Andrew Johnson and Secession
When Southern secessionists formed the Confederacy after Abraham Lincoln's 1860 presidential election, Johnson struggled to keep Tennessee in the Union. He warned his constituents that the dissolution of the United States would result in anarchy and a patchwork of "petty little governments, with a little prince in one, a little potentate in another, and a republic somewhere else."
When Tennessee left the Union, Johnson, in line with his area in eastern Tennessee, broke with his state and was the only Southern senator not to resign his seat in the U.S. Senate. Unable to get back to his family in Tennessee, Johnson became one of the strongest supporters of President Lincoln, objecting to any compromise with the Confederacy as long as the rebels were in charge in the South.
Johnson was deemed a traitor and hung in effigy in his hometown. His properties were confiscated , and his wife and two daughters were essentially driven from the state with little more than what they could carry in a wagon. In the North, Johnson's stand made him an overnight hero, praised in the press as a true patriot who had risked his life and his fortune to side with the Union in the Civil War.”
Excerpt from “President Andrew Johnson: Life Before the Presidency,”
Miller Center of Public Affairs,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
Civil War and Reconstruction >> Civil War >> A Divided State >> Confederate State Government
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