U.S. presidential administration from 1865 to 1869
The presidency of Andrew Johnson began on April 15, 1865, when Andrew Johnson became President of the United States upon the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and ended on March 4, 1869. He had been Vice President of the United States for only six weeks when he succeeded to the presidency. The 17th president, Johnson was a member of the Democratic Party before the Civil War and had been Lincoln's 1864 running mate on the National Union ticket, which was supported by Republicans and War Democrats. Johnson took office as the Civil War came to a close, and his presidency was dominated by the aftermath of the war. As president, Johnson attempted to build his own party of Southerners and conservative Northerners, but he was unable to unite his supporters into a new party. Republican Ulysses S. Grant succeeded Johnson as president.
Johnson, who was himself from Tennessee, favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union. He implemented his own form of Presidential Reconstruction – a series of proclamations directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections to re-form their civil governments. His plans did not give protection to the former slaves, and he came into conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress. When Southern states returned, many of their old leaders passed Black Codes to deprive the freedmen of many civil liberties, congressional Republicans refused to seat legislators from those states and established military districts across the South. Johnson vetoed their bills, and congressional Republicans overrode him, setting a pattern for the remainder of his presidency.
Frustrated by Johnson's actions, Congress proposed the Fourteenth Amendment to the states, and the amendment was ratified in 1868. As the conflict between the branches of government grew, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, restricting Johnson's ability to fire Cabinet officials. When he persisted in trying to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, he was impeached by the House of Representatives, making him the first U.S. president to be impeached. Johnson narrowly avoided conviction in the Senate and removal from office, but he exercised little power in his last year in office. In foreign policy, Johnson presided over the purchase of Alaska, and his presidency saw the end of the French intervention in Mexico. Having broken with Republicans, and failing to establish his own party under the National Union banner, Johnson sought the 1868 Democratic presidential nomination, but it went to Horatio Seymour instead. Seymour's defeat by Grant in the 1868 presidential election left Northern Republicans firmly in control of Reconstruction.
Though he was held in high esteem by the Dunning School of historians, more recent historians rank Johnson among the worst presidents in American history for his frequent clashes with Congress, strong opposition to federally guaranteed rights for African Americans, and general ineffectiveness as president.
Accession.
President Abraham Lincoln had won the 1860 presidential election as a member of the Republican Party, but, in hopes of winning the support of War Democrats, he ran under the banner of the National Union Party in the 1864 presidential election. At the party's convention in Baltimore in June, Lincoln was easily nominated, but the party dropped Vice President Hannibal Hamlin from the ticket in favor of Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat who served as the military governor of Tennessee. After the National Union ticket won the 1864 presidential election, Johnson was sworn in as vice president on March 4, 1865.
On April 14, 1865, in the closing days of the Civil War, President Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. The shooting of the president was part of a conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward on the same night. Seward barely survived his wounds, while Johnson escaped attack as his would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, got drunk instead of killing the vice president. Leonard J. Farwell, a fellow boarder at the Kirkwood House, awoke Johnson with news of Lincoln's shooting at Ford's Theatre. Johnson rushed to the president's deathbed, where he remained a short time, on his return promising, "They shall suffer for this. They shall suffer for this." Lincoln died at 7:22 am the next morning; Johnson's swearing in occurred between 10 and 11 am with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding in the presence of most of the Cabinet. Johnson's demeanor was described by the newspapers as "solemn and dignified". Johnson presided over Lincoln's funeral ceremonies in Washington, before his predecessor's body was sent home to Springfield, Illinois, for burial.
At the suggestion of Attorney General James Speed, Johnson allowed a military commission to try the surviving alleged perpetrators of Lincoln's assassination. A six-week trial culminated in death sentences for four of the defendants, along with lesser sentences for the others. The events of the assassination resulted in speculation, then and subsequently, concerning Johnson and what the conspirators might have intended for him. In the vain hope of having his life spared after his capture, Atzerodt spoke much about the conspiracy, but did not say anything to indicate that the plotted assassination of Johnson was merely a ruse. Conspiracy theorists point to the fact that on the day of the assassination, Booth came to the Kirkwood House and left one of his cards. This object was received by Johnson's private secretary, William A. Browning, with an inscription, "Are you at home? Don't wish to disturb you. J. Wilkes Booth."
Partisan affiliation.
 BEP engraved portrait of Johnson as president
Johnson took office at a time of shifting partisan alignments. Former Whigs and former Democrats contended for influence within the Republican Party, while the remaining Northern Democrats looked to redefine their party in the wake of the Civil War. Johnson's accession left a Southern former Democrat in the president's office at the end of a civil war that had as its immediate impetus the election of Abraham Lincoln, a Northern Republican, to the presidency in 1860. Johnson had served as a Democrat in various offices prior to the Civil War, and he became one of the most prominent Southern Unionists after the start of the war. During the 1864 presidential election, the Republican ticket campaigned as the National Union ticket, and the National Union convention chose Johnson as the party's vice presidential nominee in large part because of Johnson's status as a prominent Southern War Democrat. Though he never declared himself to be a Republican, when Johnson took office, he had widespread approval within the Republican Party.
