Presidents Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant Video 20 Minutes

April 14th, 1865, is remembered as the night of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. But in Washington, it was an evening of general treachery. There were evil men about Lincoln was shot. Secretary of State William Seward was stabbed. General Ulysses S. Grant was targeted, but was fortunately out of town. Vice president Andrew Johnson was on the hit list too. Johnson was offered tickets to attend the play at Ford's theater that turned him down. Probably a good thing. But Lincoln assassin John Wilkes booth knew exactly where the vice president would be spending the night. He assigned a co-conspirator to go to Johnson's suite at the Kirkwood boarding house. Johnson retires to his quarters at the Kirkwood house. He's completely unaware of anything that's going on. And in fact, sits up part of the night reading, then goes to bed. If all had gone according to plan, Johnson would have been awakened some time later by a knock at the door, at which point a knife would have been plunged into his heart. But it never happened. Demand assigned by booth to assassinate Johnson, lost his nerve, started drinking, decided he wasn't going to go through with it. So the vice president was spared, and when Lincoln died of his wounds the following morning, Andrew Johnson became the first American president to gain the office because of an assassin's bullet. That's part of what will evolve and Johnson's difficulties. He assumes the presidency he was not elected to it. And so Johnson is coming in as virtually a pretender to the throne. Number 17, Andrew Johnson, Democrat union, 1865 to 1869, 56 years old from Tennessee. Andrew Johnson was nothing like his martyred predecessor. Unlike Lincoln, he was a southerner and a Democrat and had at one point owned a small number of slaves, but during the Civil War he was the only senator from a seceding state to remain with the union, and he had been selected as Lincoln's running mate in 1864 to broaden the tickets appeal. Nobody anticipated at all, Johnson becoming president. If anyone had thought that might possibly happen, they certainly wouldn't have put them on the ticket. Johnson was regarded as stubborn or principled, depending on whether you agreed with him or not. Like Lincoln, he had risen from poverty to prominence through his own determination. This upward striving in Lincoln went along with the kind of wit and modesty and open mindedness and ability to deal with all sorts of people. Somehow with Johnson, he has this closed in personality. He's very self oriented. He doesn't listen to other people. He doesn't care about other people. He doesn't have very many friends. Johnson's background and personality greatly influenced his management style. He had no formal education and had trained to be a tailor. He also had a righteous streak. Johnson was dogged and stubborn. Inflexible. Once he took a position, he was never willing to compromise it. He has a tendency to see conspiracies on all sides against him. He was thin skinned about criticism. So in all of these respects, he differed sharply from Lincoln. For a model on how to run his new presidency, Johnson looked to a former president with whom he shared a home state and a very similar name. Andrew Jackson. Ronald Jackson's great quotations, our federal union, it must be preserved. And Johnson picked that up and used that throughout his career and the argument can be made that he was the last jacksonian. Like Jackson, Johnson believed he was the voice of the common man, or at least the common white man. He's probably the most racist president we've ever had. And he thinks he talks about blacks of savages, Barbarians, and he really thinks they should just go back to work on the plantation and leave the public sphere to whites. When Johnson took the oath of office, the Civil War was essentially over. Now it was up to the tailor from Tennessee to stitch the tattered union back together. His entire legacy would be staked on the question of reconstruction. Well, I think the reconstruction crisis was the greatest crisis in American history other than the crisis of the Civil War itself. Because what was at issue was not simply bringing the south back into the union, but defining the essence of the American nation, who is going to be a citizen in the United States. What are the rights that citizens are to enjoy? Who is an American basically? Among the most eager to learn about Johnson's policies were the so called radical Republicans. The vocal reform minded wing of the party. Men like Pennsylvania representative thaddeus Stevens and Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner, they believe the south should be punished and the freed slaves protected made citizens and given the right to vote. Johnson played the role very skillfully in those first few weeks. And the immediate reaction