Name	Andrew Johnson
Office	17th President of the United States
Term start	April 15, 1865
Term end	March 4, 1869
Predecessor	Abraham Lincoln
Successor	Ulysses Grant
Office2	16th Vice President of the United States
President2	Abraham Lincoln
Term start2	March 4, 1865
Term end2	April 15, 1865
Predecessor2	Hannibal Hamlin
Successor2	Schuyler Colfax
Office3	Governor of Tennessee
Term start3	March 12, 1862
Term end3	March 4, 1865
Predecessor3	Isham Harris
Successor3	Edward East (Acting)
Term start4	October 17, 1853
Term end4	November 3, 1857
Predecessor4	William Campbell
Successor4	Isham Harris
Jr/sr5	United States Senator
State5	Tennessee
Term start5	March 4, 1875
Term end5	July 31, 1875
Predecessor5	William Brownlow
Successor5	David Key
Term start6	October 8, 1857
Term end6	March 4, 1862
Predecessor6	James Jones
Successor6	David Patterson
State7	Tennessee
District7	1st
Term start7	March 4, 1843
Term end7	March 4, 1853
Predecessor7	Thomas Arnold
Successor7	Brookins Campbell
Birth date	December 29, 1808
Birth place	Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.
Death date	July 31, 1875
Death place	Elizabethton, Tennessee, U.S.
Party	Democratic PartyNational Union Party (1864–1868)
Spouse	Eliza McCardle
Children	MarthaCharlesMaryRobertAndrew
Profession	Tailor
Religion	IrreligionNon-denominational Christianity
Signature	Andrew Johnson Signature.svg
Signature alt	Cursive signature in ink }}

Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 July 31, 1875) was the 17th President of the United States (1865–1869). Following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Johnson presided over the Reconstruction era of the United States in the four years after the American Civil War. His tenure was controversial as his positions hostile to the Freedmen came under heavy political attack from Republicans.

When Tennessee seceded in 1861, Johnson was a U.S. Senator from Greeneville in East Tennessee. A Unionist, he was the only Southern senator not to resign. He became the most prominent War Democrat from the South and supported Lincoln's military policies during the American Civil War of 1861–1865. In 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of occupied Tennessee, where he was energetic and effective in fighting the rebellion and beginning the transition to Reconstruction.

Johnson was nominated as the vice presidential candidate in 1864 on the National Union Party ticket. He and Lincoln were elected in November 1864 and inaugurated on March 4, 1865. Johnson succeeded to the presidency upon Lincoln's assassination on April 15, 1865.

As president, he took charge of Presidential Reconstruction – the first phase of Reconstruction – which lasted until the Radical Republicans gained control of Congress in the 1866 elections. His conciliatory policies towards the South, his hurry to reincorporate the former Confederate states back into the union, and his vetoes of civil rights bills embroiled him in a bitter dispute with Radical Republicans. The Radicals in the House of Representatives impeached him in 1868, charging him with violating the law (specifically the Tenure of Office Act), but the Senate acquitted him by a single vote.

Johnson's party status was ambiguous during his presidency. As president, he did not identify with the two main parties – though he did try for the Democratic nomination in 1868. While President he attempted to build a party of loyalists under the National Union label. Asked in 1868 why he did not become a Democrat, he said, "It is true I am asked why don't I join the Democratic Party. Why don't they join me ... if I have administered the office of president so well?" His failure to make the National Union brand an actual party made Johnson effectively an independent during his presidency, though he was supported by Democrats and later rejoined the party as a Democratic Senator from Tennessee from 1875 until his death. Johnson was the first U.S. President to undergo an impeachment trial. He is commonly ranked by historians as being among the worst U.S. presidents.

Early life

Andrew Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, to Jacob Johnson (1778–1812) and Mary McDonough (1783–1856). Jacob died when Andrew was around three years old, leaving his family in poverty. Johnson's mother then took in work spinning and weaving to support her family, and she later remarried. She bound Andrew as an apprentice tailor. In the 1820s, he worked as a tailor in Laurens, South Carolina. Johnson had no formal education and taught himself how to read and write.

At age 16 or 17, Johnson left his apprenticeship and ran away with his brother to Greeneville, Tennessee, where he found work as a tailor. His master used legal procedures to force him to return but failed, and Johnson was on his own. At the age of 18, Johnson married 16 year-old Eliza McCardle in 1827; she was the daughter of a local shoemaker. Between 1828 and 1852, the couple had five children: Martha (1828), Charles (1830), Mary (1832), Robert (1834), and Andrew Jr. (1852). Eliza taught Johnson arithmetic up to basic algebra and tutored him to improve his literacy and writing skills.

