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Johnson Seen As Motivated By Jacksonian Ideals
Sun Photo by Tom Yancey William Hardy, a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Tennessee, third from left, spoke Saturday to the Daughters of the American Revolution, as part of the year-long celebration of the bicentennial of Andrew Johnson’s birth. From left are: Lizzie Watts, superintendent of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site; Jim Small, operations director at the site; Hardy; and Justine Wills, regent of the DAR chapter.
Source: The Greeneville Sun
by Tom Yancey
Date: 2008-11-17
Doctoral candidate William Hardy, who has been helping the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site with the bicentennial of the 17th president's birth, told a meeting of the Daughters of the American Revolution on Saturday that it appears unlikely that the consensus by future historians regarding Johnson will ever be favorable.
Despite that, Hardy, who described himself as "one test away" from earning a doctorate in history from the University of Tennessee, said he believes Johnson faced the most difficult challenge in the aftermath of the Civil War that any president has faced.
"I don't think revisionist historians give Johnson credit" for perhaps doing as much as anyone could have, given "the difficult test" he faced, Hardy said in a lecture to the Nolichuckey chapter of the DAR.
He added, "In a post-civil rights 21st century world, it probably never again will be possible for historians to make a truly admirable chief executive out of Andrew Johnson. All we can do is try to understand what made him tick, by placing him in the context of his time, not in a 21st century world that Johnson would not recognize."
Hardy concluded his remarks by saying, "From a 21st century perspective you could not say very positive things about Andrew Johnson. But as a historian, "being faithful to history, I can appreciate what Andrew Johnson had to face."
In introducing Hardy, Jim Small, operations director for the Andrew Johnson National Historical Site, noted that Hardy has been a full-time project manager with the East Tennessee Historical Socieity, and has had articles published in regional historical journals.
In addition, Small said Hardy, along with Dr. Paul Bergeron of the University of Tennessee, and Dr. Robert Orr of Walters State Community College, have served the Johnson sites as historians in a number of different ways, especially during the bicentennial celebration year that ends in December.
Three Difficult Challenges
Hardy said that, when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April, 1865, Johnson, a Democrat from a slave-holding state, "inherited" three difficult questions:
* "How to restore the southern states to the union?" after a long and bloody Civil War;
* "How to handle four million emancipated slaves; and
* "Who would control reconstruction?"
Hardy briefly outlined the different schools of historical thought, or historiography, that have surrounded Johnson for the past 150 years. Almost without exception, he said, historians dealing with Johnson have focused on reconstruction, not his earlier political life.
"With few exceptions, the tone has been governed by the author's view on Reconstruction," Hardy said, because Johnson's "influence on Reconstruction was profound."
Reconstruction is the general term that refers to efforts to rebuild the U.S. in the aftermath of the Civil War, from 1865-77, removing vestiges of the Confederacy, rebuilding state governments and granting rights to freed slaves.
Johnson's primary political opponents were those who have been called Radical Republicans in Congress, who wanted to punish the former Confederate states, and to reorder the political, social and economic systems of those states.
As a lifelong Democrat and a strong Jacksonian, Hardy said, Johnson believed that the powers (and spending) of the federal government needed to be as minimal as possible.
At various times in his political career before the presidency, for example, Johnson voted against using federal funds to build statues of former presidents, asylums or the Smithsonian Institution, against paying compensation to the families of U.S. Navy sailors who were killed in the explosion of the USS Princeton, and against publishing the papers of the James K. Polk administration, to give Polk's widow an income.
Previous Historians
The first historians to write about Johnson drew heavily from the writings of his political enemies, Hardy said. Thus, they portrayed Reconstruction, as it developed, as "unjust, unwise and unnatural," and depicted Johnson in the same light.
In the 1920s and early 1930s, popular writers took more or less the same position about Reconstruction, but portrayed Johnson as "an enlightened and liberal statesman who waged a courageous battle to defend the Constitution, the Union, and Democracy against the schemes of the Radical Republicans" and their "vindictive hatred of the South" and support for northern big business.
In the 1950s, however, "a counter-revolution" took place among historians, who "returned to the early view" and portrayed Johnson as "a rude, unyielding politician with a chronic lack of discretion."
This "revisionist" view emerged, Hardy noted, against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement. Revisionists held that Johnson "tended to inhibit the advance of blacks" and concluded that Johnson's refusal to cooperate with Congress was responsible for the failures of Reconstruction.
"This negative view (of Johnson) has persisted for 50 years," Hardy noted, and is likely to continue.
Curiously, he said, a few recent scholars have put forward the idea that Johnson's "vanity, stubbornness and bad judgment, along with white Southerners' refusal to admit defeat, may have actually helped freed slaves achieve greater political power for a brief period," by making the job of Reconstruction advocates easier.
According to this recent view, he said, these historians put forward the idea that, "in a way, modern America is indebted to Johnson's blundering extremism," because, "Had Lincoln lived, it's difficult to see how northern policy could have polarized so quickly in favor of civil rights" for freed slaves.
Only two historians have treated Johnson's life in depth, Hardy said: Kenneth Stamp in 1965, and Hans Trefousse in 1989, both of whom were revisionists.
