Andrew Johnson

[Rob Wick]

Andrew Johnson's racism makes him generally a contemptible human being, but certainly not an anomaly in the 19th century. What makes his intractable prejudices of importance is his position. With the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation and the passage of the 13th amendment, the times called for someone who could further help the freedmen down the path they were on--not stand in their way. As president, he had an obligation (call it a moral one or simply a political one) to help bring about a radical change in the way Americans saw the former slaves, and there he failed miserably.

If Lincoln had not been assassinated, it remains quite possible that Reconstruction would have been a failure, but the political battle between Lincoln and the Radicals would have been far less vitriolic than it was under Johnson. Lincoln knew that politics often required compromise, which Johnson seemingly didn't, or if he did he didn't care. As Annette Gordon-Reed once pointed out, Lincoln's hardscrabble roots gave him an empathy with other people and allowed him to hold firm beliefs while seeing the other fellow's view. For Johnson, it made him a bitter man who felt it necessary to win against his "betters" regardless of the cost. What makes a president successful or a failure is how he handles the crises thrown his way. While Lincoln had missteps and failures, he never lost sight of the big picture. Johnson was so obsessed with the petty details and imagined slights against him, his presidency was doomed from the start.

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Rob