Abstract
Andrew Johnson is almost universally regarded as one of the worst presidents. He was, after all, the first president to be impeached, and the missed opportunities for genuine reconstruction have been directly traced to his policies. It is only the subsequent judgment that impeachment itself was a great error that seems to lessen slightly this assessment. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, for example, concluded in 1992 that congressmen mistakenly followed the maxim that “the end justifies the means.” Constitutional protections for an independent executive were regarded as “obstacles to the accomplishment of a greater good.”1
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Notes
William H. Rehenquist, Grand Inquests (New York: William Morrow, 1992), p. 22. See David Donald, “Why They Impeached Andrew Johnson,” American Heritage (December, 1956), 7:21–25 for a different assessment. It should also be noted that until the 1960s, Johnson’s general reputation was rather high first as a result of negative assessments of Reconstruction and then as negative reassessments of the Civil War in the 1930s. See as examples two popular accounts: Claude Bowers, The Tragic Era: The Revolution after Lincoln (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929); George F. Milton, The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals (New York: Coward-McCann, 1930). Bowers described Johnson as one “who fought the bravest battle ever waged by an Executive” against “brutal, hypocritical and corrupt” men.
Brooks D. Simpson, The Reconstruction Presidents (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998), p. 69.
Howard P. Nash, Jr., Andrew Johnson, Congress and Reconstruction (Rutherford, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1972), pp. 23–24.
John J. Craven, Prison Life of Jefferson Davis (New York, 1866), p. 261.
Hans L. Trefouse, Andrew Johnson (New York: Norton, 1989), pp. 35–50.
See Stephen Howard Browse’s analysis: “Andrew Johnson and the Politics of Character” in Martin J. Medhust, ed., Before the Rhetorical Presidency (College Station, TX; Texas A&M Press, 2008).
Carl Schurz to Charles Sumner, November 13, 1865 in Harold M. Hyman, ed., The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction, 1861–1870 (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), p. 294.
W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South, Paperback ed. (New York: Knopf, 1941).
LaWanda Cox and John H. Carr, Politics, Principle and Prejudice, 1861–1866 (New York: Free Press, 1963), pp. 151–55.
The Papers of Andrew Johnson, ed. LeRoy P. Graf and Ralph W. Haskins (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1967), 9:466.
Andrew Sefton, Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), p. 125. Johnson’s personal secretary shared this account with the press and bragged that the president upheld his honor in the face of a hostile “darkey delegation.” Trefose, Andrew Johnson, p. 242.
P. Nash, Jr., Andrew Johnson, Congress and Reconstruction, p. 67.
The Papers of Andrew Johnson, ed. LeRoy P. Graf and Ralph W. Haskins et al. (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1967).
Howard P. Nash, Jr., Andrew Johnson, Congress and Reconstruction, pp. 94–96.
Ibid., p. 109.
Martin E. Mantell, Johnson, Grant, and the Politics of Reconstruction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), p. 68.
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© 2008 Philip Abbott
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Abbott, P. (2008). Andrew Johnson “I care not about my dignity”. In: Accidental Presidents. The Evolving American Presidency Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230613034_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230613034_4
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