Early political career

Johnson participated in debates at the local academy at Greeneville, Tennessee and later organized a worker's party that elected him as alderman in 1829. He served in this position until he was elected mayor in 1833. In 1835, he was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives where, after serving a single term, he was defeated for re-election.

Johnson was attracted to the states rights Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson. He became a spokesman for the numerous yeomen farmers and mountaineers against the wealthier, but fewer, planter elite families that had held political control in the state and nationally. In 1839, Johnson was elected to a second, non-consecutive term in the Tennessee House, and was elected to the Tennessee Senate in 1841, where he served one two-year term. In 1843, he became the first Democrat to win election as the U.S. representative from Tennessee's 1st congressional district. Among his activities for the common man's interests as a member of the House of Representatives and the Senate, Johnson advocated "a free farm for the poor" bill that would give land to farmers. Johnson was a U.S. representative for five terms until 1853, when he was elected Governor of Tennessee.

Political ascendancy

Johnson was elected governor of Tennessee, serving from 1853 to 1857. He was then elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate, serving from October 8, 1857 – March 4, 1862. He was chairman of the Committee to Audit and Control the Contingent Expense (Thirty-sixth Congress). As a U.S. senator, he continued to push for the Homestead Act. It finally passed in 1862, after the Civil War had begun and Southerners had resigned from Congress.

As the slavery question became more critical, Johnson continued to take a middle course. He opposed the antislavery Republican Party because he believed the Constitution guaranteed the right to own slaves. He supported President Buchanan's administration. He also approved the Lecompton Constitution proposed by proslavery settlers in Kansas. At the same time, he made it clear that his devotion to the Union exceeded his devotion to right to own slaves.

Johnson's stand in favor of both the Union and the right to own slaves might have made him a logical compromise candidate for president. However, he was not nominated in 1856 because of a split within the Tennessee delegation. In 1860, the Tennessee delegation nominated Johnson for president at the Democratic National Convention, but when the convention and the party broke up, he withdrew from the race. In the election, Johnson reluctantly supported Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, the candidate of most Southern Democrats.

Before Tennessee voted on secession, Johnson, based in Unionist East Tennessee, toured the state speaking in opposition to the act, which he said was unconstitutional. Johnson was an aggressive stump speaker and often responded to hecklers, even those in the Senate. When Tennessee seceded, Johnson was the only Senator from the seceded states to continue participation in Congress. His explanation for this decision was, "Damn the negroes, I am fighting those traitorous aristocrats, their masters."

Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of occupied Tennessee in March 1862 with the rank of brigadier general. During his three years in this office, he "moved resolutely to eradicate all pro-Confederate influences in the state." This "unwavering commitment to the Union" was a significant factor in his choice as vice president by Lincoln. Johnson vigorously suppressed the Confederates, telling his subordinates: "Whenever you hear a man prating about the Constitution, spot him as a traitor." He later spoke out for black suffrage, arguing, "The better class of them will go to work and sustain themselves, and that class ought to be allowed to vote, on the ground that a loyal negro is more worthy than a disloyal white man." The Confederacy seized his slaves.

Vice presidency

As a leading War Democrat and pro-Union southerner, Johnson was an ideal candidate for the Republicans in 1864 as they enlarged their base to include War Democrats. They changed the party name to the National Union Party to reflect this expansion. During the election, Johnson replaced Hannibal Hamlin as Lincoln's running mate. He was elected vice president of the United States and was inaugurated March 4, 1865. At the ceremony, Johnson, who had been drinking to offset the pain of typhoid fever (as he claimed later), gave a rambling speech and appeared intoxicated to many. According to Senator Zachariah Chandler, he "disgraced himself and the Senate by making a drunken foolish speech." In early 1865, Johnson talked harshly of hanging traitors like Jefferson Davis, which endeared him to radicals.

On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, while the president was attending a play at Ford's Theater. Booth's plan was to destroy the administration by ordering conspirators to assassinate Johnson, lieutenant general of the Union army Ulysses S. Grant, and Secretary of State William H. Seward that night. Grant survived when he failed to attend the theater with Lincoln as planned, Seward narrowly survived his wounds, while Johnson escaped attack as his would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, failed to go through with the plan.

Presidency 1865–1869

On April 15, 1865, following Lincoln's death that morning, Johnson was sworn in as President of the United States by the newly appointed Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. Johnson was the first vice president to succeed to the presidency upon the assassination of a president and the third vice president to become a president upon the death of a sitting president.

