And having lived here, I tried to learn as much as I could about the 17th president, Andrew Johnson.

And what I learned about him and what I was hearing the pundits say on national television did not match at all how he was the worst president ever.

What I learned was a man that had been an indentured servant, fled servitude at 14 years old, came across the mountain, and got as far as Greeneville, Tennessee.

This man was illiterate, but he had been an apprentice tailor.

He dated the town librarian who taught him to both read and write, and went on to hold every elected office in America.

Now think about that for a moment.

You start with an alderman for the town of Greeneville, you move to mayor, you move to state legislator, state senator, territorial governor, U.S.

legislator, U.S.

Senate, vice president, president, and the only president to go back into the Senate after having been president.

As I stacked up those facts, I decided that I would commission this film to determine what kind of man Andrew Johnson really was.

And I think we're going to determine that this man was a significant president, and perhaps stopped the second Civil War from happening.

And so I'm very, very delighted that we've taken this task on to prove and clear Andrew Johnson's name.

[horse neighing] On the evening of April 14th, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, along with a bodyguard composed of Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris, arrived at Ford's Theater on 10th Street in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the White House.

It was Good Friday.

They were there to watch, from the flag-draped presidential box, the performance of the comedy play Our American Cousin, a popular British farce that poked fun at stereotypes of rustic Americans and the British aristocracy.

Perhaps the president needed some comic relief from the stress of war, as hopeful news had just appeared in Washington the day before, signaling an end to the horrible Civil War through which the country had suffered for four long years.

Only five days before, on Palm Sunday, April 9th, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of Union armies, in the McLean House at Appomattox, Virginia.

General Grant, who had been known through much of the war as Unconditional Surrender Grant, had offered merciful and generous terms to General Lee and his army as conditions for surrender.

Those gestures of reconciliation were measures both commanders hoped would help end the hostilities felt on both sides of the bloody, costly war.

The terms of parole allowed the soldiers to go home and remain unmolested as long as they agreed not to fight further.

They were free to apply for pardons.

[cheers and applause] By 10:15 in the evening of April 14th, 1865, the comedy Our American Cousin was in its last act.

[music playing] Actor John Wilkes Booth, a frequent performer at Ford's Theater, had managed to situate himself just outside the door of the presidential box.

Incredibly, Booth got inside the presidential box without being challenged, and there he leveled his pistol at the back of the president's head and pulled the trigger.

[gunshot] [panicked screaming] President Lincoln slumped in his chair.

He had been fatally shot.

Booth then jumped out of the box and onto the stage below, yelling.

“The South is avenged.

Sic semper tyrannis.” He then escaped by scrambling out the rear entrance to the theater.

The mortally wounded President Lincoln was taken across the street to the Petersen family boarding house, where he died at 7:22 in the morning of April 15th, 1865.

[crying] Andrew Johnson, a southerner from eastern Tennessee and a Jacksonian Democrat with profound states' rights views, who had run for the vice presidency alongside the Republican Abraham Lincoln on what Lincoln called the National Union Ticket, had been elected vice president of the United States on November 8th, 1864.

Johnson replaced Hannibal Hamlin, who had served as vice president during Lincoln's first term.

On April 14th, 1865, Johnson, too, had been singled out for assassination by a man named George Atzerodt, one of the co-conspirators who was in league with Booth.

In fact, a three-pronged attack on government officials had been planned.

William H. Seward, the Secretary of State, who was confined to his bed after a carriage accident, was cornered by an assassin armed with a knife and narrowly escaped death himself that same night.

[music playing] That evening, Johnson was in his hotel room at the Kirkwood House in Washington, D.C., just blocks away from Ford's Theater.

George Atzerodt had a room in the Kirkwood House directly above Johnson's.

But incredibly, Atzerodt never carried out his mission to assassinate Johnson.

Instead, he allegedly got so drunk at a hotel bar, he was unable to act.

A sudden knock at Andrew Johnson's door brought life-altering news.

The messenger, Leonard J. Farwell, former governor of Wisconsin, had attended the play at Ford's Theater and witnessed the assassination.

He, too, boarded at Kirkwood House and raced to inform the Vice President that President Lincoln had been shot.

Hastily, Johnson and Farwell departed for Petersen's boarding house to attend Lincoln on his deathbed.

Out of respect for Mary Todd Lincoln, Johnson did not stay long but returned to his room at Kirkwood House.

In 1875, Andrew Johnson told a Tennessee compatriot.

“It was evident from the first that Booth's shot would prove fatal.

I walked the floor all night long, feeling a responsibility greater than I'd ever felt before.

More than 100 times I said to myself, ‘What course must I pursue so that the calm and correct historian will say, “100 years from now he pursued the right course?” I knew that I would have to contend against the mad passions of some and self-aggrandizement of others.” [music playing] When Lincoln died on April 15th, 1865, Andrew Johnson became the 17th President of the United States.

Pursuant to Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 7 of the Constitution of the United States, which reads.

“In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President.” Yet, the Constitution then did not provide for the naming of a new Vice President, and it would not do so until 1967 with the ratification of the 25th Amendment.

[music playing] Until that tragic moment, the Constitution had been tested only once before when Vice President John Tyler had stepped into the presidency in 1841 after William Henry Harrison died in office only one month into his term.

[music playing] Andrew Johnson became President without having a Vice President in an unforeseen, unexpected, and unprecedented fashion at a tumultuous moment in American history.

The nation had been torn into bloody factions, and it seemed as though Andrew Johnson was the man fate had chosen to repair the damage.

[music playing] In a hastily arranged ceremony, Andrew Johnson was sworn into the office of President in the small parlor on the first floor of Kirkwood House by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Salmon P. Chase.

Present were Cabinet members, several Senators, House members, and other dignitaries, all of whom would have known Johnson for many years during his service in Washington.

As recorded in the New York Times, on April 17th, 1865, Andrew Johnson's first statement, which served as an inaugural address under the circumstances, was as follows.

"The only assurance that I can give of the future is by reference to the past.

The course which I have taken in the past in connection with this rebellion must be regarded as a guarantee of the future.

My past public life, which has been long and laborious, has been founded, as I in good conscience believe, upon a great principle of right, which lies at the basis of all things.

The best energies of my life have been spent in endeavoring to establish and perpetuate the principles of free government.

I've long labored to ameliorate and alleviate the condition of the great mass of the American people.

Toil and an honest advocacy of the great principles of free government has been my lot.

The duties have been mine.

The consequences are God's.” Everyone wanted to know what to expect from the new president.

In London, The Spectator, on May 6, 1865, reported what they knew about Andrew Johnson.

“A very original, very determined, maybe a very dangerous, but unquestionably a very powerful man has succeeded Abraham Lincoln.

Englishmen cannot afford to make a second mistake such as that committed about Lincoln.

We have passed hours in studying the speeches and acts of Mr.

Johnson as governor of Tennessee.

The more we have read, the more strongly has the conclusion grown on us that the new American president is one of the most individual men on the continent who will accept advice only when it harmonizes with his own preconceived convictions.” How this fascinating American original reached the position he held reveals one of the most notable examples of self-development in our national history.

[music playing] Andrew Johnson was born on December 29th, 1808, in a one-story frame house with a loft in the town of Raleigh, North Carolina, a dwelling likely owned by his parents' employer, the Casso's Inn.

His father, Jacob Johnson, had died a hero's death due to his own health being compromised, likely by pneumonia, after he saved the lives of two fishermen whose boat had capsized in the icy waters of Hunter's Mill Pond.

Andrew was only three years old.

