Andrew Johnson
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln is, without doubt, one of the defining moments in American history. And in more ways than one. Certainly, for Andrew Johnson, the shooting at Ford’s Theatre was a pivotal moment. It means that, as Lincoln’s Vice President, he stepped into the very top job at a moment when tensions between the North and the South were reaching fever pitch.
Johnson was one of the select few of the American political elite to have grown up in poverty. He was born in North Carolina in 1808 and was forced to make his own way in the world rather than rise up through family connections. He started out as an apprentice tailor, though he soon gave that up and went it alone. He married and opened a tailoring shop of his own in the town of Greenville, Tennessee. However, his true passions laid elsewhere. By the 1830s, he had become actively involved in local politics and had started making a name for himself as a great speaker and a canny debater.
Johnson rose to become a Member of the House of Representatives. Throughout the 1840s and then the 1850s, he championed the cause of the common man and even went so far as calling for all poor men to be given free farms. Then, his real moment came. At the height of the secession crisis, Johnson refused to give up his Senate seat, even when Tennessee seceded. This won him the admiration of the North, and of Lincoln in particular.
In 1862, President Lincoln appointed Johnson the Military Governor of Tennessee, tasking him with rebuilding the state. Then, even though he was a Southerner and a Democrat, Johnson was named as Lincoln’s running mate for the 1864 election. Less than two months later after the pair’s election victory, Lincoln was dead and Johnson was President. The new top man worked to complete his predecessor’s reconstruction of the states, and he even pardoned former opponents who would swear an oath of allegiance.
Before too long, however, the opposition of Radical Republicans won out. In March 1867, they succeeded in impeaching Johnson. Though he was tried and then acquitted by the Senate, his political career was all but over. He tried to run for President again, but fell at the first hurdle. Johnson died in 1875 in his native Tennessee. He will forever be remembered for being Lincoln’s VP – and for being the first President to be impeached.