Reconstruction

Northern anger over the assassination of Lincoln and the immense human cost of the war led to demands for harsh policies. Vice President Andrew Johnson had taken a hard line and had spoken of hanging rebel Confederates. In late April 1865, he was noted telling an Indiana delegation that, "Treason must be made odious ... traitors must be punished and impoverished ... their social power must be destroyed." However, when he succeeded Lincoln as president, Johnson took a much softer line, commenting, "I say, as to the leaders, punishment. I also say leniency, reconciliation and amnesty to the thousands whom they have misled and deceived," and ended up pardoning many Confederate leaders.

His class-based resentment of the rich appeared in a May 1865 statement to W.H. Holden, the man he appointed governor of North Carolina: "I intend to confiscate the lands of these rich men whom I have excluded from pardon by my proclamation, and divide the proceeds thereof among the families of the wool hat boys, the Confederate soldiers, whom these men forced into battle to protect their property in slaves." In practice, Johnson was seemingly not harsh toward the Confederate leaders. He allowed the Southern states to hold elections in 1865. Subsequently, prominent former Confederate leaders were elected to the U.S. Congress, which, however, refused to seat them. Congress and Johnson argued in an increasingly public way about Reconstruction and the way the Southern secessionist states would be readmitted to the Union. Johnson favored a quick restoration, similar to the plan of leniency that Lincoln advocated before his death.

Break with the Republicans: 1866

Johnson-appointed governments all passed Black Codes that gave the freedmen second class status. In response to the Black Codes and worrisome signs of Southern recalcitrance, the Republicans prevented the secessionist states from receiving representation in Congress in fall 1865. Congress also renewed the Freedman's Bureau, but Johnson vetoed it. Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, leader of the moderate Republicans, took affront at the Black Codes. Trumbull proposed the first Civil Rights bill.

Although strongly urged by moderates in Congress to sign the Civil Rights bill, Johnson broke decisively with them by vetoing it on March 27. His veto message objected to the measure because it conferred citizenship on the freedmen at a time when eleven out of thirty-six states were unrepresented and attempted to fix, by federal law, "a perfect equality of the white and black races in every State of the Union." Johnson said it was an invasion by federal authority of the rights of the states; it had no warrant in the Constitution and was contrary to all precedents. It was a "stride toward centralization and the concentration of all legislative power in the national government." Johnson, in a letter to Gov. Thomas C. Fletcher of Missouri, wrote, "This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men."

The Democratic Party, proclaiming itself the party of white men, North and South, aligned with Johnson. However, the Republicans in Congress overrode his veto and the Civil Rights measure became law.

The last moderate proposal was the Fourteenth Amendment, also written by Trumbull. It was designed to put the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution, but it went further. It extended citizenship to every person born in the United States (except Indians on reservations), penalized states that did not give the vote to freedmen, and most importantly, created new federal civil rights that could be protected by federal courts. It guaranteed the federal war debt and voided all Confederate war debts. Johnson unsuccessfully sought to block ratification of the amendment.

The moderates' effort to compromise with Johnson had failed and an all-out political war broke out between the Republicans (both radical and moderate) on one side, and on the other Johnson and his allies in the Democratic party in the North, and the conservative groupings in the South. The decisive battle was the election of 1866, in which the Southern states were not allowed to vote. Johnson campaigned vigorously, undertaking a public speaking tour of the north that was known as the "Swing Around the Circle"; the tour proved politically disastrous, with Johnson widely ridiculed and occasionally engaging in hostile arguments with his audiences. The Republicans won by a landslide and took full control of Reconstruction.

Historian James Ford Rhodes explained Johnson's inability to engage in serious negotiations:

"But," as Sumner shrewdly said, "the President himself is his own worst counsellor, as he is his own worst defender." Johnson acted in accordance with his nature. He had intellectual force but it worked in a groove. Obstinate rather than firm it undoubtedly seemed to him that following counsel and making concessions were a display of weakness. At all events from his December message to the veto of the Civil Rights Bill he yielded not a jot to Congress. The moderate senators and representatives (who constituted a majority of the Union party) asked him for only a slight compromise; their action was really an entreaty that he would unite with them to preserve Congress and the country from the policy of the radicals. The two projects which Johnson had most at heart were the speedy admission of the Southern senators and representatives to Congress and the relegation of the question of negro suffrage to the States themselves. Himself shrinking from the imposition on these communities of the franchise for the coloured people, his unyielding disposition in regard to matters involving no vital principle did much to bring it about. His quarrel with Congress prevented the readmission into the Union on generous terms of the members of the late Confederacy....He sacrificed two important objects to petty considerations. His pride of opinion, his desire to beat, blinded him to the real welfare of the South and of the whole country.