[music playing] On his grave, unmarked until 1867, it reads, “In memory of Jacob Johnson, an honest man loved and respected by all who knew him.” While attending the commemoration of the stone marking his father's grave in 1867, Andrew Johnson Andrew Johnson spoke about him.

“He was my father, and of him I am very proud.

He was an honest man and a faithful friend, a character I prize higher than all the world's fortune that could have been left me.” Indeed, his father's legacy was one of humble, untiring public service.

And it appears that Andrew Johnson emulated that ethic throughout his entire life.

Jacob's death left the family utterly destitute.

Andrew's mother, Mary, also known as Polly, a weaver and a laundress for the inn, was left to raise on her own two boys, Andrew and his older brother, William, born in 1804.

Their sister, Elizabeth, sadly, died as an infant.

Andrew's mother was 29 years old at the time of her husband's death.

She eventually remarried.

The man's name was Turner Daughtry.

Lacking the resources to educate her sons, in 1818, she signed Andrew, then about nine years old, and his older brother, William, over to a Raleigh tailor named James J. Selby, who assured her he would train the boys as tailors.

As part of the contract for indentured servitude, Selby was obligated to provide the boys with an education.

[music playing] To be a tailor in a small town in early 19th century America was a meaningful trade.

The tailor in early America was an essential figure in any community, and the tailor shop was traditionally a place where men gathered to talk about everything from fashion to politics.

Because Selby's contract with Polly Johnson required him to educate the boys while training them as tailors, Selby hired a Dr.

William Hill to read to the boys as they worked.

The work Dr.

Hill read was a volume entitled The American Speaker.

That book so impressed young Andrew Johnson that later he requested and obtained the book from Dr.

Hill, treasuring it his entire life.

The book included works by Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth I, General George Washington, John Adams, John Randolph, and even the Seneca chief Red Jacket.

Its stated aim was.

“To endeavor to fire the minds of our young men by placing in their view some of the brightest examples of genius, to enable them with lips of fire to plead their country's cause.” Indeed, listening to the written word as read by Dr.

Hill was the only education Andrew Johnson ever received.

[music playing] In the summer of 1822, Andrew and William decided to run away.

It seems the boys became weary of the work that tailor James J. Selby expected of them.

Likely, too, the meaning of the readings they had listened to for so many hours was sinking in, and the boys realized that they were not living in freedom and liberty as promised by the nation's laws.

Selby ran an ad in the Raleigh Gazette.

Ran away from the subscriber on the night of the 15th instant, two apprentice boys, legally bound, named William and Andrew Johnson.

Selby offered a reward of $10 for anyone who could deliver the two boys.

He also offered $10 for anyone who could deliver Andrew Johnson alone, a clear illustration of how much Selby thought of Andrew's worth.

Andrew Johnson later acknowledged that.

“I left Raleigh a penniless and inexperienced boy to make my way in the world.” He was only 15 years old.

William and Andrew parted.

And Andrew, it appears, journeyed mostly by foot as far as Lawrens, South Carolina, by himself.

There he found a tailor who was in need of assistance.

Andrew remained there for nearly two years, perfecting his craft.

He fell in love with a girl who lived in Lawrence named Sarah Ward.

Sarah and Andrew made a white work quilt together.

Andrew proposed marriage.

Sarah embroidered her initials upon the quilt.

His were to be added once they were married.

He was turned down after Sarah's mother refused to give permission for her daughter to marry a penniless 16-year-old tailor.

He returned to Raleigh after a journey, mostly on foot, amounting to over a thousand miles from beginning to end.

He hoped to stay in Raleigh, but his relations with his former employer Selby were not settled.

He could not satisfy either the terms of the contract for indentured servitude or pay the bounty Selby required.

Neither could his mother.

After Andrew expressed an interest in settling in Tennessee, his mother and her husband, Turner Daughtry, concluded that they should accompany him.

They loaded all their belongings into a wagon, pulled, according to legend, by a blind pony, and set out across the mountains to Tennessee, initially hoping to settle in the Sequatchie Valley in southern Tennessee where Polly's brother lived.

And where William had settled.

They soon discovered the Sequatchie Valley was too distant from where they were heading.

The blind pony would never make it.

After a difficult and dangerous journey through the Bald and Blue Ridge Mountains, they reached Greeneville, the county seat of Greene Greene County, Tennessee, on September 17, 1826.

Greeneville was a village surrounded by hills.

It was the county seat of Greene County and was the home of Greeneville College, which even in those days boasted a library of 3,000 books.

Located there were also Tusculum College and Washington College, as well as Rhea Academy for young students.

The town of Greeneville had about 500 residents.

The Methodist and Presbyterian churches featured prominently in the downtown, along with a large brick courthouse, two taverns, and four stores.

Three doctors and four lawyers had practices in the town.

The town also had a gristmill that stood at the base of a hill south of town.

Greeneville even had a village tailor shop owned and operated by a George Boyle.

Andrew Johnson quickly made friends in Greeneville.

One of them was a young lady named Eliza McCardle, an attractive brunette.

She was the daughter of a local shoemaker, John McCardle, who had died leaving Eliza and her widowed mother, Sarah, to support themselves by making and selling quilts and leather goods.

Family tradition holds that in September 1826, Eliza told her friends after seeing Andrew in a cart drawn by a blind pony.

“There goes my boat, girls.

Mark it.” Lacking the skills to open his own tailor shop, and not finding enough work in Greeneville, Andrew left Greeneville and moved 50 miles away to Rutledge, Tennessee, where he found work in a tailor shop.

He liked Rutledge, but missed seeing Eliza.

He wrote letters to her frequently.

[music playing] In the spring of 1827, Andrew returned to Greeneville.

He rented a tailor shop and asked Eliza to marry him.

Eliza readily agreed.

They were married on Eliza's 16th birthday, May 17th, 1827.

Andrew was 18 years old.

They were married before a justice of the peace named Mordecai Lincoln, a cousin of Thomas Lincoln, the father of none other than Abraham Lincoln.

Their marriage certification was signed by Mordecai Lincoln and by Valentine Sevier, a prominent citizen of Greeneville, who was a nephew of John Sevier, the hero of the Battle of Kings Mountain in the Revolutionary War and the first governor of Tennessee.

Andrew Johnson began working at his own tailor shop.

Over his shop, Andrew hung a sign which read A. Johnson Tailor.

William Johnson, who by this time had become an accomplished carpenter, constructed for his brother a tailor's table that can be seen today.

Eliza, who had been provided a good basic education, tutored Andrew in mathematics and writing, instruction he had never been given before.

Gifted with native intelligence, Eliza otherwise helped him become the owner of a respected and profitable tailor shop.

They lived in a home on Water Street, close to the tailor shop.

The marriage was a good partnership from the beginning.

The couple would have five children, Martha born in 1828, Charles born in 1830, Mary born in 1832, Robert born in 1834, and Andrew Jr.

born in 1852, 24 years after his eldest sister Martha was born.

Eliza was a devoted wife and mother, and totally loyal to Andrew throughout their married life.

Andrew Johnson turned his interest and attention toward local politics, participating in debates at the Debating Society at Greeneville College, and soon earning a reputation for public speaking.

He helped organize a mechanics or working men's ticket in the 1829 Greeneville municipal election.

He was elected a town alderman, along with Blackstone McDannel, and none other than Mordecai Lincoln, who according to Andrew Johnson's ledger of 1833, became a steady customer of Andrew's tailor shop.

The tailor shop soon developed a clientele that included the prominent men of Greeneville, including Valentine Sevier and Mordecai Lincoln, among many others.

Indeed, A. Johnson Tailor also began to host its own debating society, where politics, local, state, and national, were steadily and passionately debated.

Blackstone McDannel became one of Andrew's lifelong close friends.