Johnson's Reconstruction policy quickly alienated many in the Republican Party, while Johnson's patronage decisions and alliance with Seward alienated many Democrats. Instead of allying with either of the established parties, Johnson sought to create a new party consisting of the conservative elements of both parties. In August 1866, Johnson held a convention of his supporters in Philadelphia. The convention endorsed Johnson's program, but Johnson was unable to establish a durable coalition. Towards the end of his term, Johnson pursued the 1868 Democratic nomination, but his alliance with Lincoln and his patronage decisions had made him many enemies in that party.
Administration.
On taking office, Johnson promised to continue the policies of his predecessor, and he initially kept Lincoln's cabinet in place. Secretary of State William Seward became one of the most influential members of Johnson's Cabinet, and Johnson allowed Seward to pursue an expansionary foreign policy. Early in his presidency, Johnson trusted Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to carry out his Reconstruction policies, and he also had a favorable opinion of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch. He had less esteem for Postmaster General William Dennison Jr., Attorney General James Speed, and Secretary of the Interior James Harlan.
Harlan, Dennison, and Speed resigned in June 1866 after Johnson had broken with congressional Republicans. Speed's replacement, Henry Stanbery, emerged as one of the most prominent members of Johnson's cabinet before resigning to defend Johnson during his impeachment trial. Johnson suspended Stanton after disagreements related to Reconstruction and replaced him with General of the Army Ulysses S. Grant on an interim basis. After clashing with Grant, Johnson offered the position of Secretary of War to General William T. Sherman, who declined, and to Lorenzo Thomas, who accepted. Thomas never took office; Johnson appointed John Schofield as Secretary of War as a compromise with moderate Republicans.
Judicial appointments.
Johnson appointed nine Article III federal judges during his presidency, all to United States district courts; he did not successfully appoint a justice to serve on the Supreme Court. In April 1866, he nominated Henry Stanbery to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Associate Justice John Catron, but Congress eliminated the seat by passing the Judicial Circuits Act of 1866. To ensure that Johnson did not get to make any appointments, the act also provided that the Court would shrink by one justice when one next departed from office. Johnson did appoint his Greeneville crony, Samuel Milligan, to the United States Court of Claims, where he served from 1868 until his death in 1874.
End of the Civil War and abolition of slavery.
Johnson took office after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomatox Court House, but Confederate armies remained in the field. On April 21, 1865, Johnson, with the unanimous backing of his cabinet, ordered General Ulysses S. Grant to overturn an armistice concluded between Union General William T. Sherman and Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston. The armistice had included political conditions such as the recognition of existing Confederate state governments. On May 2, Johnson issued a proclamation offering $100,000 for the capture of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who many thought had been involved in the assassination of Lincoln. Davis was captured on May 10. In late May, the final Confederate force in the field surrendered, and Johnson presided over a triumphant military parade in Washington, D.C. alongside the cabinet and the nation's top generals. After less than two months in office, Johnson had cultivated the reputation of someone who would be tough on the defeated Confederacy, and his esteem among congressional Republicans remained high.
In the final days of Lincoln's presidency, Congress had approved what would become the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude nationwide. The amendment was ratified by the requisite number of states (then 27) in December 1865, becoming the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Though Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had freed many slaves in the former Confederacy, the Thirteenth Amendment permanently abolished slavery nationwide and freed slaves in border states like Kentucky.
Reconstruction.
With the end of the Civil War, Johnson faced the question of what to do with the states that had formed the Confederacy. President Lincoln had authorized loyalist governments in Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee as the Union came to control large parts of those states and advocated a ten percent plan that would allow elections after ten percent of the voters in any state took an oath of future loyalty to the Union. Many in Congress considered this too lenient. The Wade–Davis Bill, requiring a majority of voters to take the loyalty oath, had passed both houses of Congress in 1864, but Lincoln had pocket vetoed it.
At the time of Johnson's accession, Congress consisted of three factions. The Radical Republicans sought voting and other civil rights for African Americans. They believed that the freedmen could be induced to vote Republican in gratitude for emancipation, and that black votes could keep the Republicans in power. Radical Republicans were defined by their views on Reconstruction, the protection of minority rights, and the necessity of a stronger postwar role for the federal government; they did not hold unified views on economic matters. The Moderate Republicans were not as enthusiastic about the idea of African-American suffrage as their Radical colleagues, either because of their own local political concerns, or because they believed that the freedman would be likely to cast his vote badly. Nonetheless, they were committed to ensuring that African-Americans were granted more than "nominal freedom," and they opposed restoring Confederate officials to power. The third faction in Congress, Northern Democrats, favored the unconditional restoration of the Southern states and opposed African-American suffrage.
Presidential Reconstruction.
Johnson was initially left to devise a Reconstruction policy without legislative intervention, as Congress was not due to meet again until December 1865. Johnson believed that the Southern states had never truly left the Union. With the rebellion defeated, he thought