Impeachment

First attempt

There were two attempts to remove President Andrew Johnson from office. The first occurred in the fall of 1867. On November 21, 1867, the House Judiciary committee produced a bill of impeachment that consisted of a vast collection of complaints against him. After a furious debate, a formal vote was held in the House of Representatives on December 5, 1867, which failed 57–108.

Second attempt

Johnson notified Congress that he had removed Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War and was replacing him in the interim with Adjutant-General Lorenzo Thomas. Johnson had originally wanted to replace Stanton with General Ulysses S. Grant, but Grant refused to accept the position. This violated the Tenure of Office Act, a law enacted by Congress in March 1867 over Johnson's veto, specifically designed to protect Stanton. Johnson had vetoed the act, claiming it was unconstitutional. The act said, "...every person holding any civil office, to which he has been appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate ... shall be entitled to hold such office until a successor shall have been in like manner appointed and duly qualified," thus removing the president's previous unlimited power to remove any of his cabinet members at will. Years later in the case ''Myers v. United States'' in 1926, the Supreme Court ruled that such laws were unconstitutional.

The Senate and House debated the act. Thomas attempted to move into the war office, for which Stanton had Thomas arrested. Three days after Stanton's removal, the House impeached Johnson for intentionally violating the Tenure of Office Act.

On March 5, 1868, a court of impeachment to hear charges against the president was constituted in the Senate. William M. Evarts served as his counsel. Eleven articles were set out in the resolution, and the trial before the Senate lasted almost three months. Johnson's defense was based on a clause in the Tenure of Office Act stating that the then-current secretaries would hold their posts throughout the term of the president who appointed them. Since Lincoln had appointed Stanton, it was claimed, the applicability of the act had already run its course.

There were three votes in the Senate. One came on May 16 for the 11th article of impeachment, which included many of the charges contained in the other articles, and two on May 26 for the second and third articles, after which the trial adjourned. On all three occasions, 35 senators voted "guilty" and 19 "not guilty", thus falling short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction in impeachment trials by a single vote. A decisive role was played by seven Republican senators - William Pitt Fessenden, Joseph S. Fowler, James W. Grimes, John B. Henderson, Lyman Trumbull, Peter G. Van Winkle and Edmund G. Ross of Kansas, who provided the decisive vote; disturbed by how the proceedings had been manipulated to give a one-sided presentation of the evidence, they voted against conviction, in defiance of their party and public opinion. President John F. Kennedy discusses this in further detail in his book, ''Profiles In Courage.''

Christmas Day amnesty for Confederates

One of Johnson's last significant acts was granting unconditional amnesty to all Confederates on Christmas Day, December 25, 1868, after the election of Ulysses S. Grant to succeed him, but before Grant took office in March 1869. Earlier amnesties, requiring signed oaths and excluding certain classes of people, had been issued by Lincoln and by Johnson.

Administration and Cabinet

Clear	yes
Name	A. Johnson
President	Andrew Johnson
President start	1865
President end	1869
Vice president	''None''
Vice president start	1865
Vice president end	1869
State	William H. Seward
State start	1865
State end	1869
War	Edwin M. Stanton
War start	1865
War end	1868, replaced ad interim by Ulysses Grant before being reinstated by Congress in Jan 1868
War 2	John M. Schofield
War start 2	1868
War end 2	1869
Treasury	Hugh McCulloch
Treasury start	1865
Treasury end	1869
Justice	James Speed
Justice start	1865
Justice end	1866
Justice 2	Henry Stanbery
Justice start 2	1866
Justice end 2	1868
Justice 3	William M. Evarts
Justice start 3	1868
Justice end 3	1869
Post	William Dennison
Post start	1865
Post end	1866
Post 2	Alexander W. Randall
Post start 2	1866
Post end 2	1869
Navy	Gideon Welles
Navy start	1865
Navy end	1869
Interior	John P. Usher
Interior date	1865
Interior 2	James Harlan
Interior start 2	1865
Interior end 2	1866
Interior 3	Orville H. Browning
Interior start 3	1866
Interior end 3	1869 }}

Judicial appointments

Andrew Johnson appointed only nine Article III federal judges during his presidency, all to United States district courts. Johnson is one of only four presidents who did not appoint a justice to serve on the Supreme Court. In April 1866 he nominated Henry Stanbery to fill the vacancy left with the death of John Catron, but the Republican Congress eliminated the seat. Johnson also appointed one judge to the United States Court of Claims, Samuel Milligan, who served from 1868 to 1874. ,,m

States admitted to the Union

Nebraska – March 1, 1867

Foreign policy

Johnson forced the French out of Mexico by sending an army to the border and issuing an ultimatum. The French withdrew in 1867, and the government they supported quickly collapsed. Secretary of State Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia on April 9, 1867 for $7.2 million. This is equivalent to $}} in present day terms. Critics sneered at "Seward's Folly" and "Seward's Icebox" and "Icebergia." Seward also negotiated to purchase the Danish West Indies, but the Senate refused to approve the purchase in 1867 (it eventually happened in 1917). The Senate likewise rejected Seward's arrangement with Britain to arbitrate the ''Alabama'' Claims.