A plasterer by trade, and thus a fellow artisan, Andrew and Blackstone McDannel saw eye to eye on many of the issues of the day.

These were the years that Andrew Jackson, a colorful Tennessee lawyer and military officer, served as the president, and what became known as Jacksonian Democrat politics formed Andrew Johnson's political thinking.

When the proposed Tennessee Constitution was submitted to a vote of the people, Andrew Johnson spoke for its adoption.

That campaign gave Andrew Johnson exposure all across East Tennessee.

On January 4, 1834, Andrew Johnson's fellow alderman elected him mayor of Greeneville.

[music playing] In 1835, Andrew Johnson stood for election for a seat in the Tennessee House of Representatives that was shared by Greene County and neighboring Washington County.

According to one historian, Andrew Johnson won the election after demolishing his opposition in debates held in the two counties.

It seems Andrew had absorbed the lessons and deployed the skills he learned in declamation and oratory during those impressionable years listening to Dr.

Hill read The American Speaker.

Andrew Johnson also joined the Tennessee militia as a member of the 90th Regiment.

He ultimately attained the rank of colonel and was thereafter often addressed by his rank.

Andrew Johnson had achieved financial success with his tailoring business.

Wanting to concentrate on his political interests, he sold the tailor business in 1841.

He had acquired significant real estate by then and built a larger home on the farm where his mother and stepfather also lived.

As he expanded his real estate, he purchased slaves.

By 1857, he would own nine slaves.

[music playing] [music playing] Andrew Johnson was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1843 where he served five two-year terms representing his Tennessee district.

His eldest daughter, Martha, then 16, accompanied her father to Washington in 1844 and 1845 to attend Miss S. L. English's female seminary in Georgetown.

On occasion, she was the guest of the White House courtesy of President James K. Polk.

She befriended Mrs.

Polk who gave her a necklace and earring set.

Doubtless, Martha never could have imagined then that her father would become president and she would serve at times as first lady.

In 1851, Andrew Johnson and his family moved into a spacious two-story brick house on Main Street in Greeneville called The Homestead.

[music playing] In 1853, Andrew was elected governor of Tennessee for a four-year term.

In 1855, while Andrew was Tennessee's governor, Martha married Judge David Trotter Patterson, a lawyer and political ally of Johnson's.

As governor of Tennessee, Johnson turned his attention to the pressing need for public education, an interest of his that endured throughout his political career.

And not surprising, given what he had suffered during his first gubernatorial term, Johnson supported public education by overseeing the enactment of the first state law that levied a tax for financing public schools.

He defeated the know-nothing candidate for a second term.

During that term, legislation was enacted providing for the sale of bonds for railroads and regulating banking practices.

In 1856, Johnson supported the Democratic ticket, helping James Buchanan to carry Tennessee, the first time that the state had voted the National Democrat ticket since Andrew Jackson's presidency.

In response, a grateful Democrat state legislature endorsed him for a third term as governor and selected him for the United States Senate seat before the term ended.

[music playing] In 1857, he was elected by the Tennessee state legislature to serve in the United States Senate.

While a United States senator, Andrew Johnson introduced the Homestead Bill, legislation that was designed to give federal farmlands to poor families.

Andrew Johnson passionately supported the bill, whereby 270 million acres of public land was designated for United States citizens to claim in 160-acre parcels.

U.S.

citizens, freed slaves, new immigrants intending to become nationalized, single women, and people of all races were eligible.

Former slaves, union soldiers, and others could help drive westward expansion.

The Homestead Act has been shown to be one of the most significant pieces of legislation in American history.

Modern presidents have lauded the law, with George H.W.

Bush stating on November 28, 1990.

“It freed people from the burden of poverty.

It freed them to control their own destinies, to create their own opportunities, and to live the vision of the American dream.” Andrew Johnson always considered the Homestead Act one of his greatest achievements and proudly reported to Congress in his years as president the progress attained by the act.

On December 3rd, 1866, President Andrew Johnson reported.

“During the last fiscal year, 4,629,312 acres of public land were disposed of, 1,892,516 acres of which were entered under the Homestead Act.

This liberal policy invites immigration from the old and from the more crowded portions of the new world.

Its propitious results are undoubted and will be more signally manifested when time shall have given to it a wider development.

The Homestead Act expired more than a hundred years later, in 1976.

It was extended in Alaska until 1986.

What a legacy.

[explosion] After a furious bombardment, Major Robert Anderson surrendered the Union garrison at Fort Sumter to Confederate forces on April 12, 1861.

The Union became fractured.

When the southern slave states, including Tennessee, seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America, Andrew Johnson remained firmly with the Union.

In fact, he was the only sitting United States Senator from a Confederate state who remained a United States Senator upon learning of his state's secession in 1861.

As the Lincoln administration called out troops to suppress what President Abraham Lincoln regarded as the Rebellion of the Cotton States.

Andrew Johnson's determination to stay in the Senate with the Union was not without personal cost to him and his family.

His defiance had a broader impact on other Unionist families, particularly in East Tennessee.

Shortly after the secession vote, believing his life was in danger, Andrew Johnson fled Tennessee, escaping through the Cumberland Gap in order to get to Washington, D.C.

He left his wife, Eliza, and their five children in Greeneville, but this exposed his family to the wrath of Confederate supporters there.

East Tennessee, including Greeneville, was largely Unionist, but the state of Tennessee was under Confederate control, and Unionist families, even those not as prominent as the Johnsons, shared the Johnsons' ordeal of persecution, resistance, and survival.

Eliza and the children initially remained in their home, but rapidly the situation deteriorated.

Confederate authorities and local secessions viewed Andrew Johnson's family as a liability and a symbol of defiance.

Andrew served as senator in Washington in 1861.

Confederate officials ordered Eliza and her family to leave Greeneville.

Eliza, who suffered poor health, likely tuberculosis, since the birth of Andrew Jr.

in 1852, was forced to pack up her household and relocate along with their slaves.

[music playing] In February 1862, Andrew Johnson's son, Robert, escaped arrest for his Unionist views by fleeing into Kentucky.

By March, he became a colonel in the 4th Tennessee Union Infantry, a regiment led by his sister Mary's husband, Colonel Daniel Stover.

Colonel Daniel Stover, however, stayed in Tennessee and took part in the notorious bridge-burning efforts.

This attempt to sabotage Confederate railroads was intended to coincide with a Union invasion to liberate East Tennessee.

When the invasion did not take place, the bridge-burners were forced to take refuge in the mountains over a cold winter.

This is likely where Daniel contracted tuberculosis.

Andrew Johnson's son, Charles, also sympathized with the Union during the Civil War and may have at this time taken an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy, likely in a failed attempt to preserve family property.

The Johnsons attempted to settle eastward with other Unionist families, but they faced harassment and threats from Confederate sympathizers everywhere they went.

Confederate officials billeted soldiers in the beautiful Johnson homestead in Greeneville.

The soldiers left souvenirs throughout the home in the form of graffiti.

Andrew Johnson's defiance gave Confederate authorities license to crack down on Unionist sentiment.

After Tennessee seceded, Confederate leaders imposed martial law, deployed troops, and established local militias to suppress dissident families.

[music playing] On March 12, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Senator Andrew Johnson military governor of Tennessee.

[men shouting] [gunshots] In the wake of the Battle of Shiloh, fought on April 6 and 7, 1862, Union troops slowly took control of the state of Tennessee.

With the appointment of Andrew Johnson as military governor, Lincoln also commissioned him as a brigadier general.

Lincoln was hoping Johnson could restore civil government and return Tennessee to the Union.

Andrew Johnson's appointment helped to stabilize not just the state government in Tennessee, but also his family's situation.

