Why Was Andrew Johnson President?

President Andrew Johnson with Gen (and future president) US Grant. Photo by US Government, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Andrew Johnson is currently remembered as one of the worst presidents in American history. He rightfully receives much of the blame for the ultimate failure of Reconstruction. His racism and incompetence stand out among a host of fellow racists and incompetents in the history of the American presidency. In recent years, the historical judgment of several formerly maligned presidents such as Ulysses S. Grant has improved, while no revisionists have taken it upon themselves to change Johnson’s legacy.

Therefore, it came as no surprise that political gadfly Andrew Yang’s tweet about Johnson on Monday led to such strong criticism. Following his failed run as New York mayor, Yang has taken on the position of third-party advocate. He founded the Forward Party in October 2021 and has argued for a kind of nonpartisan politics ever since. He followed those arguments up with a novel argument: “Lincoln won the presidency on the brand new Republican ticket in 1860 with 39.8% in a four-way race. He took a Democrat, Andrew Johnson as his running mate in 1864.” The response was immediate. Liberals from Mehdi Hasan to John Legend castigated Yang for ostensibly supporting such a white supremacist candidate. Mediaite summed up the response with this blaring headline: “Andrew Yang Gets Obliterated After Invoking Andrew Johnson to Call for National Unity: ‘Did John Wilkes Booth Write This Tweet?’”

The consensus against Johnson leads to an interesting question. If Johnson was such a terrible leader, why did Abraham Lincoln, arguably the greatest president in American history, choose him as his running mate? Why did Lincoln drop his first vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, a man who many observers today believe would have been a much better Reconstruction-era president than Johnson was? The problem is a common one in historical memory. Lincoln’s appointment, while seeming illogical in hindsight, was in many ways the most sensible at the time.

In 1864, the Civil War had been raging for three years without a discernible end to the conflict. Ulysses S. Grant was stuck in Virginia, embarking on a siege in Petersburg after several horrific battles in northern Virginia. The Union army in the west suffered arguably its worst defeat the year before at Sabine Pass. Confederate General Joseph Johnston had bogged William T. Sherman down in northern Georgia for months and seemed as though he was prepared for a long and potentially successful siege. The Confederacy still had the vast majority of its territory a full year after the seemingly decisive battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg.

At that time, Lincoln was faced with a dilemma. According to J.E. Randall and David Donald, Lincoln fully expected to lose the presidential election of 1864. The Democratic Party had been resilient in the 1862 election. Conservatives opposed Lincoln’s civil liberties policies and radicals hated the toothless nature of the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln wanted to strengthen his chances at reelection while also making national unity a key campaign theme.

Therefore, Lincoln turned to one of the best Southern, Democratic options he could find. Andrew Johnson was not known in 1864 for his racism. Instead, he was known for his patriotism. Born in North Carolina in 1808 and raised in Tennessee, he was a virulent critic of the planter class and of secession. Although he owned slaves, Johnson remained in the Senate following the formation of the Confederacy and later became military governor of Tennessee under Lincoln. As Vice President under the new National Union ticket, he was a reasonable choice to appeal to the border states and Democrats in 1864.

A confluence of events in 1864 helped make Lincoln’s appointment of Johnson wholly unnecessary. The most important of these was the decision in July 1864 to replace Joseph Johnston with John Bell Hood. Hood was more aggressive than Johnston and fought numerous battles that the Confederacy easily lost. Instead of Johnston dragging out the Atlanta campaign for months and seriously threatening Lincoln’s reelection prospects, Hood’s approach to the war led to the capture of Atlanta in a matter of weeks. Lincoln won the 1864 presidential election in a landslide. Had he known that Davis would appoint a general as reckless as Hood, Lincoln almost certainly would have retained Hannibal Hamlin as his vice presidential candidate.

The story of Andrew Johnson is a cautionary tale of interpreting party politics outside of its immediate context. Andrew Yang’s tweet was silly and ridiculous for that reason. Outside of his ignorance of Johnson as a reprehensible president with abhorrent views, Yang simply should not try to use the circumstances of the Civil War to support his own political project of the 2020s. But it is also wise to study immediate context when looking at the decisions of historical leaders instead of the aftermath of those decisions. In July 1864, Lincoln would have never guessed that his opponents would sabotage their own war effort or that he would be assassinated less than a year later. Andrew Yang, as well as the people rightfully criticizing him, should always remember this context when they talk about the career of Andrew Johnson.