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Andrew Johnson: Tennessee Democrats
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Andrew Johnson became a public figure during the nation's greatest crisis—the American Civil War. Although he came from the slave state of Tennessee, Johnson refused to resign as United States senator when the state seceded; instead, he worked to preserve the Union. For his efforts he won the vice-presidency, taking office in March 1865.
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Already showing signs of the ambition that drove him all his life, Johnson learned the basics of reading and writing from the foreman of his shop and trained himself as a public speaker. By the time he was 16, Johnson was restless and dissatisfied with the limits his apprenticeship placed on his life. In 1827 he moved with his family, finally settling in Greeneville, in the eastern Tennessee hill country, where he opened his own tailor shop. In the same year he married Eliza McCardle, who furthered his education and helped him prosper in his business. In Greeneville, Johnson's personal magnetism, native ability, and powerful will made him a leader of the town's younger skilled artisans. In the social ferment of the late 1820s and early 1830s, when Andrew Jackson and his advisers both capitalized on and promoted a new spirit of egalitarianism, Johnson and his friends were inspired to try to replace the town's traditional political leaders.
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Johnson was born on December 29, 1808, in Raleigh, North Carolina, to Jacob Johnson and Mary McDonough. Andrew Johnson grew up in poverty. When Johnson was three, his father died. At the age of 10 he was apprenticed to a tailor, but at age 16 he and his brother ran away to Greeneville, Tennessee, where he found work as a tailor.[2] Johnson married Eliza McCardle Johnson at the age of 19. He never attended any type of school; he credited his wife with teaching him to read and write.
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Johnson was elected to his first political office, town alderman, in 1829. Thereafter, his rise in politics was rapid. He served as mayor of Greeneville and in both houses of the state legislature. In 1843, he was elected to the first of five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was elected governor of Tennessee in 1853 and a U.S. senator in 1857. He was serving in the Senate at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.
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In the wake of Abraham Lincoln's election and amid threats of secession, Johnson returned to Washington. A few days later he delivered his famous speech against secession, in which he staked out his claim as a Southern Unionist. In a February 1861 referendum, Tennessee voters refused to endorse a secession convention call, yet Johnson knew he had to return home to fight against the surging tide of secession sentiment. He finally left in April, the month the Civil War began.
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Johnson's father was a laborer and his mother a barmaid. His father died when he was three, and his mother barely survived by sewing and taking in laundry. She could not afford to send him to school, and Johnson became a tailor's apprentice at 14. He and his brother opened their own tailor shop in Carthage, North Carolina; then, at 18, he opened his own shop in Greeneville, Tennessee. He married the next year and his wife, Eliza, taught him how to read, write, and count. He learned how to speak in public by participating in a debating society at a nearby college.
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