He was able to bring Eliza, Martha, and David Patterson, Mary and her husband Daniel Stover, Charles and Andrew Jr.

to Nashville, where he provided for them in the Lizinka Campbell Brown House.

It was not long before Andrew Johnson's family in Nashville was pierced with sadness.

In the fall of 1862, Andrew's son Charles joined the 10th Tennessee Infantry as an assistant surgeon.

Tragically, on April 4th, 1863, Charles was thrown from his horse and died from head injuries.

In May 1864, Colonel Robert Johnson resigned his post in the 4th Tennessee Infantry, which had become the 1st Tennessee Cavalry to serve as one of his father's secretaries in Nashville.

As military governor, Andrew Johnson initially attempted to suppress Confederate sentiment and then began promoting emancipation, setting the stage for Reconstruction.

He arrested critics of the federal government and dismissed state officeholders who refused to denounce secession.

He shut down anti-union newspapers, seized railroads, and levied heavy taxes on large land owners.

As military governor of Tennessee, Andrew Johnson issued Tennessee's Emancipation Proclamation on October 24th, 1864.

President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1st, 1863 did not apply to the border states of Missouri, Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky, nor in Tennessee, where Johnson had the state under Union control.

Andrew Johnson's commission as military governor and an exchange of correspondence between President Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson explicitly discuss Lincoln's plans for Johnson's appointment as military governor of Tennessee.

Lincoln desired that Johnson would enable the loyal people of Tennessee to present such a republican form of state government as will entitle the state to the guarantee of the United States and therefore be protected under such state government by the United States against invasion and domestic violence.

Johnson and Lincoln together planned to show how the operations of civil government would naturally bring about an end to the war, an end to slavery, and a self-governing state government in the state of Tennessee.

Importantly, one of his first acts was to establish tribunals determining the loyalty of Tennessee's citizens and to guarantee that in all civil and criminal cases that came before the judicial tribunals of the state, the rights of colored persons would be adjudicated and disposed of as cases of free persons of color.

[music playing] Andrew Johnson had freed all his own slaves on August 8th, 1863.

Those slaves who remained on Andrew Johnson's farms in Greene County, Tennessee were given money earning jobs on the farms.

As part of restoring Tennessee to the Union, Andrew Johnson began a widespread program of pardoning all those Confederates who took the oath of allegiance while still requiring large landowners and others to appeal for presidential pardons.

He worked to let Tennessee function as a state again, electing its legislature, its governor, and resuming state functions.

It was a slow, painstaking process.

[music playing] Abraham Lincoln's presidential campaign of 1864 was one of the most interesting such campaigns in American history.

Lincoln called upon Andrew Johnson to run for the vice presidency with him, even though Lincoln was a Republican and Johnson was a Jacksonian Democrat with pronounced states' rights views.

Lincoln and Johnson did not run for the office under their political party's banners.

Rather, they ran on what Lincoln referred to as the National Union Ticket.

In one of Johnson's last acts as military governor, he certified the ratification of Tennessee's new constitution, which abolished slavery.

[chugging] Andrew Johnson prepared to leave Nashville and join Lincoln in Washington as his newly elected vice president.

Johnson reported triumphantly by letter dated January 13th, 1865, the Tennessee Convention, composed of more than 500 delegates from all parts of the state, have unanimously adopted an amendment to the Constitution forever abolishing slavery in this state and denying the power of the legislature passing any law creating property in man.

“Thank God that the tyrant's rod has been broken.

This amendment is now to be submitted to the people for ratification on the birthday of the father of his country.

When without some reversive arms, the state will be redeemed, the foul blot of slavery erased from her escutcheon.

All is now working well, and if Tennessee is now, let alone will soon resume all the functions of a state according to the genius and theory of government.

I am for emancipation for two reasons.

First, because it is right in and of itself.

And second, because in the emancipation of slaves, we break down an odious and dangerous aristocracy.” Throughout Johnson's Johnson's military governorship, he held the confidence of the President and the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton.

In a letter to Andrew Johnson accepting his resignation as military governor, Edwin Stanton wrote.

“In one of the darkest hours of the great struggle for national existence against rebellious foes, the government called you from the Senate to place you in front of the enemy.

And in a position of personal toil and danger, perhaps more hazardous than was encountered by any other citizen or military officer of the United States in every official and personal relation, I have found Johnson worthy of the confidence of the government and the honor and esteem of his fellow citizens.” [music playing] Andrew Johnson was elected Vice President in November 1864.

The election for Governor of Tennessee was yet months away, and Johnson was determined to stay in Tennessee until after that election had been decided.

[people cheering] However, Lincoln's advisers requested his presence at the March 4th Inaugural, and Johnson reluctantly agreed.

Andrew Johnson was ill with what appears to have been typhoid fever when he was sworn into office as Vice President.

The whiskey he had taken to cope with the effects of his illness, an accepted remedy at the time, made him somewhat incoherent at the inauguration, a situation that subjected him to ridicule.

He recuperated for about a month at the home of Francis Preston Blair in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Lincoln stated, in response to criticism of Johnson's behavior.

“I have known Andy Johnson for many years, but you need not be scared.

Andy ain't a drunkard.” Andrew Johnson was getting ready to return to Nashville in April 1865 and then to resettle his family in Greeneville when he heard that General Grant had captured the Confederate capital at Richmond and resolved to stay, believing the end of the war was to come.

[music playing] [music playing] When Andrew Johnson became the president in April 1865, the Civil War was nearing its end.

Yet, for Andrew Johnson, the most difficult time in his political life was yet to begin.

Although he had spent over 30 years in public service, his experience could not have prepared him for the great problems that now faced him.

To bring harmony out of hysteria and chaos that prevailed.

Throughout the nation, on April 15, 1865, following his induction into office and his inaugural address, he called his first cabinet meeting at noon that day when two items were settled.

First, the matter of the details of Lincoln's funeral and then the appointment of Mr.

W. Hunter as Secretary of State pending the recovery of Secretary of State Seward from his attempted assassination.

Andrew Johnson saw that his first duty was to restore civil government in the South.

He viewed it as a political and economic necessity that the Southern states pledge allegiance and loyalty to the Union.

Andrew Johnson's purpose in allowing former Confederate states to return to the Union without facing punishment or constitutionally suspect requirements was to welcome the former Confederate states back into the Union, not to punish them.

Andrew Johnson faced an anxious, divided nation and a Congress that included what were called radical Republicans who wanted to send Union troops into the former Confederate states and then punish the former Confederate officers, enlisted men, and government officials of those states by trying them for treason and then providing, by an act of Congress, the right to vote to the freed slaves in the Southern states.

Radical Republicans publicly claimed that the former slaves, with gratitude, would then choose to vote for radical Republicans and they claimed the votes of the former slaves would give them complete control for the foreseeable future in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.

Not only would the radical Republicans control the slaves' votes, but with Union troops in those Southern states under their command, they would be able to totally control those states.

The radical Republicans sought the power to impose any and all punishments they saw fit on former Confederates and Confederate states.

That way, there would be no white people in the Southern states voting, only freed slaves would represent the former Confederate states in the ballot box.

The radical Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate included Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, John A. Logan of Illinois, Thomas Williams of Pennsylvania John A. Bingham of Ohio, James F. Wilson of Iowa, George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts, Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, Lincoln's first vice president, Schuyler Colfax of Indiana, Theodore Pomeroy of New York, and Zachariah Chandler of Michigan.

Notably, Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio became president pro tempore of the United States Senate, an extraordinarily powerful position.

A few of the radical Republicans hailed from some Northern states that actually denied African-Americans the right to vote.

