Andrew johnson

Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808, Raleigh – July 31, 1875, Elizabeth) was the seventeenth president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869 after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, of whom he had been vice president. Since the Civil War had ended shortly before his presidency, Johnson was concerned to start rebuilding the states that had seceded from the Union, but he was opposed by the Republican majority in Congress and was put on trial. political.

Johnson was born into a poor family in Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina. He was a tailor's apprentice and worked in several towns before moving permanently to Greeneville, Tennessee, a city where he rose to serve as alderman and mayor. In 1835 he was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives and then to the United States House of Representatives in 1843, a position he held for ten years. He was governor of Tennessee for four years and was elected senator in 1857.

He was the only senator from the South not to secede and became the most prominent antiwar Democrat in the South. In 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of Tennessee, where he demonstrated dynamism and effectiveness in fighting the rebellion. His reconciliation policy toward the South, his rush to reincorporate the former Confederates back into the US Union, and his vetoes of civil rights bills embroil him in a bitter dispute with the Republicans. Republicans in the House of Representatives tried to remove him by impeachment in 1868, and he was acquitted by a single vote in the Senate, that of Edmund G. Ross. He was the first President of the United States to be tried for an impeachment , although the process did not culminate in his removal from office.

During his tenure, the purchase of Alaska from Imperial Russia took place for an amount of 7.2 million US dollars.

Childhood

Johnson's birthplace and childhood home, located in Mordecai Historic Park in Raleigh, North Carolina

Andrew Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on December 29, 1808, to his father Jacob Johnson (1778-1812) and mother Mary ("Polly") McDonough (1783-1856), laundress and of English, Scottish and Irish descent. He had a brother William, four years older than him, and an older sister, Elizabeth, who died in infancy. Johnson's birth in a two-room shack was a political asset in the mid-19th century, and he often reminded voters of his humble origins. Jacob Johnson was a poor man, like his father, William Johnson, but he became a Raleigh city sheriff before marrying and raising a family. Both Jacob and Mary were illiterate and had worked as tavern servants, while Johnson never attended school and grew up poor. Jacob died of an apparent heart attack while ringing the village bell, shortly after rescuing three drowning men, when his son Andrew was three years old. Polly Johnson worked as a laundress and became the sole breadwinner for her family. She then despised her occupation, as she often took her to other houses without company. Since Andrew did not resemble any of his siblings, there are rumors that he may have been fathered by another man. Polly Johnson eventually remarried to a man named Turner Doughtry, who was just as poor as she was.