Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson was--and is--an American paradox. He never attended school, yet fought for public education. He was a Southern slaveholder who opposed secession and enforced emancipation. Born into poverty, he became the 17th president of the United States--and the first U.S. president to be impeached.

This new volume thoroughly examines the troubled career of our most unpopular president--not to resuscitate his reputation, but because his personal contradictions reflected those of his country: a democratic nation conceived in liberty, yet existing half slave and half free; an economy of yeoman farmers and independent artisans being swept into industrialization and a market system; a country fond of tradition, but caught up in social, economic, and political revolution.