Some states, such as Indiana, barred any African-American man or woman from entering the state.

In one notorious case, Dr.

William Bowles, the founder of what has become known as the French Lick Resort in the state of Indiana, brought several African-Americans into Indiana, defying state law.

He was arrested, tried for treason, and convicted.

He was sentenced to be hanged.

Before the date of Bowles' execution, President Andrew Johnson was informed of the circumstances and intervened immediately commuting Bowles' sentence.

Bowles was freed.

Notably, the radical Republicans never sought to correct the laws of those states or to prevent the states from enforcing those laws.

[music playing] Andrew Johnson rightly perceived that if the radical Republicans seized control of the Congress, their measures could bring about another civil war.

As President of the United States, Andrew Johnson now faced a task beyond comprehension to bring harmony and union out of war and chaos.

Both the northern states as well as the southern states had suffered horrific casualties during the war at immeasurable cost.

In the Battle of Gettysburg, for instance, both sides together lost over 51,000 men killed, wounded, or missing.

In the battles like the Seven Days, Second Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Petersburg, Shiloh, Perryville, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and the battles for Atlanta and Vicksburg and many others, there were in the Union armies countless dead, wounded, captured, and missing, not to mention the economic losses suffered by attempting to support and supply the armies.

In the southern states, the casualties among the armies were enormous.

Cities and towns throughout the south were completely destroyed.

Buildings, farms, homes, and businesses in some places were burned to the ground.

Andrew Johnson's task as President was to unify the states by bringing the defeated southern states back into the Union.

It was a Herculean task.

With all the losses and destruction suffered by the southern states at the hands of the Union armies, how could they be brought back into the Union?

Pardoning the former Confederates was a start.

[music playing] Mercifully, the Congress was not in session from April until December 1865, and Andrew Johnson spent much of that time studying pardon applications and issuing pardons to former Confederates who took the oath of allegiance to preserve, protect, and defend the United States.

In 1865 and the first half of 1866, Johnson issued pardons for 12,652 former Confederate soldiers and officials.

In 1867, he issued over 7,000 more pardons.

By pursuing that policy, Andrew Johnson carried out the very policy that was advocated by Abraham Lincoln when he envisioned the Union after the conclusion of the war.

[people chattering] On March 4, 1865, Lincoln had delivered his second inaugural address, saying█ “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphan, to all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Just as Andrew Johnson had, as military governor, busily pardoned Tennesseans who had served in the Confederate Army or otherwise supported the Confederate cause as part of restoring civil government, he set about using his presidential pardon power to do the same.

[train chugging] Once Lincoln's funeral train departed Washington for Springfield, Illinois on April 21, 1865, Andrew Johnson immediately set to work in the White House.

He was a man with a powerful work ethic, beset by a bewildering array of duties.

His calendar from April 16 to April 30 was packed with addresses, speeches, interviews, and visits.

He was described at this time by one of his secretaries, Fred Cowan, who observed.

Lincoln resembled President Johnson in his manner of transacting the executive business.

Easy of approach and constantly made personally interested in the details of many cases others could not attend to as well as he.

He was constantly having the most mighty and most trivial on his hands at the same time.

Assailed by persons who, in the wake of the loss of Lincoln, wanted to provide Johnson with advice, he assigned an old and trusted friend, the journalist Henry Watterson of Louisville, Kentucky, to conduct a tour of the Southern states and report back his findings.

Losing no time, Andrew Johnson published an address to loyal Southerners in the Washington Morning Chronicle, one of his early public acts as president, on April 24th, 1865.

Andrew Johnson wrote█ "In the exercise of clemency and mercy, let pardoning powers should be exercised with caution.

I do not give my utterance to my opinions on this point in any spirit of revenge or unkind feelings.” He cited his experience in Tennessee as evidence for Southerners to support the exercise of the pardoning power.

He then went on to define treason as a crime not a mere political difference and pointed to the assassin of Lincoln as a traitor who should pay for the act with his life.

And finally, he stated that the leaders, the conscious leaders of the rebellion, should be treated with justice, but amnesty, conciliation, clemency, and mercy would be shown to the thousands of countrymen who were driven into rebellion.

On May 2nd, 1865, he demonstrated his resolve to punish some Confederate leaders by ordering the arrests of Jefferson Davis and Clement C. Clay, Jr., who had served as a Confederate senator and peace negotiator.

His forceful move illustrated his commitment to justice while issuing pardons to Southerners who supported the Confederacy.

It was Andrew Johnson's commitment to pardoning the former Confederates that caused the Southern states to ultimately accept reunification and rejoin the Union.

He proved that Lincoln's simple and heartfelt motive of exercising malice toward none but charity to all was the only way to reunify the states.

Andrew Johnson, at the same time, wanted to honor the Union soldiers and their families.

Johnson issued thousands of orders elevating Union soldiers to higher ranks, such as the order elevating Captain Andrew Cowan, commander of the First New York Independent Battery who won his fame at Gettysburg.

Beyond recognizing and honoring both Union and Confederate officers and enlisted men after the Civil War, Andrew Johnson presented the Medal of Honor to Dr.

Mary Edwards Walker, the only female military surgeon who served in the Civil War and the only female to ever be awarded the Medal of Honor.

[music playing] Abraham Lincoln had planned the grand review of all the Union armies in Washington to take place at the conclusion of the war.

It was also crucial to Lincoln to disband the armies in order to return the nation to a sense of normalcy.

Two, to disband the armies was necessary for the Southern states to know that they could safely return to the Union.

On May 23rd and 24th, 1865, that grand review took place while President Andrew Johnson and his staff and family watched from the White House reviewing stand.

[band playing] [soldiers cheering] More than 150,000 officers and men from the armies of the Potomac and the Tennessee and others marched down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House.

It was an awesome spectacle consuming two entire days.

In his efforts to disband the armies, Andrew Johnson ultimately retained over 15,000 men to actively serve in the army.

[music playing] On May 29, 1865, Andrew Johnson issued two proclamations summarizing his plans to restore civil government in the Southern states.

He granted clemency to all Southerners who took the oath of allegiance and thereby retained their rights to their property.

High Confederate officials and Southerners owning property valued at more than $20,000 who had not been heretofore paroled or excluded from the option.

They could apply for clemency.

Then he outlined a plan for reconstruction in North Carolina, which became a blueprint for other Southern states.

He proposed to appoint provisional governors to defeated Southern states who would draft new constitutions abolishing slavery and renouncing secession.

Following the enactment of these laws, the states would then be readmitted to the Union.

[music playing] By June 9th, 1865, President Johnson's family joined him in the White House.

Robert joined his father in Washington, D.C., and served as one of his secretaries.

Martha Johnson Patterson and her husband David joined along with their two young children, Belle and Andrew J. Patterson.

Mary Johnson Stover, now widowed, joined her sister in hostess duties at the White House accompanied by her three young children, Sarah, Lillie, and Andrew.

The president's son, Andrew Johnson, Jr., just 14, moved to Washington, D.C., and attended Georgetown College during the years 1866 to 1869.

Eliza, now somewhat crippled, mostly kept to herself at the White House while Martha handled the duties of First Lady with pride and dignity at times with Mary's help.

[music playing] Martha Johnson Patterson was careful to preside over receptions and restore the war-ravaged executive mansion with frugality intact.

In a May 5th, 1895 Knoxville, Tennessee newspaper, Martha was quoted.

“I thought that as our country was impoverished, at the time it was my duty to make the White House expenditures as light as I possibly could.

What I pride myself on is that while I was in the White House, any man, woman, or child, rich or poor, black or white, who was in Washington and sent me his card at any hour after 9:00 in the morning on any day of the week was allowed to see through the whole house.” To her is credited this statement.

