Andrew Johnson: The American Presidents Series: The 17th President, 1865-1869

Ishmael Reed recently recommended I look to Andrew Johnson if I wanted to learn the true origins of the Republican party's Southern strategy. At the time, I had little idea what he meant-- wasn't the GOP's courting of Southern racists a recent phenomenon dating back to the 1960s? After reading Gordon-Reed's superb account of the disastrous presidency of Andrew Johnson, I understand what he meant.When Lincoln contemplated a second term, he realized that the focus would no longer be on winning the war, but on welcoming the South back into the Union. To that end, he chose a vice-president with unquestionable Southern credentials. Andrew Johnson had risen through the ranks of Tennessean politics and had become a Union favorite with his harsh denunciations of Southern separatists. When the South later seceded, Johnson fled to the North, where he became the only Senator from a Confederate state to continue serving in Congress.One can understand Lincoln's political motive in tapping Johnson for the vice-presidency. But it must have given Lincoln a moment of pause when Johnson arrived drunk at his own Inauguration. A few weeks after this spectacle, Lincoln was killed by John Wilkes Booth, and the laughing-stock of Washington was sworn-in as president.Johnson wasted no time in making his agenda known: now that the war was over, things would return to normal. Rather than subject the conquered Southern states to the gamut of Reconstruction, Johnson insisted that they return to how things used to be, save that they could no longer practice slavery. The South, whose crushing defeat had made it willing to accept any conditions imposed upon it by the North, was incredulous. Far from having to ensure equal treatment of blacks, it could maintain its apartheid system just like before the war.Within months, the odious "black codes" were enacted throughout the South. These laws required that blacks produce proof of gainful employment on demand to any white who asked to see them. If the black person could not produce them, he would be jailed. Blacks were not allowed to hunt or fish, which meant they could not support themselves independently. The point of the black codes was, in the words of one observer, "getting things back as near to slavery as possible."Violence against freed blacks in the South reached "staggering proportions." Blacks who tried to leave the plantations of their former slave masters were murdered. They were whipped, maimed, or killed if they refused to "obey the order of their former masters, just as if slavery existed."Records tell of a black man killed for not removing his hat. Another, because the white murderer simply "wanted to thin out the n---gers a little." Blacks were hunted and shot down like wild animals for no reason other than to reinforce the message that nothing would change in the way they would be treated after the war. Lynchings spread all over the South.Far from simply countenancing this slow-motion genocide of freed blacks, Andrew Johnson encouraged it. He encouraged southerners to act as they did and refused to use federal power to protect the rights of newly-freed blacks. "This is a country for white men," he declared. "And by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men."Johnson disingenuously masked his approval at the slaughter of blacks behind the excuse that the use of federal power to protect them would be an unwarranted intrusion upon the rights of Southern states. The states should decide who to accord rights to within their own borders. If the southern states did not want to grant political rights to blacks, it was not the place of the federal government to make them do so. Yet his vaunted reverence of the Constitution did not prevent Johnson from trampling it underfoot when necessary to pursue other political goals, such as overruling Congress' granting of the vote to blacks residing in the District of Columbia. Under Article I, Section 8, Congress alone has legislative power over the District. Johnson, like so many conservatives after him, hid behind the argument of "state's rights" in refusing to use federal power to protect the rights of blacks.Gordon-Reed describes the failed attempt by Republicans in Congress to impeach Johnson, and how his bid for a second term was defeated by Ulysses S. Grant.Andrew Johnson did everything he could to make sure blacks would never become equal citizens in the United States. Rather than carry forward Lincoln's vision for Reconstruction, he simply aimed for Restoration: allow the states which had formed the Confederacy to resume life as usual with only one, technical exception: they could no longer practice legal slavery. But this leniency, coupled with Johnson's open and virulent racism encouraged the South to pass black codes and conduct widespread terrorism to bring newly-freed blacks to heel. The age of night riders and the Klan was at hand, all thanks to the man Abraham Lincoln had chosen as his second-in-command.Had Lincoln retained Hannibal Hamlin, his first vice-president, into a second term, the entire history of racism in the United States would have taken a dramatically different turn. Hamlin was a strong opponent of slavery who urged Lincoln to deliver the Emancipation Proclamation and arm blacks to fight in the Union army. By dropping him from the ticket for his second term and picking a deep Southerner like Johnson, Abraham Lincoln unwittingly set back the cause of racial equality in the United States by 100 years.

Gordon-Reed’s biography of Andrew Johnson is important and significant. She demonstrates why character is so important for presidents. A must read.

I have all the Presidential Series books and have been waiting for this one to come out, which did recently. Good book with decent information, but I was let down because the author spent as much time concentrating on the main issues as she did on Andrew Johnson despising black people. Why? This book is written by a black woman and she has clearly got the "anti-white" chip on her shoulder, as most blacks do. How blacks were brought into the USA and how they lived until the last 25 years has always been a big issue with them, although I have never heard of a single black person in the USA fighting and clawing his/her way BACK to Africa to live the good life there. I have been to almost every country in Africa many times. One could not even begin to compare the life in Africa for a black person with this great life here in the USA.The book was more about Andrew Johnson being racist and single handedly causing black people to be set back in the way of rights for the next 100 years. Of course there were actually 17 more presidents after this president and before Lyndon Johnson's term in 1965 when blacks were allowed the right to vote, given complete rights, etc (Kennedy began this before he was assassinated). The author leads one to believe that since Andrew Johnson deprived blacks of any rights other than to be freed (this part is true), he was powerful enough to make that deed last for another 100 years (he wasn't). Abe Lincoln could not have pulled that one off and he WAS powerful enough. Thank God this woman was not allowed to write the books about the next 16 presidents who did virtually nothing to promote the life of the black person. I would have stopped buying them.I agree Andrew Johnson was not the best president to take office. But the attempt to impeach him was not because of racial issues or the fact that he clearly had an interracial relationship with a young black woman named Dolly that produced several half-breed children that look JUST LIKE ANDREW JOHNSON, that by the way, he adored, something racists and people that despise blacks simply don't do. Congress attempted to impeach him because he replaced his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton with another man. There was a law then called "The Tenure of Office Act" that did not allow Johnson to do this alone. This was a relatively new law and was overturned as unconstitutional in 1926 because it was clearly not a good law. All one needs to do is read Wikipedia about Andrew Johnson to see that even "Historians' Changing Views on Andrew Johnson".So if you want to read a book about Andrew Johnson that actually deals with the issues and is less racially inclined, I would buy another book. Preferably the one written by Hans L. Trefousse titled: "Andrew Johnson: A Biography". At least you will get the issues and the good and bad of his presidency without a lot of the rhetoric about how terrible it is to be a black person here in the USA that will most likely be an issue until the end of time.