March 5, 1875, 150 years ago: Andrew Johnson is sworn in as a member of the U.S. Senate. Just 7 years earlier, the Senate had tried to ensure that he never held public office in America again.
Andrew Johnson (no middle name) was born on December 29, 1808 in Raleigh, North Carolina. His father died when he was 3 years old, casting the family into dire poverty. He apprenticed as a tailor, moved to Greenville, Tennessee, and, at age 18, married 16-year-old Eliza McCardle, in a ceremony performed by Justice of the Peace Mordecai Lincoln -- a 1st cousin of Abraham Lincoln. They had 5 children, none of whom ever ran for public office. All 3 sons died young, from alcoholism, and 2 of them predeceased Andrew.
He had as many as 10 slaves, but freed them shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation, keeping them as paid servants. He was elected an Alderman in Greenville in 1829, and became a delegate to a convention writing a new Constitution for Tennessee. He was elected Mayor in 1834, to the State House of Representatives in 1835, to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1843, Governor in 1853, and U.S. Senator in 1857.
Johnson was the only Senator from a State that seceded from the Union in 1860-61 who did not resign his seat. He remained loyal to the Union. President Lincoln rewarded him for this by appointing him Military Governor of Tennessee in 1862. In 1864, seeking to widen his support, the Republican Lincoln asked his Vice President, former Maine Senator Hannibal Hamlin, to step aside from the ticket, and he formed a "National Union" ticket with the Democratic Johnson.
Lincoln and Johnson won, and were inaugurated on March 4, 1865. But while Lincoln's Inaugural Address was one of the greatest ever -- with its request, "With malice toward none, with charity for all" -- Johnson was hungover from celebrating the night before, was given more drinks, and was drunk when he delivered his Inaugural Address. He was still so out of it when Lincoln spoke that, knowing there were photographers, Hamlin blocked Johnson's face with his top hat.
Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, and died the next morning, April 15, at 7:22 AM. At 11:00 AM, Johnson was sworn in by the Chief Justice of the United States, Salmon P. Chase, a former Senator from Ohio. The ceremony was held at the Kirkwood House, a boarding house, at 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, 4 blocks east of the White House. (It was demolished in 1874. The site is now occupied by an office building, with ground-floor retail, including The West Wing Cafe.)
Johnson continued Lincoln's lenient "Reconstruction" policy toward the South, which was considered too lenient by the "Radical Republicans" who then controlled Congress. It's important to note that, at this point in the nation's history, the Republicans were liberal, including being pro-civil rights, and, while they were based in what's now considered the Midwest, they also dominated the Northeast; while the Democrats were conservative, with a base in the "Solid South," and stood up for white supremacy.
And so, the Republicans, led by such men as Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and Senator Benjamin Franklin Wade of Ohio, and Johnson fought like cats and dogs. Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, preventing the President from firing any member of the Cabinet without the consent of the Senate. After all, the Senate had to give consent to appoint someone to the Cabinet, so why shouldn't their consent be needed to remove someone from it?
But the consent of the Senate for Cabinet appointments was written into the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution did not prevent the President from firing a Cabinet member without the Senate's consent. Eventually, well after Johnson was dead, the U.S. Supreme Court would rule that Johnson was right, and struck the Act down.
Johnson fired the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who had been appointed by Lincoln. On February 24, 1868, the House impeached Johnson, the 1st impeachment of a President. His trial began in the Senate on March 5, with a conflict of interest: Under the law in effect at the time, since the Vice Presidency was vacant following Johnson's rise to the Presidency, if he were to be convicted, the next President would be the President Pro Tempore of the U.S. Senate -- Ben Wade. He should have recused himself from the trial. He did not.
On May 16, the Senate voted on the 11th Article of Impeachment, accusing Johnson of firing Stanton in violation of the Tenure of Office of Act once the Senate had overturned his suspension. The vote was 35 Guilty, 19 Not Guilty. With a 2/3rds majority required to convict Johnson and remove him from the Presidency, he thus stayed in office by 1 vote. One vote. In the days to come, 2 other Articles of Impeachment also went down to 35-19 votes, and the others were dropped, with the presumption that the results would be roughly the same.
There were 10 Republicans who broke from their party to acquit him. One, James Grimes of Iowa, said, "I cannot agree to destroy the harmonious working of the Constitution for the sake of getting rid of an unacceptable president." Another, Edmund G. Ross of Kansas, would later be one of the Senators cited in John F. Kennedy's book Profiles in Courage.
It was just as well: Johnson was done as President within a year, anyway. The Republicans, no longer needing votes from the South, were never going to re-elect him. And the Democrats viewed him as having abandoned them. In the 1868 election, the Republican nominee, General Ulysses S. Grant, easily defeated the Democratic nominee, Governor Horatio Seymour of New York.
On March 4, 1869, Johnson did not attend Grant's Inauguration. They already did not get along, and Johnson refused the traditional carriage ride of the outgoing and the incoming Presidents from the White House to the Capitol. He stayed at his desk, literally working until the last minute of the last day of his Administration. While some of those carriage rides, which became an automobile ride in 1921, were tense, no outgoing President would refuse to attend the incoming President's Inauguration again until Donald Trump for Joe Biden in 2021.
Seeking vindication for himself, and revenge against his political enemies, he launched a Senate bid soon after returning home. At the time, Senators were still elected by State legislatures, and he lost his 1869 race. He lost a House race in 1872. On January 26, 1875, he won a Senate seat. He remains the only former President to be elected to the Senate, although John Quincy Adams was elected to the House after his failed bid for re-election.
When Andrew Johnson walked into the Senate chamber for his swearing-in on March 5, 1875, he was greeted with a standing ovation, and given a bouquet of flowers. John Sherman of Ohio, brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman, and one of the leaders of the move to convict him, shook his hand. With some irony, Johnson's predecessor as Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin, had also been returned to the Senate, and they were sworn in together by the current Vice President, Henry Wilson.
Because of his pro-South policies and racism, much more than for the circumstances that led to his impeachment, he has consistently been rated one of the worst Presidents. Nevertheless, he did produce one of the greatest comebacks in the history of American politics.
Only one film has been made about him: Tennessee Johnson, in 1942, starring Van Heflin -- not to be confused with Van Johnson (no relation to Andrew) or Van Williams. A Presidential Library was set up for him on the campus of Tusculum University in Greenville, Tennessee. U.S. Route 11E in northeastern Tennessee, including Greenville, is named the Andrew Johnson Highway. No U.S. Navy ship has been named for him.
A note about Chief Justice Chase, who swore Johnson in as President: In 1934, his portrait appeared on a one-time issue of a gold certificate with a face value of $10,000. The U.S. government has not issued a bill larger than $100 since.
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