“We are plain people from the mountains of Tennessee, brought here through a national calamity.

We trust too much will not be expected of us.” The five young children added an air of liveliness to the White House.

A teacher came daily to give them lessons.

Andrew Johnson was relaxed and happy with the family.

His wife was his trusted advisor whom he consulted daily.

When the boys and girls wanted to ask him something, they were allowed free access to him in his offices and knew they were always welcome.

In the privacy of his family, he would wear his dressing gown and slipper.

enjoy occasional popcorn feasts and chestnut and apple roasts.

On June 13th, 1865, Johnson appointed William L. Sharkey as the Provisional Governor of Mississippi.

Over the next few weeks, Johnson appointed provisional governors for Georgia, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina and Florida and assigned to each the task of overseeing his reconstruction plans in the South.

The first session of the 39th Congress, which met beginning December 4th, 1865 and ended August 28, 1866, was a flurry of activity.

On January 31st, 1865, Congress had passed the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Section 1 of the amendment read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Section 2 of the amendment read, “Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” [clapping] The 13th Amendment was ratified December 6th, 1865.

The first item on the 39th Congress's agenda.

[music playing] Next up, Congress created legislation to enforce the abolition of slavery.

To illustrate an example of the conflicts between President Johnson and the Congress in that first session after the end of the Civil War, one can look at the several pieces of important legislation designed to address reunification of the country and to protect the newly emancipated slaves called freedmen.

On March 3rd, 1865, Abraham Lincoln had signed the first bill for the relief of freedmen and refugees to provide food, shelter, clothing, medical services, and land to displaced Southerners including freed former slaves.

This bill had been nearly two years in the making, having been introduced in 1863 by Senator T.D.

Eliot of Massachusetts.

One major issue was which Department of Government would administer the roles in the Freedmen's Bureau, with some arguing the War Department should do so and others arguing the Treasury should administer its functions and still others arguing that establishing the Freedmen's Bureau would make the freedmen the political captives of the bureaucracy, prolonging their servitude.

Ultimately, after several iterations of the bill being passed back and forth between the House and the Senate, it was decided that the War Department would properly administer the Bureau.

Lincoln quickly signed the bill into law once it arrived at his desk.

The bill was designed to be operational for just one year after the end of the Civil War.

Establishing schools, supervising contracts between employers and freedmen, and managing the use of confiscated or abandoned lands were among the Bureau's missions.

January 5, 1866 marked the expiration of the Freedmen's Bureau legislation.

With the expiration of the Freedmen's Bureau legislation, Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois introduced a bill that extended the provisions of the Freedmen's Bureau Act by removing the expiration date and encompassing freedmen and refugees in every state, not just ex-Confederate states.

Supporters of the bill were shocked by what happened next.

On February 19th, 1866, Andrew Johnson vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau Bill.

Johnson's stated reasons for opposing the legislation were similar to the arguments made by the measure's opponents in the House and Senate.

It was unnecessary to extend the original legislation.

It infringed on states' rights.

It gave the federal government an unprecedented role in providing aid to a specific group of people at the exclusion of others, and it was expensive.

Johnson had resisted all congressionally driven Reconstruction programs and denounced those who stood opposed to the restoration of the Union.

He viewed the Southern states as fully restored and thus entitled to enjoy their constitutional rights as members of the Union.

He also wanted the states to drive the Reconstruction programs themselves rather than have the terms dictated by Washington.

Democrats and moderate Republicans supported the president's position, and a vote to override the veto the next day failed to gain the necessary two-thirds vote.

The issue floundered until May when a more moderate House bill to extend the Freedmen's Bureau was proposed.

This final bill gained approval by both the House and the Senate and went to the president for his approval on July 3rd.

Again, President Johnson vetoed the bill.

This time, however, both the Senate and the House were ready.

They mustered the two-thirds majorities necessary to override the veto.

The Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1866 became law on July 16, extending the work of the agency for two more years.

[music playing] The battle lines now, however, between Andrew Johnson and the radical Republicans were drawn.

Early in the session of the 39th Congress, the Congress also took up the Civil Rights Act of 1866, authored by Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull, the first federal law to define citizenship and the rights guaranteed by citizenship.

It was mainly intended to protect the rights of citizens of African descent born or brought into the United States and stated that it was unlawful to deprive any person of citizenship rights on the basis of race, color, or prior condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.

The law specifically excluded American Indians.

It was controversial at the time because not everyone in Congress could agree that Congress had sufficient constitutional power to enact the law, and President Johnson additionally opposed it as unnecessary.

Trumbull argued that Congress had the power to enact it in order to eliminate a discriminatory badge of servitude prohibited by the 13th Amendment.

It applied, however, only to former enslaved blacks.

President Johnson, you may recall, declared all men in Tennessee to be free in the Tennessee Emancipation Proclamation.

To radical Republicans who believed the federal government had a role in shaping a multiracial society in the postwar South, the measure seemed the next logical step after the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 18th, 1865 abolishing slavery.

[music playing] Representative Henry Raymond of New York noted that the legislation was one of the most important bills ever presented to this House for its action.

President Johnson disagreed with the level of federal intervention implied by the legislation, calling it another step or rather a stride towards centralization and the concentration of all legislative power in the national government in his veto message.

Representative Samuel Shellabarger of Ohio pointed out that the language of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 does not purport to confer any legal benefits to white citizens and was thereby exclusionary.

Passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 proved to be another salvo in the showdown between the 39th Congress, 1865 to 1867, and the President over the future of the former Confederacy in African-American Civil Rights.

Congressman James F. Wilson summarized what he considered to be the purpose of the act as follows when he introduced the legislation in the House of Representatives.

“It provides for the equality of citizens of the United States in the enjoyment of civil rights and immunities.

What do these terms mean?

Do they mean that in all things civil, social, and political all citizens without distinction of race or color shall be equal?

By no means can they be so construed.

Do they mean that all citizens shall vote in the several states?

No.

For suffrage is a political right which has been left under the control of several states by virtue of the Constitution, subject to the action of Congress only when it becomes necessary to enforce the guarantee of a Republican form of government.

Nor do they mean that all citizens shall sit on the juries, or that their children shall attend the same schools.

The definition given to the term civil rights in Bouvier's Law Dictionary is very concise and is supported by the best authority.

It is this, civil rights are those which have no relation to the establishment, support, or management of government.” Weeks later, Senator Trumbull described the bill's intended scope.

“This bill in no manner interferes with the municipal regulations of any state which protects all alike in their rights of person and property.

It could have no operation in Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, or most of the states of the Union.” So, here was a federal law that not only operated to benefit only one segment of society, but also did not apply equally to every state in the Union.

Moreover, Andrew Johnson argued... "There is a limit widely observed hitherto which makes the ballot a privilege and a trust and which requires, of some classes, a time suitable for probation and preparation.

To give indiscriminately to a new class, wholly unprepared by previous habits and opportunities to perform the trusted demands is to degrade it, and finally to destroy its power.” Trumbull and Johnson argued on the Senate floor over the scope and application of this provision as a federal law.

Johnson was concerned that Congress was overreaching its power, a concern shared by others.

Further, according to Congressman John Bingham, the 7th and 8th sections of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill enumerate the same rights and all the rights and privileges that are enumerated in the first section of the Civil Rights Bill, making it redundant as well.

[people cheering] On April 5th, 1866, the Senate overrode President Andrew Johnson's veto.

This marked the first time that a U.S.

Congress ever overrode a presidential veto for a major piece of legislation.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 passed on the first anniversary of Appomattox over President Andrew Johnson's veto.