Trefousse had access to the first seven volumes of Johnson's papers then available, dealing with his life up to the presidency. Trefousse's book is "the best account we currently have" but though Trefousse "tries to be fair, he does not much like Johnson or his racial attitudes."
Trefousse concludes that Johnson was a "child of his times" who did not grow with them. Hardy said he is hopeful that a better, more complete biography of Johnson, making use of papers that were not available to Trefousse, will be written.
Jacksonian Democrat
Hardy said he personally takes the position that Johnson's beliefs as a Jacksonian Democrat better explain his decisions than does the idea of racism.
Jacksonian beliefs served Johnson well through a lifetime in politics, from Greeneville alderman up to every other office through the vice presidency, Hardy said.
The only election Johnson ever lost was because of his Jacksonian opposition to "wasteful spending" of government money on a railroad in East Tennessee, Hardy said.
"Like all faithful Jacksonians, he called for extreme economy in government," and opposed any legislation that benefited one class more than it benefited the general public.
As a Jacksonian, Johnson held the view that "class legislation," that is, laws that benefited one class (usually the wealthy) above another was "the great evil" that Democracy faced.
Johnson "accepted this as political gospel, from local questions in Tennessee to the United States Senate." Johnson believed that, once the privileged lost their special-interest legislation, it would be possible for the common man to achieve" upward mobility, Hardy said.
But when Johnson "cast his lot with Lincoln," the Union and the moderate Republicans, Hardy said, "he had to abandon one of the central tenets of Jacksonianism, the right to hold persons as property, that is, the right to own slaves, as guaranteed by the constitution."
Presidential Actions
In the meantime, Hardy said, Johnson "pleaded with Confederate leaders to lay down their guns before they lost the constitutional right to own slaves."
Hardy quoted a letter from Johnson to one southern governor, which stated, "If you persist in forcing the issue of slavery against the government, I say, in the face of Heaven, give me my government, and let the negroes go."
Late in the Civil War, Johnson "endorsed emancipation, and had the honor of emancipating Tennessee's slaves," as military governor, Hardy said, but before the Civil War Johnson believed blacks were not capable of political participation.
Once Johnson became president, he initially depended heavily on the support of the moderate Republican majority in Congress. Hardy said, moderates wanted "restoration and immediate reconciliation of Southern states" with the union, but "the status of blacks was unclear."
Johnson's presidential message on amnesty called for a conservative approach, no action against "misguided Southern masses, and only temporary action against disordered Southern states," that is, "restoration rather than reconstruction."
Johnson believed moderate Republicans in the majority would silence the radicals, but trouble began when some southern governors protested the continuing presence of troops and Johnson did not respond, and when some southern states elected former high-ranking Confederates to congress, where Republicans refused to seat them.
Radical Republicans believed Johnson's plan merely reinforced white supremacy, Hardy said, and by the winter of 1865-66, "moderate Republicans were frustrated" and began moving toward the radical Republican position.
When the Civil Rights bill of 1866 was set to expire, moderates began listening more to radicals, Hardy said. U.S. Sen. Jacob Howard, of Mich., said, "Is it not time, Mr. President, to extend to black Americans equal protection?" under the law.
What Hardy called "a moderate bill" to extend equal protection to blacks was passed, but vetoed by Johnson, who, again as a Jacksonian Democrat, was "convinced that class legislation posed a threat to the constitution."
Republicans overrode the veto, marking the first time that a presidential veto of a major bill had ever been overridden, he said.
Hardy said he believes "historians have ignored Johnson's aversion to class legislation," focusing instead "on his racial bias."
Hardy concluded, "As for the present state of historical scholarship, it does not appear likely that the reputation of Andrew Johnson will undergo an upward fluctuation in any way comparable to those it has undergone in the past."
Dr. Orr Comments
Dr. Orr was present for the lecture. Orr asked Hardy how he reconciles statements about Johnson rejecting civil rights for blacks with messages Johnson sent to southern governors in the fall of 1865 "urging them to enfranchise literate, property-holding blacks," as well as those who had served in the Union Army.
Orr also cited a statement that Johnson made to Frederick Douglass, the African-American leader, in response to a demand by Douglass for voting rights for blacks.
Orr said Johnson told Douglass they were seeking "the same goal by different paths."
Hardy said that, as military governor of Tennessee, Johnson did "favor black suffrage for those capable and those who had served in the Union Army."
But as president, Hardy said, Johnson never issued an edict or directive on either subject. Hardy said radical Republicans "were for universal suffrage" of males, but "Johnson was not for universal suffrage," without literacy or service requirements.
"I stand apart from revisionist interpretations by those who were only focused on Johnson's racism," Hardy said, but that he still believes Johnson did not favor universal male suffrage (voting).
Hardy said he believes that, without Johnson's slow approach to black suffrage, "guerrilla warfare could have ensued and the Civil War could have continued many more years."
After more discussion of the same objections, Hardy said, "I think we'll disagree on that a little bit."
Justine Wills, the DAR chapter's regent, thanked Hardy for an illuminating talk.
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