[andy johnson] apolitical, vilified visionary

The politically driven impeachment proceedings

In my reading of the American Presidents, I've got up to Andrew Johnson.

Using David C. Whitney, The American Presidents, Guild America, Nelson Doubleday, 2001 as the primary source and supplementing it from the web, it's difficult to understand why Johnson is held in such low esteem by Americans generally, except for these possible reasons:

1. He was forever in Lincoln's shadow and unfavourably compared to him;

2. He was a southern Democrat who spoke strongly against secession and therefore was called a traitor in the south;

3. He argued strongly for a "soft peace" for the south after the war and therefore was seen as a traitor in the north.

Therefore he had this way of alienating his own supporter base.

Clearly he fought for policies which he and Lincoln saw as fair and right and to hell with party affiliations and the party line. His one vote saving from impeachment seems clearly to have been a matter of principle with seven Republicans crossing the floor.

Also, from Whitney:

Despite Johnson's humble tone, he was a fearless, even reckless fighter for what he believed in.

Well OK, his passionate pugnacity can be seen from here and it's now clear why he'd alienate even those he was fighting for. Increasingly, as I read on, it sounds not unlike the way yours truly would have operated. Speaking of the soft peace for the south, he said:

It has been my steadfast object to escape from the sway of momentary passions and to derive a healing policy from the fundamental and unchanging principles of the Constitution.

In other words, to look ahead to the future. Right on, brother! Having defeated secession and slavery, it was necessary to avoid a Versailles 1919 style vindictiveness which would only sprout new Hitlers and to gradually draw the south back into the Union. You couldn't do that by draconian measures rooted in hatred which took away people's dignity.

And when you come to think of it, it's the same greedy story again, isn't it? There were big profits to be made in the south on the back of war and destroyed markets and Lincoln and Johnson were standing in the way, with their namby pamby "soft peace".

Think about what it must have taken, what personal character, to put such a point of view at that time of very heated passions against the sorts of people who wanted to profit from the misery . That made Lincoln a very great President but because of the manner, more so than the message, it got Andy Johnson near-impeached and with a tarnished reputation as a president.

Johnson had his vindication later though - re-elected to the Senate after leaving office and receiving a standing ovation. One could almost apply one of my former lecturer's own words, in turn, to Andrew Johnson:

I admire greatly your determination if not your manner.

I see other similarities too - humble beginnings, always having to have fought for his position, not naturally attracting sympathy and adulation through physical attributes, getting his lucky break by being smiled on from above [Lincoln and in my case a number of dignitaries], a bit of a loner who cared for the cause and not the party affiliation and a man with simple logic and the ability to see further than his nose.

With hindsight, Andrew Johnson was proved right on the "soft peace" after the Carpetbaggers and Scalawags ransacked the south and created lasting enmity for the Yankees. He was also proved right, 57 years later, on the unconstitutionality of the Tenure Act which had always simply been Congress's attempt to wrest powers from the President.

His policies were only ever for the common man - for the betterment of his lot. And America does not cherish his memory? I can't follow that.

This blogger knows his own limitations and why he'll never enjoy the patronage of the many but Andy Johnson - he was a very great visionary president of a then embryonic nation and deserves better than he's received.