Congress recessed in July 1866, but it would resume its conflicts with Andrew Johnson and tests of the limits of its power as soon as it reconvened on December 3rd, 1866.

As the storm of impeachment proceedings was already brewing and he read of himself frequently as a traitor who should be hanged, the fight with Congress grew in bitterness.

The advisers to the president began to urge upon him the need of making more friends so that he would have less opposition.

They became more insistent on the importance of his making a tour through the principal cities of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.

[train chugging] The occasion presented was the laying of the cornerstone of the Chicago monument to Stephen A. Douglas.

The Swing Around the Circle, as it was called, started on August 28th and was the most unusual trip ever made by a president.

Martha Johnson Patterson, her husband, Senator Patterson, Secretary Seward and Welles, Mrs.

Welles, Postmaster General Randall, General Ulysses S. Grant, Admiral David Farragut, and a group of 60 people accompanied Andrew Johnson.

He had continual ovation for three weeks, but it seemed that his responses and speeches failed to please.

Throughout the tour, his speeches were aggressive, even fierce in tone.

He had much provocation.

His resentment was expressed by his remarks to Congress.

“I would ask you, with all the pains this Congress has taken to poison the minds of their constituency against me.

But what has this Congress done?

Have they done anything to restore the Union?

No.

On the contrary, they've done everything to prevent it.” The president stated in another address.

“If my predecessor had lived, the vials of wrath from a mendacious press would have pressed upon him as it does upon me.” Upon another occasion he declared.

“I have been fighting traitors' south.

They've been whipped and crushed and acknowledged their defeat.

Now I'm fighting traitors' north.

Some talk about traitors in the south.

When they have not the courage to go away from home and fight, but remain cowardly at home, speculating and committing frauds in the government.” [music playing] Much is made of the bills vetoed by Johnson.

With his positive efforts in support of many bills, particularly those concerned with education and farmland for the poor, overlooked.

Consistent with Johnson's interest in promoting public education for all, on March 2nd, 1867, President Andrew Johnson signed legislation creating the first Department of Education.

Its main purpose was to collect information and statistics about the nation's schools.

However, due to concern, the Department would exercise too much control over local schools, consistent with both Johnson's concerns for separation of powers and states' rights.

The new Department was demoted to an Office of Education in 1868.

[crickets chirping] It was during the 1867 Congressional recess that President Andrew Johnson visited Raleigh, North Carolina to mark the grave of his father.

During the Congressional recess later that summer, in spite of all the conflicts with and threats of the radical Republicans, Andrew Johnson, on September 17th, 1867, took the time to travel to Sharpsburg, Maryland, the site of the Battle of Antietam, fought on September 17th, 1862.

And there, before a crowd of thousands, including the governors of 18 states whose soldiers were buried in the Antietam National Cemetery, Andrew Johnson said.

“When we look upon the battlefield, I think of the brave men on both sides who fell in the fierce struggle of battle, who sleep silent in their graves, would to God we of the living could imitate their example as they lay sleeping in peace in their tombs and live together in friendship and peace.” [music playing] On the very first day of the second session of Congress, George Henry Williams of Oregon, with the support of the radical Republicans, introduced legislation called the Tenure of Office Act, prohibiting the President of the United States from removing any member of his cabinet, regardless of whether he had appointed that member.

The bill was intended to protect officers appointed during Reconstruction.

It passed the Senate in January, the House in February, and was promptly vetoed by President Johnson on March 2nd, 1867.

This time, the Congress was ready and that very same House and Senate successively overrode his veto.

On the heels of the Tenure of Office Act, Andrew Johnson swiftly dismissed his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, a Lincoln appointee who publicly opposed Andrew Johnson's policies toward the former Confederate states, and promptly appointed General Lorenzo Thomas to that position.

[music playing] The Tenure of Office Act turned out to be a test of the constitutional independence of the executive branch from the legislative branch of the federal government.

In response to Johnson's defiance of the act, Stanton barricaded himself in the War Department and appealed to his friends in the Senate.

Andrew Johnson's dismissal of Secretary of War Stanton prompted the United States House of Representatives to impeach him, the only means available to the Radical Republicans to remove him from office so they could fundamentally do whatever they wished to the former Confederate states and those who served in the Confederate Army or the Confederate governments.

If the Radical Republicans were successful in removing President Andrew Johnson from office, one of their own members Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, would become Acting President of the United States as he was the president pro tempore of the Senate, the position held by the Presidential Succession Act of 1792 to be next in line for the presidency should the president be removed or unable to serve.

Andrew Johnson, having been impeached by the House of Representatives, was to be tried before the United States Senate.

The trial was set to begin on March 3rd, 1868.

On that day, the House managers all Radical Republicans presented their case to the Senate.

The arguments of the House managers continued until April 9th, 1868, another anniversary of Appomattox.

[people chattering] The Senate was loaded with spectators who had acquired tickets to watch the proceedings.

[music playing] Andrew Johnson brought together a group of prominent lawyers to defend him.

First was Henry Stanbery of Ohio, who resigned his post as Attorney General of the United States to lead Johnson's defense.

Then there was Benjamin Curtis, a Massachusetts Republican and a former Supreme Court Justice.

Third was Jeremiah Black, Pennsylvania Democrat and Cabinet member in President James Buchanan's term of office.

Fourth was William Evarts, a Republican who was added at the last minute.

He was a New York Associate of Secretary William Seward.

Fifth, was William Groesbeck, a former Democrat Congressman from Ohio.

And finally, Thomas Nelson, a former Tennessee adversary of Johnson who became a staunch ally of the President.

Presiding over the impeachment case was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase.

To convict Andrew Johnson of the charges against him required those seeking his conviction to get two-thirds of the Senate to vote in favor of conviction.

Attending the trial in the Senate chamber was none other than Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant.

He let it be known that he believed Andrew Johnson would be convicted.

Mingling among the Senators was none other than General Daniel E. Sickles, the self-anointed Hero of Gettysburg, whose insubordination in that battle nearly cost the Union Army a bloody defeat.

Apart from that, Sickles had killed the son of Francis Scott Key in a duel across from the White House and then, through his counsel, Edwin M. Stanton, successfully pled temporary insanity that enabled him to escape conviction from murder.

A Tammany Hall operative in New York City politics before and after the war, Sickles was hardly a man of splendid character.

Sickles cornered on the Senate floor Senator Edmund Ross, a Republican from Kansas, and urged him to vote to convict Johnson.

Ross quickly turned away.

The trial lasted over a month.

Ninety witnesses were heard.

When this sensational jury of Senators voted, 35 declared the President guilty, 19 voted not guilty, immediately after the announcement by the Chief Justice that two-thirds of the Senators had not voted him guilty, everyone knew President Johnson had been acquitted.

Edmund Ross's vote of not guilty was considered so significant by historians that President John F. Kennedy selected him as the subject of one chapter among just eight in his famous book Profiles in Courage.

In fact, President Kennedy identifies Ross and all six of the colleagues who courageously stood with him.

William Fessenden of Maine, John Henderson of Missouri, Peter Van Winkle of West Virginia, Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, Joseph Fowler of Tennessee, James Grimes of Iowa, as deserving special mention due to their courage in this moment of history.

Twenty years later, when the Tenure of Office Act was repealed, the Kansas newspapers who had denounced Ross at the time now were full of praise by the firmness and courage of Senator Ross.

The country was saved from calamity greater than war, while it consigned him to political martyrdom.

He did his duty knowing it was his political death.

He acted for his conscience and with a lofty patriotism.

Regardless of what he knew, it must be the ruinous consequences to himself.

He acted right.

Kennedy insists all seven of the Republicans who voted against conviction should be remembered for their courage.

