President Andrew Jackson (Lesson 80)

The third President from Tennessee, not unalike Jackson and Polk before him, came to the state from North Carolina. Andrew Johnson was born in 1808. His father died when Andrew was just three years old, so his family was too poor for him to receive a formal education. Andrew was apprenticed to a tailor when he was 14, where another apprentice may have taught him to how to read.
When Johnson was 16 he through some pebbles against a girls window.

                              (Sound familiar)

The girls mom threatened to have him arrested, (poor guy...) and then he ran away to South Carolina in fear.... (What if she wasn't serious... GAH ANDYYY)  Leaving a apprenticeship as a serious crime. (REALLY Andrew?!?!)

Andrew eventually decided to go to Tennessee to start anew. Settling in Greeneville, Johnson opened a tailor shop. There he married Eliza McCurdle when she was 16 and Andrew as 18. (Is that even legal now???) Eliza might have taught him how to write. 

Johnson was elected to the town council at age 19 and was elected mayor two years later. He won two terms to the Tennessee House of Representatives and then was elected to state senate. Johnson was first elected to Congress in 1843 and was re-elected for five terms. He supported President Polk in the Mexican War and worked for a law that would make it easier for poor farmers to obtain land in the West. 

Andrew was elected for governor of Tennessee in 1853. After two terms, the legislature named him the US Senate in 1857. He eventually saw the Homestead Act passed in 1862, fulfilling his dream to help the Western settler. Johnson has a strong dislike of wealthy people who used their influence to limit the power of the common man. He later saw Reconstruction not so much as an opportunity to help freed blacks, but as a opportunity to crush the power of their masters, who he saw as hateful aristocrats. 

Johnson strongly opposed to secession. He was the only Senator from the South to remain in Washington when the Southern state seceded. When Union forces took control of Nashville in 1862, President Lincoln named Johnson military governor of the state. Because Johnson was a Southern Democrat who supported the Union, Lincoln chose him as his running mate in 1864 on the National Union ticket. Lincoln was trying to please the South by selecting him. Johnson gained a reputation as an alcoholic when he showed up drunk at his inauguration on March 4, 1865. One explanation was he was ill and had taken a shot of brandy. Whatever the true story was, Lincoln defended him strongly.

When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson became President of the US. He continued the Administrations mild plan for restoring the Southern states to the Union. Considerable conflict developed between Johnson and the Radical Republicans strong in the Southern states and the national government as well Johnny stubborn in opposing the Radical Republican plan. Sometimes he made harsh comments about them in speeches. He often vetoed bills that Congress had given the US Constitution. 

 One positive accomplishment of Johnson's Presidency was the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million in 1867. Although the purchase was criticized at the time as "Seward's Folly" and "Seward's Icebox". The purchase proved to be for more valuable to the United Stated than its price. (a cheep one at that)

After Johnson was found not guilty by the Senate for his impeachment trial, he hoped he might receive the Democratic presidential nomination in 1874. In his one speech in the Senate the next year, Johnson repeated his belief in milder approach to Reconstitution and denounced  the harsher policies of the Radical Republicans. His speech received applause in the very chamber where he stood only seven years earlier. Johnson died of a stroke on July 31, 1875, while visiting his daughter in TN. 

Johnson and his wife had five children. Eliza was a fairly educated for the rimes. She has a quiet personality that was a contrast to her husband's aggressive style. She usually remained in Greeneville when Johnson was serving in Nashville or Washington. Confederate raiders in East Tennessee harassed her and forced her to moved in with her daughter in Carter County during the Civil War. Confederate raider Nathan Bedford Forrest only reluctantly allowed her to pass through Confederate lines to Nashville to be with Johnson when he was military governor. 

Mrs. Johnson developed tuberculosis and was invalid for much of her later life. When Andrew became President in !865, his wife didn't join him in Washington till June of that year. She was usually not involved in White House receptions. Their daughter, the wife of Senator David Patterson, served at hostess. 

When the couple returned to Greeneville from Washington in 1869, Eliza was seriously ill. she died in 1876, six months after her husband passed away.    

Peace OUT.