Andrew Johnson gives veracity to the aphorism that anyone in America can become President. Born in a small house in the backwoods of North Carolina to practically uneducated parents, Johnson was illiterate until he reached seventeen years of age.1 The only other person to become President with such insufficient formal education was Abraham Lincoln.2 While Lincoln is revered as one of the greatest presidents of the United States, his replacement, Johnson, is classified as one of the most substandard. At the start of the Civil War, Johnson was in his first term as a Tennessee senator. Although he aligned with the proslavery and states’ rights faction of the Democratic Party, he ardently disputed appeals made by other Southerners to secede the Union over the matter of slavery.3 Following Tennessee’s secession from the Union, Johnson withdrew from his home state, making him the only senator of the South to maintain his seat in the Senate.4
Southerners considered Johnson a traitor and, consequently, seized his belongings and forced his family out of the state. Northerners, on the other hand, appreciated Johnson’s position, making him a sudden idol. Lincoln knew that he needed Johnson—a man who supported emancipation as a war measure—to secure his reelection in 1864, which was ultimately a successful strategy.5 Unfortunately, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth shortly after the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865. Had Booth’s plan gone as he intended, Johnson also would have been murdered; alternatively, he succeeded Lincoln as President.6 While any change in White House leadership influences the country, the transferal from Lincoln to Johnson had the most significant impact. President Andrew Johnson was an adverse ...
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..., July 6, 1867, sec. Editorial. http://www.impeach-andrewjohnson.com/08OvertObstructionOfCongress/v-5.htm (accessed May 18, 2014).
Cimbala, Paul (Editor); Miller, Randall M. (Editor). Great Task Remaining Before Us: Reconstruction as America's Continuing Civil War. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2010. ebrary collections. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/apus/Doc?id=10397785&ppg=202 (accessed May 18, 2014).
Slap, Andrew. Doom of Reconstruction: The Liberal Republicans in the Civil War Era. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2006. ebrary collections. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/apus/Doc?id=10388620&ppg=99 (accessed May 18, 2014).
Zoellner, Robert H. "Negro Colonization: The Climate of Opinion Surrounding Lincoln, 1860-1865," Mid-America, XLII (July, 1960), pp. 131-50. Ebrary collections. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/apus/Doc?id=10397785&ppg=202 (accessed May 18, 2014).
This began a chain of events that led to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the end of the biracial democracy in the south. Johnson put pro-Union Southern political leaders into power, even though many had aided the Confederacy during the war. These men, with Johnson's support, attempted to restore a sense of the “Old South”, essentially trying to force blacks down as low in the class system as they legally could in light of the 13th and 14th Amendments-second class citizens. In 1866 the Radical Republicans stood up to President Johnson, and a battle for control of Reconstruction ensued.... ... middle of paper ...
Andrew Johnson took office shortly after the Civil War. He was the 17th president of the United States. Throughout Johnson’s presidency his power and influence steadily declined. Two things that really made people upset were Johnson’s veto on the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and his veto on the Civil Rights Bill. Both bills
The Civil War era divided the United States of America to a point that many Americans did not foresee as plausible throughout the antebellum period. Generating clear divisions in even the closest of homes, the era successfully turned businessmen, farmers, fathers, sons, and even brothers into enemies. Many historians would concur that the Reconstruction Era ushered in a monumental turning point in the nation’s history. The common rhetoric of what the Reconstruction Era was like according to historians is that it was a euphoric era. Those same historians often write about the Reconstruction Era as a time of optimism and prosperity for African Americans. Attempting to illustrate the era in a favorable light, they often emphasize the fact that African Americans had gotten the emancipation that they were fighting for and they were free to create a future for themselves. Jim Downs, author of Sick From Freedom African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction, is not like those historians at all. Downs takes a completely different approach in his book. He asserts that both the Civil War Era and
President Andrew Johnson lifted himself out of extreme poverty to become President of the United States. He was a man with little education who climbed the political ladder and held many different high offices. As a strict constitutionalist, Johnson believed in limiting the powers of the federal government. President Johnson was one of the most bellicose Presidents who “fought” Congress, critics, and many others. President Andrew Johnson faced numerous problems post-Civil War Era including reconstructing the Southern states to combine peacefully with the Union, his battles with Congress, and his career ending impeachment.