Not a single one of them escaped the unholy combination of threats, bribes, and coercive tactics.

Not a single one of them escaped the terrible torture of vicious criticism engendered by their vote to acquit.

Analyzed and stripped of all superfluous matter, the trial revealed itself strictly as a contest between the executive and the legislative branches of the government.

Naturally, during the war, the executive branch had eclipsed the other two branches of government.

After the death of President Lincoln, powerful leaders in the two houses clamored for the subordination of the executive branch to the legislative branch.

Mr.

Johnson's firm fight for the independence of the executive branch was, in reality, a major cause of his unpopularity.

Had he been convicted, undoubtedly, succeeding presidents would have found their positions stripped of many of its prerogatives and reduced to that of being mere figureheads.

The Tenure of Office Act was repealed in 1887, proving Andrew Johnson right because it violated separation of powers.

[gavel pounds] Andrew Johnson was exonerated.

The impeachment trial had been a fight to the death between Johnson and Stanton.

Stanton had often referred to President Johnson sarcastically, calling him our tailor from Tennessee and saying, “That tailor from Tennessee, our knight of the shears and goose, naming a tailor's two main tools of the trade.” And Johnson's response, always.

“It is true, I am a tailor by trade, but no man has ever said that I was not a good tailor.

And if I'm relieved of this office I now hold, I am proud to say I could still go back to the bench and earn a living.” When Johnson's impeachment failed, Stanton immediately resigned.

And in December, 1869, he died.

Andrew Johnson attended the funeral of Edwin Stanton and made a speech in eulogy of his erstwhile enemy, declaring.

“He was my friend, a friend who did not always understand me.

He was one of the most able men I ever knew, and one of the most honest men I ever knew.

If he had faults, they were of the head, not the heart.

And now all we remember is his zeal, his earnest desire for the good, his upright intent, his matchless ability of brain.

Let love mingle with memory, and peace be accorded to his ashes.” Andrew Johnson's bare escape, though by a single vote, was nevertheless a victory.

It kept the nation from having still another cataclysm over the selection of a successor to the president.

But for the balance of his term, President Johnson was entirely ignored by Congress, or at least the part that had opposed him so vigorously.

It passed bills over his veto with apparent delight, and he went out of office despised and ignored by such of its members as had fought him all through his term.

Grant won the 1868 presidential election.

And as Andrew Johnson's term was ending, his thoughts were directed to those in need of help, the former Confederates, who were uncertain of their futures if he was no longer the president.

On Christmas Day, 1868, President Andrew Johnson granted, by proclamation, a full pardon and amnesty to all persons engaged in the late rebellion.

Thus ended any attempts by the radicals or anyone else, including the new president, to punish those who had fought in the Confederate armies, or served in the Confederate government or aided them in any way during the Civil War.

It was the last gesture from the United States government that the former Confederate states and their citizens, including those who served in the Confederate armies, were welcomed back into the Union as Abraham Lincoln so passionately wanted.

The dream of Andrew Johnson's life, however, his election to the presidency as his party's choice, was denied.

Johnson's energy and dominant will, however, would not let him retire to idleness.

[music playing] Andrew Johnson returned home to Greeneville, Tennessee.

He began another congressional race.

He was defeated successively for both the House and the Senate.

He ran again for the Senate as an independent and was elected, taking his seat on March 5th, 1875, at a special session called by President Grant.

Johnson was the most interesting member of that body, being the only ex-president to serve in the United States Senate.

[music playing] Johnson felt that his time on Earth was drawing to a close, and he informed those who were close to him of his thoughts about the end of life.

“I have performed my duty to my God, my country, and my family.

I have nothing to fear in approaching death.

To me, it is the mere shadow of God's protecting wing.

Here I will rest in quiet and peace beyond the reach of calumny's poison shaft, the influence of envy and jealous enemies, where treason and traitors or state backsliders and hypocrites in church can have no peace.

When I die, I desire no better winding sheet than the stars and stripes, and no softer pillow than the Constitution of my country.” On July 29th, 1875, Andrew Johnson, after spending some time visiting friends and family members in Greeneville, boarded a train in order to spend time with his daughter, Mary Stover Brown, who married a William Brown of Greeneville, Tennessee, but who lived in neighboring Carter County, Tennessee.

Her first husband, Colonel Dan Stover, had died during the war.

The house where Mary and her husband and daughter Lilie lived was a two-story framed dwelling.

On July 29th, 1875, Andrew Johnson, while at his daughter's home, suffered a stroke with paralysis and was put to bed.

On the 31st, he suffered a second stroke and died.

Thus ended the life of the one who reunified the nation after the Civil War.

[music playing] Andrew Johnson's body lay in state at his home on Main Street in Greeneville, Tennessee.

It was then taken to the courthouse on Main Street to lie in state there.

Editor Quincy Marshall O'Keefe reminisced in the Greeneville Sun in 1946 about attending Johnson's funeral at the age of nine.

She recalled attending the funeral parade, marveling at the turnout, numbering about 5,000 people for her friend and neighbor, Belle Patterson's grandfather.

Quincy's grandfather, Thomas Dickens Arnold, was an ally of Andrew Johnson, though they were of different parties and Arnold was known as a colorful Tennessee congressman in the U.S.

House of Representatives.

He was one of the very few Tennesseans who opposed the programs and policies of President Jackson, even though he opposed secession and supported the Union much like Johnson.

The Arnolds occupied the beautiful home that had been built by Valentine Sevier across Main Street from the Johnson homestead.

Quincy observed, remembering the days while growing up in the Sevier home.

“I knew that Andrew Johnson, that stern man who often came to our house, was dead.

So often had I opened the door to him, but never in my life had he addressed one word to me.

When I saw that tall, rather frightening figure coming down the street, I would pause in the game my sister and I were playing with his granddaughter, Belle Patterson, and open the door to him, admit him to the little parlor where his daughter, Mrs.

Patterson, was awaiting him with mother.

I did not wait to hear the exchang of gracious conversation.

It was a too accustomed proceeding to arouse any curiosity of mine.” As Andrew Johnson requested, his body was wrapped in the American flag and his head rested on a pillow made from a copy of the United States Constitution.

Andrew Johnson's funeral was held on August 3rd, 1875, at the courthouse on Main Street in Greeneville.

His remains were then taken up Main Street to what was then called Signal Hill, where they were buried.

The entire town was draped in black.

Today, there is a magnificent monument over the grave of Andrew Johnson.

Nearby are the graves of his family members.

Although it was once Signal Hill, it is now the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery.

Andrew Johnson's legacy has been somewhat dwarfed by the giants Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, his predecessor and successor.

The significance of his fierce devotion to a strict construction of the United States Constitution may very well be credited, however, with saving the executive branch of government from irrelevancy and for preserving the notions of state sovereignty and federalism.

His most remarkable achievement is his faithful interpretation of Lincoln's vision for national unity, with malice toward none and charity for all, which informed every action in Johnson's presidency, from the issuing of pardons and amnesty, to recognizing military service, to entrusting states with the restoration of civil governments, his peers preferred to belittle and ridicule him for his origins and lack of formal training.

But his sensibilities and the courage of his convictions proved to be transcendent during a time of unimaginable national discord and difficulty.

Any American can be inspired by this man of humble, modest beginnings, whose dogged persistence, grit, determination, and a genuine willingness to learn of and to serve the interests of those who, like himself in his early life, lacked political power and economic means, and who recognized that the government could and should make the difference in improving the lives of all Americans, young and old, black and white, rich and poor.

It's time for the greatness of President Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States, to emerge from the shadows of the giants who served before and after him.

He deserves his rightful place in history.

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