Country Vacations & Resorts

Time in Office: 1865 to 1869
Terms: One partial after Lincoln’s assassination
Birthday: December 29, 1808
Birth Place: (Now) Mordecai Plantation Manor – Raleigh, North Carolina.
Date of Death: July 31, 1875
Place of Death: Elizabethton, Tennessee
Buried: Andrew Johnson National Historical Site (since 1963) – Greeneville, Tennessee

Notes:
~ His father died when Andrew was three
~ No formal education
~ Taught himself to read and write
~ Was supposed to have been assassinated along with Lincoln
~ Was Vice President for less than two months
~ Was seen by his peers as an “obstinate” politician
~ Survived two attempts at impeachment
~ Approved the purchase of Alaska from Russia

Imagine being Vice President to Abraham Lincoln’s second Presidential term for about 40 days. Lincoln is then assassinated and suddenly, you are President of the United States. Even then, Lincoln would prove a tough act to follow in a country still reeling from the Civil War. Andrew Johnson, America’s 17th President, might have preferred his office at a different time and place in US history.

Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, Andrew Johnson’s father died when he was around 3 years old – leaving the family in near poverty. Johnson’s mother apprenticed him to a tailor at the age of 14 – which position eventually moved him to Laurens, South Carolina. He left after 3 or 4 years and ran away with his brother to Greeneville, Tennesse where he continued working as a tailor.

Andrew Johnson, Politician

In 1827 he married the educated Eliza McCardle, also of Greeneville, and for the next 26 years, he remained mainly in the State of Tennessee. He was politically very active – being elected an alderman (1829), Mayor (1833), Tennessee House of Representatives (1835), Tennessee Senate (1841), Congressman (1843), and then Governor of Tennessee in 1853. Andrew’s rise to national politics was assured when he was elected Tennessee’s Democratic Senator – serving from 1857 to 1962. Not bad for a person with no formal education!

Lincoln appointed Johnson as Military Governor (Brigadier General), of Tennessee in 1862. In his three years at this posting he toured Tennessee in opposition to slavery. In 1863, he freed his own slaves. Johnson had been the only Senator from a Confederate State who did not leave the Senate and return home at the start of the Civil War.

Impeachment Trial – 1868

Two attempts at impeachment of President Johnson took place in 1867 and 1868. Both failed.

Andrew ran unsuccessful campaigns for the Senate (1868) and the House of Representatives in 1872. In 1874 Tennessee returned him to the Senate – a position he held from March 1875 until he died a few months later in July 1875. He was buried – his body wrapped in an American flag and a copy of the US Constitution under his head, just outside Greeneville, Tennessee at the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery.

Some vacation rental ideas in Johnson’s Tennessee:

Here’s a timely piece of news…a new Andrew Johnson coin was just released in Greeneville, February 17, 2011.

Next: America’s 18th President – Ulysses S. Grant