LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Andrew Johnson: Civil War
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During the summer of 1865 when Johnson was implementing his reconstruction plan, Thaddeus Stevens formulated his own ideas. He believed that the rebel states had taken themselves out of the Union when they seceded; now they should be dealt with as U.S. territories. Furthermore, Stevens argued, since the large Southern landowners had brought on the Civil War, the U.S. government should confiscate their property and give it to the freedmen (40 acres for each adult male). According to Stevens, this would break the back of the old slave-holding class and prevent it from regaining political power in the South.
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The book begins with an overview of America at the end of the Civil War and a description of Johnson's political career prior to 1865. Castel recounts the drama of Johnson's sudden inheritance of the presidency upon Lincoln's death and then examines how Johnson organized and operated his administration. Johnson's formulation of a Reconstruction policy for the defeated South comes under special scrutiny; Castel evaluates Johnson's motives for that policy, its implementation, and its reception in both North and South. He descries and analyzes Johnson's quarrel with the Republican[dominated Congress over Reconstruction, the triumph of the Republicans in the election of 1866, the president's frustrated attempt to remove Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton from office, his bitter dispute with General Ulysses S. Grant, and his impeachment by Congress. Johnson's impeachment trial is covered in detail; Castel explains how it was that Johnson escaped conviction and removal from office by the narrowest possible margin. The book concludes with a discussion of Johnson's place in history as judged by scholars during the past one hundred years.
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Johnson was never a friend of the residents of the District of Columbia. While serving in the Senate before the Civil War, he voted against congressional funding of public works projects in the city. As president, he vetoed the District of Columbia Suffrage Act, which enfranchised residents of the capital city. That veto was one of those overridden by Congress, but the Act remained in effect only until 1874, when the right to vote in the District of Columbia was rescinded.
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As a Tennessee congressman in 1843–53 and senator in 1857–62, Johnson provided mixed signals on military issues. In 1850, he remarked that he might like to have one of his sons in the navy, and he worked to get Tennessee boys into West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy. Yet Johnson was at heart a small government Democrat, with special concerns about money and class privilege. Thus in a speech on appropriations in August 1852 he derided the “imbecile†congressional sons who got preference; proposed to close both academies; attacked the wasteful War and Navy Department bureaucracies; and called the army and navy expensive and oppressive in the European style.
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Johnson was from Greeneville, where he owned a tailor shop. He later ran for Congress. And when the Civil War broke out, he remained loyal to the Union, which made him a hero up North and a villain in the eyes of many Southerners. It was because of this that Lincoln made Andrew Johnson his vice president in 1864.
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Johnson's views and his approach to Reconstruction infuriated northern Republicans, who instituted their own program of Radical Reconstruction in 1866 and '67. Johnson, in turn, was profligate with his vetoes. He issued 29 of them, of which 15 were overridden. When Johnson refused to obey the Tenure of Office Act, which had been passed over his veto, and dismissed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the Radical Republicans determined to remove him.
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