I read the new book on President Andrew Johnson by Annette Gordon-Reed. The author is best known for her books on Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson and has won a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for her work. She is also a MacArthur Fellow and recipient of the National Humanities Medal and holds 3 appointments at Harvard.

Here is a partial quote from near the beginning of the book

… an assassin’s bullet would place the political fate of African Americans into the hands of a man who despised them.

Were it not so thoroughly steeped in mindless tragedy the first assassination of an American president, the destruction of the hopes of a people long treated as property who thought they were finally going to be able to live in dignity and peace, the lost chance to make the promise of America real to all who lived here one might be content to cast Andrew Johnson’s time in the White House as a form of cosmic joke. The gods were playing tricks on us, giving us Abraham Lincoln exactly when we needed him, having him cut down by an inconsequential person, and then giving us Andrew Johnson to teach us the folly of even imagining that we controlled our own destinies. But the effects of Johnson’s presidency were too profound, too far ranging — reaching into twenty-first-century America to be considered anything approaching a joke or trick, even one to teach an important lesson.

To be fair to Johnson, any man would have had a tough time following Abraham Lincoln, particularly under the circumstances that ended his presidency. …

Seems a very tragic thing that we went from Lincoln who is considered one of the best presidents to Andrew Johnson who is considered one of the worst presidents at a time of great national need. Like Lincoln, Johnson rose from very humble beginnings to the highest office in the land. Unfortunately, Johnson learned a very different lesson from the journey. The book documents his career which includes white supremacist beliefs and battles with Congress over Reconstruction of the defeated South.

My take on this is that the author has very strong feelings about the failures of Johnson as a President and events resulting from those failures. At a time the nation need unity and healing, a white supremacist became President and his failures have “haunted the nation ever since.” It seems to me that the author is very fair in her evaluation of events and documents those failures well. The book was extremely interesting and gave me insight into the first president to be impeached (and the only one before Bill Clinton). The Constitution provides for impeachment for “… high Crimes and Misdemeanors” but those offenses are not defined. There is an interesting discussion about various interpretations of that provision of the Constitution. The book has also made me want to learn more about the period after the Civil War and its implications for modern society.

This book is part of The American Presidents Series and if this is a typical example, I assume it must be a series of fairly short and excellent biographies.