The Critical Year. A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (1930); C. G. Bowers, The Tragic Era (1929); R. H. White, Development of the Tennessee State Educational Organization, 1796-1929 (1929); W. M. Caskey, "First Administration of Governor Andrew Johnson," Tennessee History Society's Pubs., I ( 1929), pp. 43-59; and "Second Administration of Governor Andrew Johnson, Ibid., II (1930), pp. 34-54; Thos. P. Abernethy, From Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee (1932). J. G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, volume I (1884); and S. S. Cox, Union—Disunion-Reunion: Three Decades of Federal Legislation (1885); are valuable but have to be handled with caution. Works purporting to throw reminiscent light on Johnson's career are Frank Cowan, Andrew Johnson: Reminiscences of his Private Life and Character (2 ed., 1894) ; and Memoirs of the White House ... Being Personal Recollections of Colonel W. H. Crook, etc. (1911), edited by Henry Rood. In his Notable Men of Tennessee (1912), O. P. Temple, a younger contemporary of Johnson, has an interesting short account of the latter's life. See also J. D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, volume VI (1897); Procs. in the Trial of Andrew Johnson, . . . before the Senate of the U. S. , etc. (1868) ; B. B. Kendrick, Journal of the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction (1914); W. L. Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction (2 volumes, 1906-07).]

St. G. L. S.



Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes IV and V, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.