The U.S. experienced tense relations with Britain and its colonial government in Canada in the aftermath of the war. Lingering resentment over the perception of British sympathy toward the Confederacy resulted in Johnson initially turning a blind eye towards a series of armed incursions by Fenians (Irish-American civil war veterans) into Canada. These small-scale Fenian Raids were easily repulsed by the British. Eventually, Johnson ordered the Fenians disarmed and barred from crossing the border, but the Canadians feared an American takeover and moved toward Canadian Confederation.

Johnson's purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867 was his most important foreign policy action. The idea and implementation is credited to Seward as Secretary of State, but Johnson approved the plan.

Post-presidency

Johnson was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the United States Senate from Tennessee in 1868 and to the House of Representatives in 1872. However, in 1874 the Tennessee legislature did elect him to the U.S. Senate. Johnson served from March 4, 1875, until his death from a stroke near Elizabethton, Tennessee, on July 31 that year. In his first speech since returning to the Senate, which was also his last, Johnson spoke about political turmoil in Louisiana. His passion aroused a standing ovation from many of his fellow senators who had once voted to remove him from the presidency. He is the only former president to serve in the Senate. Johnson was buried just outside Greeneville, Tennessee, with his body wrapped in an American flag and a copy of the U.S. Constitution placed under his head, according to his wishes. The burial ground was dedicated as the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery in 1906, now part of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site.

Historians' changing views on Andrew Johnson

Views on Johnson changed over time, depending on historians' perception of Reconstruction. The widespread denunciation of Reconstruction after the compromise of 1877 resulted in Johnson being portrayed in a favorable light. By the 1930s a series of favorable biographies enhanced his prestige. Furthermore, a Beardian School (named after Charles Beard and typified by Howard K. Beale) argued that the Republican Party in the 1860s was a tool of corrupt business interests, and that Johnson stood for the people. They rated Johnson "near great", but have since reevaluated and now consider Johnson "a flat failure".

The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s brought a new perspective on Reconstruction, which was increasingly seen as a noble effort to build an interracial nation. Beginning with W.E.B. Du Bois' ''Black Reconstruction'', first published in 1935, historians noted African American efforts to establish public education and welfare institutions, gave muted praise for Republican efforts to extend suffrage and provide other social institutions, and excoriated Johnson for siding with the opposition to extending basic rights to former slaves. In this vein, Eric Foner denounced Johnson as a "fervent white supremacist" who foiled Reconstruction, whereas Sean Wilentz wrote that Johnson "actively sided with former Confederates" in his attempts to derail it. Accordingly, Johnson is today among those commonly mentioned among the worst presidents in U.S. history. According to Glenn W. LaFantasie, Professor of Civil War History at Western Kentucky University, "Johnson is a particular favorite for the bottom of the pile because of his impeachment (although he was acquitted in the Senate by one vote in May 1868), his complete mishandling of Reconstruction policy, his inept dealings with his Cabinet and Congress, his drinking problem (he was probably inebriated at his inauguration), his bristling personality, and his enormous sense of self-importance. He once suggested that God saw fit to have Lincoln assassinated so that he could become president. A Northern senator averred that "Andrew Johnson was the queerest character that ever occupied the White House."

See also

List of American Civil War generals

United States presidential election, 1864

History of the United States (1865-1918)

Tennessee Johnson

List of Presidents of the United States

US Presidents on US postage stamps

Bibliography

Beale, Howard K., ''The Critical Year. A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction'' (1930). ISBN 0-8044-1085-2

Les Benedict, Michael, ''The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson'' (1999). ISBN 0-393-31982-2

Boulard, Garry, "The Swing Around the Circle—Andrew Johnson and the Train Ride that Destroyed a Presidency" (2008) ISBN 978-1-4401-0239-4

Castel, Albert E., ''The Presidency of Andrew Johnson '' (1979). ISBN 0-7006-0190-2

DeWitt, D. M., ''The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson'' (1903).

Du Bois, W. E. B. 'The Transubstantiation of a Poor White' in ''Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward the History of the Part Which Black People Have Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880'' (1935). ISBN 0-527-25280-8.