is, yes, we trust Johnson, and we can deal with him. Then Congress leaves Washington not to come back again until December. So Johnson has that wonderful window of opportunity there to take over as president. What Johnson did with his opportunity was to come up with his own presidential reconstruction plan. Many in the defeated south were prepared for the worst. In April 1865, the south was late prostrate at the feet of the conquering north, and many southerners then were so shell shocked that they would have been willing to accept almost any terms of reconstruction. Johnson came in thundering, revenge, punishment to these same people. And in their despair, while they thought, oh my God, you know, this is what our fate is going to be. But Johnson had a pleasant surprise in store for the dispirited southerners. They are a conquered region, but he doesn't want to treat them as a conquered region. These are his people, after all. Nobody knows for sure what Lincoln would have done, but Johnson's plan favored Amnesty for most ex confederates and quick acceptance of the seceded states into the union. The freed slaves got little protection. They weren't guaranteed citizenship or the right to vote. Johnson was on the wrong side of history on the wrong side of morality on the wrong side of politics. He just was unable to recognize that the Civil War had changed the nation that the Emancipation of the slaves carried with it some obligation to protect the basic rights of these emancipated slaves when Congress comes back to town in December of 65. Johnson announces that the restoration of the staff has been completed. And that is startling news to the members of Congress. Congress immediately started passing reconstruction acts of its own, beginning with an extension of the freed men's bureau, a measure begun under Lincoln to aid the transition of blacks from slavery into freedom. Johnson vetoed it. And from that point on, that will be the story. Of the relationship between Congress and the president. Congress passes Johnson Leto's Congress passes Johnson vetoes. Johnson's 29 presidential vetoes shattered the previous record of 12, which was set by his hero Andrew Jackson. When you hitch your president's leadership to the veto wagon, you're not going anywhere. And Johnson stubborn and defiant that he was. Refused to see that. Now it was Congress has turned to make history, beginning with the civil rights bill of 1866, they realized they had the votes to override Johnson's vetoes. Their record of overturning president Johnson 15 times still stands. Throughout 1866 and 1867, Congress hammered away at Johnson's authority. In March of 1867, they passed the tenure of office act limiting the president's ability to remove appointees without the Senate's consent. It was a trap, and Johnson couldn't resist the bait. He suspended and later dismissed his Secretary of War a holdover from Lincoln's cabinet. Take no prisoners was his attitude. And of course, that inspired the other side to fight back in the same way. And that's why he was impeached. By violating the tenure of office act, Johnson gave the radicals in Congress an excuse to get rid of it. Articles of impeachment were drafted. Opposition only made him more and more stubborn. He was unwilling to meet his critics halfway. He was unwilling to listen to criticism. So he just destroyed his own presidency. In February of 1868, the House of Representatives made an unprecedented move, voting to impeach the president, their charges were flimsy at best and clearly politically motivated. Johnson's a target of a vast left wing conspiracy. He thought the impeachment was an outrage. He said the people who are violating the constitution impeaching me for violating the constitution should be the other way around. A trial in the Senate would determine whether Johnson's misdeeds amounted to the high crimes and misdemeanors required by the constitution to remove him from office. If two thirds of the senators voted to convict him, the Johnson presidency would be over. Tickets to this trial were like getting tickets to the Super Bowl. Now, they were scalped outside the Senate chambers. It was a matter of great entertainment. It's like a big athletic event. It was the social event in Washington. And the women and all that finery and the diplomats, everybody came to the Senate to see what was going to go on. It was a circus. Just as it was 1999. In the end, Johnson avoided conviction and removal from office by a single vote. Chastened by his run in with Congress, Johnson passed the rest of his term quietly. After returning home to Tennessee, he would later become the only former president to be elected to the Senate. At the end of the day, you have to admit that he was no Abraham Lincoln. But who was? And Johnson lived with that shadow over him. His entire tenure as president. I think Johnson, in a way, discredited the presidency. His intransigence helped