As the Civil War ended, according to Norton et al., America was a nation in need of “healing, justice, and physical rebuilding” (465). The war had left
President Lincoln was succeeded by his vice president Andrew Johnson. Johnson was a southern democrat who believed in the union, however, he did not believe in black equality. Johnson believed that the planter class in the south had led their section of the country to ruin. As far as blacks were concerned, they were an inferior race to be held in some sort of subjugation to the dominant white population of the south. His attitude ran into a head on collision with that of the radical republicans in congress led by Thaddeus Stevens.
Marable, Manning. Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
. .’, concludes James Oakes’ book with the aftermath of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination. Oakes discussed the respect Douglass gathered for Lincoln over the years and the affect his assassination had on both himself and America as a whole. Oakes even brushed over Douglass’ relationship with Andrew Johnson, the president succeeding Lincoln. Analyzing his experience with the new president, it was safe to say that Andrew Johnson had no consideration as to what Douglass and Lincoln previously fought for. Johnson did not have the same political skills as Lincoln did, and he did not retain the same view for America that Lincoln did. It was obvious that Douglass held Lincoln at a higher standard than Andrew Johnson, stating that he was a “progressive man, a humane man, an honorable man, and at heart an anti-slavery man” (p. 269). Oakes even gave his own stance on Andrew Jackson, “It was a legacy that Andrew Johnson could ever match. When all of Lincoln’s attributes were taken into consideration - his ascent from the obscurity to greatness, his congenial temperament, his moral courage - it was easy for Douglass to imagine how much better things would be ‘had Mr. Lincoln been living today’.” (p. 262). It is hard to imagine the pre-war Douglass to have said something like that as opposed to an older, much more reserved Douglass. With the abolishment of slavery, so came much discrimination. Without
...ights for African Americans as well as a political rights for the people, his goal was to abolish slavery and felt that “all men created equally” should uphold for everybody, everybody that was man at least. Johnson the president, in the beginning proved to be loyal to his radicals by chastising the confederacy making sure there would be repercussions for their actions. Also his amnesty plan to reinstate the south states was far harsher than that of Lincoln's. Johnson’s sanctions deprived confederacy officers, people in high power, and anyone who owned valuable assets could be subject to confiscation. The purpose was to shift political power in south and reward it to freed blacks and white southerners who stayed neutral during the war. Hahn states in his article that, “During reconstruction, black men held political offices in every state of the former confederacy”
People attending schools before 1960’s were learning about certain “unscrupulous carpetbaggers”, “traitorous scalawags”, and the “Radical Republicans”(223). According to the historians before the event of 1960’s revision, these people are the reason that the “white community of South banded together to overthrow these “black” governments and restore home rule”(223). While this might have been true if it was not for the fact that the “carpetbaggers were former Union soldiers”, “Scalawags… emerged as “Old Line” Whig Unionists”(227). Eric Foner wrote the lines in his thesis “The New View of Reconstruction” to show us how completely of target the historians before the 1960’s revision were in their beliefs.
Perman Michael, Amy Murrell Taylor. Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2011.
As President, Johnson decided to follow Lincolns plans by granting amnesty to almost all former confederates; establishing a Provisional government; and ratifying the thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery. However, Johnson was not the same man as Lincoln for he was quite unpopular, especially with Congress. As the south was in a transitional period, its politics were changing as well. First, the Reconstruction Act allowed blacks to v...
On December 23, 1814, Andrew Jackson rode his way into history. His victory over the British on that day made him into a national hero. Jackson used this popularity to ensure his victory over John Quincy Adams in the election of 1828. But who was the real "Old Hickory?" Was Andrew Jackson the courageous, honor bound "man of the people", or, as his opponents liked to think, was he a hot tempered, poorly educated farm boy? This essay will present both sides of the case and try to reach a conclusion.
After the great battle of the American Civil War was fought, and the North won, a bigger battle still had to take place; reconstruction. Reconstruction after the war was not going to be easy, and it was not. What was the primary goal? What should be done to ex-confederates? Free Blacks? How should this reconstruction take place? Many of these questions were solved by the government, but how well? Reconstruction could have gone very differently, and that is what I intend to show. I will develop my own reconstruction policy for the United States after the American Civil War, dealing with several critical points, and the overall re-integration of the south into the Union. My policy is based on equality for the South and North, and making sure that a political balance and a balance of economic power was restored as much as possible.
A “war” Democrat opposed to secession, in 1864 Johnson was tapped by Republican President Abraham Lincoln as his running mate to balance the Union ticket. He became president following Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, just days after the Civil War ended. As president, Johnson’s desire to scale back Lincoln’s Reconstruction legislation following the Civil War angered the Radical Republican majority that sought to punish the former rebels of the Confederacy.