Dunning, W. A., ''Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction'' (New York, 1898)

Dunning, W. A., ''Reconstruction, Political and Economic'' (New York, 1907) online edition

Foster, G. Allen, ''Impeached: The President who almost lost his job'' (New York, 1964).

Gordon-Reed, Annette ''Andrew Johnson: The American Presidents Series: The 17th President, 1865-1869'', ISBN 0-8050-6948-8 .

* Gordon-Reed, Annette speaking on CSPAN Booktv ''Andrew Johnson''

Hatfield, Mark O., with the Senate Historical Office, Vice Presidents of the United States, 1789–1993.(U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997), p. 219

Mantell,Martin E. ''Johnson, Grant, and the Politics of Reconstruction'' (1973)

McKitrick,Eric L., ''Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction'' (1961). ISBN 0-19-505707-4

Means;Howard, ''The Avenger Takes His Place: Andrew Johnson and the 45 Days That Changed the Nation'' (New York, 2006)

Milton; George Fort. ''The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals'' (1930) online edition

Patton; James Welch. ''Unionism and Reconstruction in Tennessee, 1860–1869'' (1934) online edition

Rhodes; James Ford ''History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896'' Volume: 6. 1920. Pulitzer prize.

Schouler, James. ''History of the United States of America: Under the Constitution vol. 7. 1865–1877. The Reconstruction Period'' (1917)

Sledge, James L. III. "Johnson, Andrew" in ''Encyclopedia of the American Civil War.'' edited by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler. (2000)

Stewart, David, O. ''Impeached: the Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy'' (2009) Simon and Schuster, New York, NY. ISBN 978-1-4165-4749-5.

Stryker, Lloyd P., ''Andrew Johnson: A Study in Courage'' (1929). ISBN 0-403-01231-7 online edition

Trefousse, Hans L. ''Andrew Johnson: A Biography'' (1989). ISBN 0-393-31742-0 online edition

Winston; Robert W. ''Andrew Johnson: Plebeian and Patriot'' (1928) online edition

Primary sources

Ralph W. Haskins, LeRoy P. Graf, and Paul H. Bergeron et al., eds. ''The Papers of Andrew Johnson'' 16 volumes; University of Tennessee Press, (1967–2000). ISBN 1-57233-091-0. Includes all letters and speeches by Johnson, and many letters written to him. Complete to 1875.

Newspaper clippings, 1865–1869

Series of ''Harper's Weekly'' articles covering the impeachment controversy and trial

Johnson's obituary, from the ''New York Times''

Notes

External links

The Impeachment trial of President Johnson as reported in Harper's Monthly Magazine April 1868

Obituary, NY Times, August 1, 1875, ''Andrew Johnson Dead''

Articles of Impeachment

White House Biography

Vice Presidential biography. From the Senate Historical Office.

Mr. Lincoln's White House: Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson Cleveland Speech (September 3, 1866)

''Congressional Globe'' transcript of Johnsons inaugural address

''Speeches of Andrew Johnson : President of the United States '' 1866 collection at archive.org

Andrew Johnson's 200th Birthday Celebration site at DiscoverGreeneville.com

Andrew Johnson: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress

Tennessee State Library & Archives, Andrew Johnson Papers, 1846-1875

Tennessee State Library & Archives, Papers of Governor Andrew Johnson, 1853-1857

Tennessee State Library & Archives, Papers of (Military) Governor Andrew Johnson, 1862-1865

Retrieved on 2009-03-02

Essay on Andrew Johnson and shorter essays on each member of his cabinet and First Lady from the Miller Center of Public Affairs

Paper comparing the impeachments of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton

Category:1808 births Category:1875 deaths Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of Scotch-Irish descent Andrew Johnson Category:Burials in Tennessee Category:Deaths from stroke Category:Democratic Party Presidents of the United States Category:Democratic Party state governors of the United States Category:Democratic Party Vice Presidents of the United States Category:Democratic Party United States Senators Category:Governors of Tennessee Category:History of the United States (1865–1918) Category:Impeached United States officials Category:Mayors of places in Tennessee Category:Members of the Tennessee House of Representatives Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee Category:People of American Reconstruction Category:People from Greeneville, Tennessee Category:People from Raleigh, North Carolina Category:People of North Carolina in the American Civil War Category:People of Tennessee in the American Civil War Category:Presidents of the United States Category:Republican Party (United States) vice presidential nominees Category:Tennessee city council members Category:Tennessee Democrats Category:Tennessee State Senators Category:Union Army generals Category:Union political leaders Category:United States presidential candidates, 1860 Category:United States presidential candidates, 1868 Category:United States Senators from Tennessee Category:United States vice-presidential candidates, 1864

