JOHNSON, ANDREW (1808-1875), seventeenth president of the United States, was born at Raleigh, N.C., on Dec. 29, 1808. His parents did not belong to the slave-owning class and Andrew continued poor long enough to develop a feeling of hos tility toward the dominant element in southern society. Of formal schooling he had none. At the age of ten the boy was apprenticed to a tailor and although his hours were long, he man aged to learn to read and write. In 1826 he removed to Green ville in eastern Tennessee, where he married Eliza McCordle (1810-76), who possessed a fair education and was of consider able assistance to her husband in his pursuit of further learning. During the early Tennessee years Johnson earned his living by the practice of his trade, but before he was 21 he entered local politics, was elected an alderman, and in 183o became mayor of Greenville. From 1834 to 1843 he participated in State politics, serving as a Democrat in the State constitutional convention (1834), in the House of Representatives ( T835-37; 1839-41) and in the Senate (1841-43). These years marked Johnson's political apprenticeship. His powers were now mature and he was ready to assume the position of champion of his section which was com posed in the main of small farmers, suspicious and jealous of the slave-holding plantation owners who dominated the social and political life of middle and western Tennessee.
Generally speaking, during the formative years of Johnson's political career and down to the middle of the 1850's, the Whig Party was the political agent of the plantation interests in Tennes see while the Democratic Party, true to its Jacksonian origin, con tinued as the exponent of the small farmer-labourer interests. As the years passed and the drift of events tended to force slave owners everywhere to unite in one party, and that party by the force of circumstances became the Democratic, Johnson some times found himself in uncongenial company. Nevertheless he preferred the Democratic to the newly-formed Republican Party. As a Democrat he had served as a member of the Federal House of Representatives from 1843 to 1853 ; from 1853 to 1857 he was governor of Tennessee and from 1857 to 1862 he was a mem ber of the United States senate. In Congress he was in harmony with the pro-slavery element of his party so far as low tariff, territorial expansion, slavery extension and opposition to aboli tionist agitation were concerned. He opposed them when they
attempted to obstruct the movement for free western land for actual settlers, and as governor of Tennessee when he espoused the cause of popular education at State expense. In 186o he sup ported Breckenridge whom he regarded as the true Democratic standard-bearer. However, he did not consider the election of Lincoln a sufficient reason for the Southern States to secede. Ac cordingly when Tennessee passed an ordinance of secession in June, 1861, he refused to leave his seat in the United States Senate and join the newly organized Confederacy. In March, 1862, President Lincoln appointed him military governor of Ten nessee and during the two years he held this position he rendered valuable service to the Union cause, and just before he left the office he succeeded in creating and putting into operation machin ery for the restoration of a loyal civil government in the State. During these Civil War years Johnson never ceased to class him self as a Democrat, and when in 1864 he was nominated for vice president on the ticket with Lincoln, it was by a convention that called itself "Union," not "Republican." This distinction is im portant for it exculpates Johnson from the charge subsequently made that he was an apostate from the Republican Party.
When Lincoln was assassinated in April, 1865, Johnson suc ceeded to the Presidency. Although he had frequently expressed himself to the effect that secession was treason and that the lead ers of the secession movement should be punished as traitors, he did not hold that the late Confederate States were conquered ter ritories to be dealt with in such manner as Congress might see fit. In this his opinions were in harmony with those of Lincoln, who had acted on the theory that the States had never been out of the Union. As commander-in-chief of the army the President had full power to name the conditions upon which military rule might be withdrawn and civil rule substituted. Accordingly, on May 29,1865, he issued a general amnesty proclamation, granting full pardon to all ex-Confederates (except certain leaders) who would take an unqualified oath of allegiance to the United States.