DK - The American Civil War

of Tennessee. In 1857, he entered the

Senate as a Democrat, and was serving

in that capacity at the outbreak of the

Civil War. Although a Southerner,

Johnson was fiercely opposed to

secession, a cause he identified with the

planters he had always stood against.

When fighting broke out, he was the

only U.S. senator from a Southern state

to remain loyal to the Union.

As a War Democrat—having split

from those among the Democratic

Party who opposed the war—Johnson

attracted the attention of Republican

strategists seeking a vice-presidential

candidate for the 1864 election. The

party needed to reach out to Democrats

willing to back the war effort. Their

choice of Johnson as Lincoln’s running

mate, both on a National Union ticket,

served to show that the Union

represented something more than just

the Republicans under another name.

Taking office

Johnson’s first public appearance in

his role as vice president did not inspire

confidence. Suffering the after-effects

of typhoid fever, he prepared for his

swearing in with several shots of

Campaign flag

The Republican Party chose War Democrat Johnson to

run with Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 presidential

election in the hope of uniting pro-war opinion. They

easily beat George McClellan, the Democratic candidate.

Andrew Johnson

T

he assassination of Abraham

Lincoln thrust Andrew Johnson

into the spotlight, conferring on

him a role that he had never been

expected to play. Born into poverty in

North Carolina, he had no formal

schooling. Instead, he was apprenticed

to a tailor at an age when most children

would still have been attending lessons.

In his teens, Johnson abandoned

the apprenticeship and ran away with

his brother to Tennessee, where he

found work as a tailor in the town

of Greeneville in the east of the state.

This was a land of smallholders,

who had little in common with the

slaveholding estate owners of the deep

South. It was these people, the

smallholders, whose views Johnson

would represent over the course of his

political career. In contrast, he always

maintained a deep-seated resentment

against the great estate owners.

In Greeneville, the young Johnson met

and married a shoemaker’s daughter,

Eliza McCardle, who is said to have

taught him writing and arithmetic,

and encouraged him in his

political ambitions. In 1829,

at just 20, he became a

municipal alderman, and

four years later he was

elected town mayor. A

talent for oratory took

him to the Tennessee

House of Representatives

two years after that. Over the

next three decades his political

career went from strength to

strength. He was elected to the

lower house of Congress in

1843, then became Governor

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES Born 1808 Died 1875

COLLAPSE OF THE CONFEDERACY 1865

“The goal to strive for is a

poor government but a

rich people.”

ANDREW JOHNSON, QUOTED IN ANDREW JOHNSON, PLEBEIAN AND PATRIOT

BY ROBERT WATSON WINSTON (1928)

Unpopular president

Photographer Mathew Brady took this

portrait of Andrew Johnson around 1865.

A Unionist, he was against civil rights for

blacks and lacked the ability to reunite

the nation after the war.