af:Andrew Johnson am:አንድሪው ጆንሰን ang:Andrew Johnson ar:أندرو جونسون (رئيس) an:Andrew Johnson az:Endrü Conson bn:অ্যান্ড্রু জন‌সন zh-min-nan:Andrew Johnson be:Эндру Джонсан be-x-old:Эндру Джонсан bcl:Andrew Johnson bs:Andrew Johnson bg:Андрю Джонсън ca:Andrew Johnson ceb:Andrew Johnson cs:Andrew Johnson co:Andrew Johnson cy:Andrew Johnson da:Andrew Johnson de:Andrew Johnson et:Andrew Johnson es:Andrew Johnson eo:Andrew Johnson eu:Andrew Johnson fa:اندرو جانسون fr:Andrew Johnson ga:Andrew Johnson gv:Andrew Johnson gd:Andrew Johnson gl:Andrew Johnson ko:앤드루 존슨 hr:Andrew Johnson io:Andrew Johnson id:Andrew Johnson is:Andrew Johnson it:Andrew Johnson he:אנדרו ג'ונסון pam:Andrew Johnson ka:ენდრიუ ჯონსონი rw:Andrew Johnson sw:Andrew Johnson la:Andreas Johnson lv:Endrū Džonsons lb:Andrew Johnson lt:Andrew Johnson hu:Andrew Johnson mr:अँड्रु जॉन्सन ms:Andrew Johnson nl:Andrew Johnson ja:アンドリュー・ジョンソン no:Andrew Johnson nn:Andrew Johnson oc:Andrew Johnson pnb:اینڈریو جانسن nds:Andrew Johnson pl:Andrew Johnson pt:Andrew Johnson ro:Andrew Johnson rm:Andrew Johnson ru:Джонсон, Эндрю sq:Andrew Johnson scn:Andrew Johnson simple:Andrew Johnson sk:Andrew Johnson sl:Andrew Johnson sr:Ендру Џонсон sh:Andrew Johnson fi:Andrew Johnson sv:Andrew Johnson tl:Andrew Johnson th:แอนดรูว์ จอห์นสัน tr:Andrew Johnson uk:Ендрю Джонсон ur:انڈریو جانسن vi:Andrew Johnson war:Andrew Johnson yi:ענדרו זשאנסאן yo:Andrew Johnson zh:安德鲁·约翰逊

Name	Annette Gordon-Reed
Birth date	November 19, 1958
Birth place	Texas, U.S.
Known for	American Legal History, American Slavery and the Law
Alma mater	Dartmouth CollegeHarvard Law School
Employer	Harvard Law SchoolHarvard UniversityRadcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Occupation	ProfessorAuthor
Spouse	Judge Robert Reed
Footnotes	}}

Annette Gordon-Reed (born November 19, 1958) is an American historian and law professor noted for changing scholarship on Thomas Jefferson. Gordon-Reed was educated at Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. She is Professor of Law and History at Harvard, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History and 15 other prizes in 2009 for her work on the Hemings family of Monticello, and in 2010 she received the National Humanities Medal and was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Background and education

Gordon-Reed was born November 19, 1958 in Livingston,Texas to Bettye Jean Gordon and Alfred Gordon. She became interested in Thomas Jefferson as a student in elementary school. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 1981 and from Harvard Law School in 1984, where she was a member of the ''Harvard Law Review''.

Personal life

Annette Gordon-Reed is married to Robert Reed, a civil court judge in the Bronx, whom she met while at Harvard Law School. She lives on the Upper West Side with her husband and two children, a teenage son, Gordon, and a daughter, Susan, a student at Harvard.

Professional and academic career

Gordon-Reed spent her early career as an associate at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, and as Counsel to the New York City Board of Corrections. She speaks or moderates at numerous conferences across the country on history and law-related topics. She was a professor at New York Law School from 1992 until June 2010 and taught undergraduate and graduate-level courses in American History and American Studies at Rutgers-Newark in the spring from 2007 until June 2010. In 2010 she joined Harvard University with a joint appointment in history and law. Her first book, published in 1997, was ''Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy''. The book sparked great interest from fellow scholars as it investigated the long-standing historical controversy of whether Thomas Jefferson had a sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered children by her. Previous scholarship had fallen into a dichotomy between those who believed in the Hemings-Jefferson liaison and those who regarded it as a false charge intended by Jefferson's critics to damage his historical reputation. Gordon-Reed "drew on her legal training to apply context and reasonable interpretation to the sparse documentation".

