Andrew Johnson

This road trip pen-ulminated (I just made that up – blending “culminate” and “penultimate” meaning the one before it ended - if it catches on I'll want royalties or something) in a visit to Andrew Johnson’s grave in Greeneville, Tennessee. Again, I learned more than I thought I could about a former president we don’t often talk about. I’ve taken a lot of history courses, and they either end at the end of the Civil War or they endlessly covered the convoluted political squabbling of Reconstruction, so Andrew Johnson (1808 – 1875) has always been to me a second rate president that lived in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln and failed to bring the country back together again peacefully after the Civil War.

Andrew Johnson’s burial spot is similar to Zachary Taylor, but different because a cemetery did not exist on that spot until Johnson was buried there. He picked a spot he loved in the town he lived for most of his teen and adult life, which later became his family's burial ground. A national military cemetery was built around his hilltop grave site.

Johnson was a true rags to riches story. He was raised by his widowed mother and when old enough (still quite young) he was apprenticed to a tailor in North Carolina. He ran away and eventually ended up in Greeneville, TN where he opened shop as the town’s tailor.

He was a great orator (which in the day was apparently all that was needed to rise through the ranks of politics) and because he was a southerner opposed to secession he was chosen by Abraham Lincoln as his running mate. With Lincoln’s death he was made president and even though the war was over he had Reconstruction to deal with.

I get the feeling that he was unpopular because 1. he wasn’t Lincoln; and 2. no answer to how to rebuild the Union would have made everyone happy. Eventually, Congress impeached him (basically, they set him up – a fascinating story, which I had no idea about until I visited his National Historic Site). He was acquitted (not removed from office), finished his term and was elected to the Senate six years later (the only president to make it to Congress after their term ended. He died of a stroke the same year.

As I’ve said before, I picked a great time of year to visit Tennessee. Greeneville is in a beautiful area in the Smokey Mountains, and during my visit the dogwood trees were in full bloom.