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Senate Years of Service: 1857-1862; 1875-1875 Party: Democrat; Democrat
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JOHNSON, Andrew, (father-in-law of David Trotter Patterson),
a Representative and a Senator from Tennessee and a Vice President
and 17th President of the United States; born in Raleigh, N.C., on December 29,
1808; self-educated; at the age of 13 was apprenticed to a tailor; moved to
Tennessee in 1826; employed as a tailor; alderman of Greeneville, Tenn.,
1828-1830; mayor of Greeneville 1834-1838; member, State house of
representatives 1835-1837, 1839-1841; elected to the State senate in 1841;
elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-eighth and to the four succeeding
Congresses (March 4, 1843-March 3, 1853); chairman, Committee on Public
Expenditures (Thirty-first and Thirty-second Congresses); did not seek
renomination, having become a gubernatorial candidate; Governor of Tennessee
1853-1857; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate and served from
October 8, 1857, to March 4, 1862, when he resigned; chairman, Committee to
Audit and Control the Contingent Expenses (Thirty-sixth Congress), Committee on
the District of Columbia (Thirty-sixth Congress); appointed by President
Abraham Lincoln Military Governor of Tennessee in 1862; elected Vice President
of the United States on the Republican ticket with Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and
was inaugurated on March 4, 1865; became President of the United States on
April 15, 1865, upon the death of Abraham Lincoln; wide differences arising
between the President and the Congress, a resolution for his impeachment passed
the House of Representatives on February 24, 1868; eleven articles were set out
in the resolution and the trial before the Senate lasted three months, at the
conclusion of which he was acquitted (May 26, 1868) by a vote of thirty-five
for conviction to nineteen for acquittal, the necessary two-thirds vote for
impeachment not having been obtained; retired to his home in Tennessee upon the
expiration of the presidential term, March 3, 1869; unsuccessful candidate for
election to the United States Senate in 1869 and to the House of
Representatives in 1872; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate and
served from March 4, 1875, until his death near Elizabethton, Carter County,
Tenn., July 31, 1875; interment in the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery,
Greeneville, Greene County, Tenn.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography;
Dictionary of American Biography; Trefousse, Hans L.
Andrew Johnson: A Biography. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.,
1989; Johnson, Andrew.
The Papers of Andrew Johnson. Edited by LeRoy P. Graf, Ralph
W. Haskins, and Paul H. Bergeron. 11 vols. to date. Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1967- .
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