Epilogue

The Aftermath

After his acquittal in the Senate in May 1868, Johnson was still president, and there were still things to be done. Despite his narrow brush with removal from office, the president almost immediately began to think of the possibility of winning a second term. The white South had fallen in love with him during the course of his battles with the congressional Republicans over Reconstruction, and he decided to return the love by issuing another proclamation of amnesty so broad that even Jefferson Davis would be pardoned. He was talked out of that and amended the language to exclude those currently under indictment. On Christmas Day 1868 he returned to his original plan and issued a universal proclamation of amnesty that included Davis.1

Johnson, of course, had no chance to win the Republican presidential nomination both because of his recent history with the party and because it was clear that Ulysses S. Grant would head the Republican ticket. Grant was the great Civil War hero, who provided a last vital link to the man whose assassination had brought Johnson to the presidency. Grant’s ascent was particularly galling to Johnson. As noted earlier, he and Grant had always had unsteady relations and finally broke with each other over the dismissal of Edwin Stanton. Johnson never forgave the man who would go on to succeed him in the presidency.

A movement to nominate Johnson on the Democratic ticket gained ground, and the president eagerly promoted the effort. Although his acquittal had been a form of vindication for the rightness of his policies for Reconstruction, winning a major party’s nomination and having the voters return him to office would have been the clearest proof that he had been right all along. He yearned for it so deeply. But it was not to be. While the delegates to the Democratic National Convention lauded his stance against the congressional Republicans, the Democrats turned out to be all talk. They nominated Horatio Seymour of New York as their standard-bearer.

By this point the president was a toothless tiger. For the most part, he kept his promise not to use his discretionary powers in such a way as to thwart congressional legislation on Reconstruction. When he issued vetoes, they were promptly overridden and Congress went about its business, leaving the president to fulminate about its efforts. His final annual message to Congress reiterated themes that he had sounded throughout this presidency: congressional Reconstruction amounted to a serious violation of the Constitution; the radicals had been attempting to “place the white population under the dominion of persons of color in the South”; and the Tenure of Office Act was illegitimate. His Farewell Address to the American People sounded similar themes, much to the chagrin of commentators, who felt the occasion required a less churlish message from a man who held the office of the presidency.2

When Johnson returned home to Tennessee in March 1869, he was greeted as a hero. Signs of welcome were everywhere, and it must have been heartening to the man who had gone through so much to see and feel this show of support. As warm as the welcome might be, all the encomiums meant one thing: he was now out of public life, a space that he had occupied for the vast majority of his adult life. What would he do with himself? After the excitement of the presidency—all the turmoil, battles, and intrigue—he found his hometown “dull” and longed to be back in the thick of things. To make matters worse, his personal life took a terrible turn when his son Robert committed suicide not long after Johnson had returned to Tennessee. This was the second personal tragedy that Johnson faced since becoming president. His brother William had died during Johnson’s first year in office after accidently shooting himself in the arm and the wound turned gangrenous.3 With this backdrop of grief and restlessness, Johnson decided to get back into the political arena by running for the U.S. Senate in 1869.

Johnson’s prospects seemed good at first. Tennessee politics was beset by factionalism and turmoil. That did not, however, stop his foes from uniting in opposition to his candidacy. Republicans in the state never forgot his actions as president, and the ex-Confederates remembered with great bitterness his time as military governor of the state. In the end, Johnson lost in state legislative balloting by four votes. He decided to try again with a run for the House of Representatives in 1872, crisscrossing Tennessee employing the stump speaking style that had catapulted him to national office many years before. He lost again but did himself enough good that he and his supporters felt this was a real step toward eventual electoral success. While waiting for the moment, the trials of personal life intruded. He contracted cholera in an epidemic and almost died. He lost a great deal of money during a bank failure in 1873. Johnson persisted, pulled forward by the hope of redemption through success at the ballot box. He received that on January 26, 1875, when the state legislature once again elected him a U.S. senator from Tennessee. “Thank God for the vindication,” he said.4

The moment was one to savor. In March 1875, Andrew Johnson stood in the well of the Senate to take the oath of office. Many of the men who had voted to remove him from the presidency were still in place. When he was greeted with flowers and applause, it was as if all that had been forgotten. It had not, of course, not by Johnson and not by the other senators. Not long after his arrival Johnson had the occasion to return to his old ways, making an impassioned speech denouncing President Grant and federal intervention into state affairs in Louisiana. Responses to the speech divided along predictable lines. All those who hated Johnson hated the speech. Those who admired him thought the speech admirable. In any event, it was to be his last hurrah.

Senator Johnson came home in the summer of 1875 during the legislative recess. He spent time with his family, which now included grandchildren. While visiting his daughter Mary’s farm, he suffered what was obviously a stroke. It appeared mild at first, so much so that he thought he did not need any help. He continued to be in relatively good condition for about two days. Then he suffered a more severe stroke and lapsed into a coma. Several hours later he died without regaining consciousness. Sending messages beyond the grave, Johnson had requested that his body be wrapped in an American flag and that his head rest on his personal copy of the United States Constitution.

The former president was a proud Mason, and the local Masonic temple played a great role in the funeral proceedings. There were great displays of public mourning. Newspapers that supported his politics extolled him to the highest. Those that did not support him nevertheless tended to emphasize his redeeming qualities. He had been loyal to the Union, and he had risen in the world against tremendous odds. A chapter of history had been closed with his death. After all, Johnson had entered the national arena through his association with Abraham Lincoln and had the unbelievably difficult task of following the sixteenth president after his martyrdom. Now that Johnson was gone, another part of the Lincoln era had slipped from the scene.

Hans Trefousse’s final judgment on his subject was that “Johnson was a child of his time, but he failed to grow with it.”5 That assessment is almost certainly correct. We all have the advantage of hindsight and can play “If only…” We know the results of Johnson’s failures—that his preternatural stubbornness, his mean and crude racism, his primitive and instrumental understanding of the Constitution stunted his capacity for enlightened and forward-thinking leadership when those qualities were so desperately needed. At the same time, Johnson’s story has a miraculous quality to it: the poor boy who systematically rose to the heights, fell from grace, and then fought his way back to a position of honor in the country. For good or ill, “only in America,” as they say, could Johnson’s story unfold in the way that it did.