She identified a set of unexamined assumptions that had governed many Jefferson scholars' investigations. These assumptions were that white people tell the truth, black people lie, slave owners tell the truth, and slaves lie. Gordon-Reed cross-checked the versions of events provided by former slaves, such as Madison Hemings, who claimed Jefferson as his father, and Isaac Jefferson, against documented historical evidence to which they could not have had access. She similarly cross-checked oral traditions among Hemings descendants with primary sources such as Jefferson's papers and agricultural records. This analysis led her to conclude that Jefferson and Hemings did have some sort of intimate sexual relationship, though she did not want to try to characterize it. Reprinted in 1999, the new edition of the book has a foreword incorporating the 1998 DNA study.

Reports of a DNA study in 1998 showed there was a match between the Jefferson male line and the Hemings descendants, with researchers' noting that, added to the body of historical evidence, this strongly suggested Thomas Jefferson was the father of the children. In addition, it conclusively showed there was no match between descendants of the Carr line, put forward by Wayles-Jefferson descendants as paternity candidates. In 2001 the National Genealogical Society published a special issue on the topic and concluded the that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Heming's children.

On February 28, 2011, Gordon-Reed was interviewed by Tavis Smiley about her latest historical work, a study of Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Abraham Lincoln as president after his assassination. She believes that Johnson, although loyal to the Union, did not favor integration of the freedmen into America's mainstream and caused the delay of full emancipation. Although many considered him a hero for many years, his reputation became tainted after 1900, as white historians researched his actions or lack thereof regarding integration of African Americans. Gordon-Reed has noted that the abolitionist Frederick Douglass realized Johnson was no friend of African Americans. Gordon-Reed argues in the book that much of the misery imposed on African Americans could have been avoided if they had been given portions of land to cultivate as their own. Without land, African Americans in the Deep South earned livings as sharecroppers, primarily (if not totally) under white land owners. They had few economic resources or choices often illiterate and forced to accept the owner's reckoning of accounts at the end of the year, as well as having to use his store. She likened their situation to that of immigrant workers in the New York garment industry (sweat shops) in the 1890s, and coal miners who were captives of the company stores until the UMWA was founded in 1890.

Current activities

Building on her earlier study, Gordon-Reed wrote the first of two planned volumes of a history of the Hemings family. The first, which appeared in 2008, was ''The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family''. The book has won sixteen awards and was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography and the 2009 Mark Lynton History Prize.: In 2008: National Book Award for Nonfiction, and

Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Book Award

In 2009: Pulitzer Prize in History (she was the first African American to be awarded this prize) George Washington Book Prize, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, New Jersey Council of the Humanities Book Award, Frederick Douglass Prize, Owsley Award from the Southern Historical Association, and Library of Virginia Literary Award

On February 25, 2010, President Barack Obama honored Annette Gordon-Reed with the National Humanities Medal in a ceremony at the White House; Gordon-Reed was one of 20 recipients of the nation's highest honors in the arts and the humanities.

On September 28, 2010, Gordon-Reed was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the "genius grants". The Foundation noted that her "persistent investigation into the life of an iconic American president has dramatically changed the course of Jeffersonian scholarship." In 2010 she joined the faculty of Harvard University, with a joint appointment in history and law.

Gordon-Reed has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship for ''Monticello Legacies in the New Age'', 2009; and a Cullman Center Fellowship from the New York Public Library for 2010-2011 to work on "Monticello Legacies", an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for ''Vernon Can Read!'', 2002; a Trailblazer Award, Metropolitan Black Bar Association, 2002; Best Nonfiction Book for 2001, Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She was Columbia University’s Barbara A. Black Lecturer, 2001; and won a Bridging the Gap Award for fostering racial reconciliation, 2000. She holds honorary degrees, from Ramapo College in New Jersey and the College of William and Mary in May 2010.

Bibliography (Books only)

1997 - ''Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy'' (reprint with new foreword discussing DNA evidence, 1998) (University of Virginia Press)

2001 - ''Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir'' (with Vernon Eulion Jordan (PublicAffairs)

2002 - ''Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History (Oxford)

2008 - ''The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family'' (WW Norton)

2011 - ''Andrew Johnson: The American Presidents Series—The 17th President, 1865-1869'' (Times Books/Henry Holt)

References

External links

http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2010/04/30_annette.html

http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/index.html?id=860

''Booknotes'' interview with Gordon-Reed on ''Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy'', February 21, 1999.

VIDEO Annette Gordon-Reed talks at The University of Sydney on ABC Fora

http://www.fordhamlawandculture.org/blog/2010/09/28/annette-gordon-reed-is-a-genius/

Category:American historians Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Pulitzer Prize for History winners Category:National Book Award winners Category:African American academics Category:Living people Category:1958 births Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:National Humanities Medal recipients Category:People from Polk County, Texas

fa:آنت گوردون رید la:Annette Gordon-Reed