Andrew Johnson
Born: December 29, 1808
Died: July 31, 1875
Term in Office: 1865-1869
Maybe it's the fatigue of doing this project... or just the desire to be done with it... but it's taken me a long time to sit down and just churn these little comments out. So here we are with the last entry of my gallery of presidential rogues, entered in order of their birthdays on the yearly calendar.
The dour looking fellow in the illustration above is my attempt at a caricature of Andrew Johnson, successor to the office after Abe Lincoln was assassinated. Most people associate this guy with his being the first president to test the Senate's impeachment hearings process. Said hearings did not result in his removal from office; same result for the other two fellows to be impeached (the last rogue – he who shall not be named – being thusly humiliated twice).
Okay, so what else can be said of this Johnson dude's time in the Oval Office?
According to a 2014 article in the Chicago Tribune, by Jules Witcover (click here to see the original article), Lincoln made a switch in running mates shortly before the 1864 election, snubbing his current vice president, Maine's Hannibel Hamlin, for the southern-born Unionist Johnson. Lincoln believed having a southerner on his ticket was the only way he would get his second term. Upon succeeding Lincoln after the assassination (that happening only days after the end of the Civil War), Johnson supported a reconstruction plan that was far more sympathetic to the South than what Congress had worked out. Of course, those Congressmen were a bit peeved and looked for a reason, any reason, to rid themselves of this guy.
So they looked at impeachment, and brought him to trial for violating the Tenure of Office Act, which prohibited a president from firing a cabinet member; something Johnson did by firing his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, and replacing him with war hero Ulysses Grant. (Side note: that Tenure of Office Act was repealed after Johnson beat the impeachment trial by one vote. I wonder how the Orange Man, Rogue #45, would have handled his Twitter firings of cabinet members had the Tenure of Office Act still been in force during his time in office.)
Who knows what the post-Civil War years would have looked like with a different reconstruction scenario.
Peace to all, and don't forget to vote in the coming mid-terms.
Comments
Post a Comment