empower Congress to take a greater and greater role in formulating major national policy. The troublesome relationship between Andrew Johnson and the Congress had a lasting impact on the executive office. For the next 30 years, a series of relatively weak presidents would occupy The White House. Andrew Johnson did not attend a single day of school. He taught himself how to read. He was hailed as the Victor of vicksburg, the hero of appomattox, the savior of the union. If there had been paparazzi in the late 19th century, no Americans picture would have been more coveted than that of general Ulysses S. Grant. There were no movie stars in that period of time. There were very few authors that were well known. There was no television. Grant was as close to a star celebrity in the United States in the late 1860s and 1870s as you could have had. Well, in 1868, there's no doubt, but that grant was the most popular man in the north. He was almost a shoe in to become the Republican presidential candidate. I think enough people told him that he should be president that he kind of became convinced, then why not become president if people are willing to make you president, right? Number 18, Ulysses Simpson grant, Republican, 1869 to 1877. 46 years old from Ohio. At the time, he was the youngest man ever to be elected president and the first west pointer. He was also the first to be elected without winning a majority of the white vote. That's because blacks in the south were allowed to cast ballots for the first time and roughly 700,000 did, 12% of the total vote. They voted almost, I think, to a man for grant. They've viewed him just as they had viewed Lincoln as central to their Emancipation. Loyal to a fault, the silent general was humble and shy. As a soldier in the field, he would bathe in a closed tent so others wouldn't see him in the nude. He was also a surprisingly good artist, some of his drawings and paintings still survive. Military heroes like grant are supposed to cut a gallant figure in their uniforms, but descriptions of him range from rumpled to reeking of cigar smoke. Grant certainly was not a gallant figure. In fact, he was short, looked a little bit dumpy because of the way he carried himself. Grant was pretty short and kind of schlepp E to use a modern phrase. He frequently had a cigar in his mouth, which made him look a little more disheveled. In addition to his smoking habit, 20 cigars a day, president grant was an adrenaline junkie. In an era before automobiles, he relied on pure horsepower to satisfy his Need for Speed. In 1866 he won an impromptu drag race through Central Park against a coach carrying president Andrew Johnson. As president, he once got a speeding ticket for driving his horse drawn carriage too fast out M street. He paid a $20 fine. Not surprisingly, grant's approach to the presidency was similar to his approach on the battlefield. He seemed to feel at the beginning he grants that the president was like a military commander. He had subordinates. The subordinates would be loyal to him. He had a tendency however to appoint cronies. Relatives of his wife, old buddies from the army days to positions of power in his administration, which they then in many cases proceeded to abuse. In a way, grant saw his presidency as a continuation of his service in the Civil War. And when grant was nominated for president, he said, let's resolve these questions that are left over from the war. Let us have peace. Those simple elegant words became his campaign slogan, let us have peace. As it turned out, grant's administration was anything but peaceful. It had started off well enough, most of the seceded states had been restored to the union. And black voters emboldened by the support of federal troops had elected Republican governments in many southern states. But the lasting hatreds of war had not died at appomattox. There were those in the north who wanted to punish the south. And those in the south, who wanted to punish blacks. The Ku Klux Klan was really the terrorist wing of the Democratic Party at that time. There is a kind of an almost another Civil War going on in the south. Terrorist groups are launching murder, assassination, whippings, beatings, burnings of buildings in order to undermine the government's there. What does the federal government do about this? Grant working with Congress essentially launched a war on terror. Using new powers granted to him by a series of anti clan laws, he sent federal troops to the hotbeds of violence in the south to round up klansmen and even hold them without trial. Grant crushes the Klan. He succeeds. You can do that if you're willing to be pretty harsh. He crushes the Ku Klux Klan. Thanks to grant's effort, 1872 was the most peaceful year the south at sea since the Civil War. But like the eye of a hurricane, the peace was a false calm for the president and for America. Late in grant's first term, a spate of scandals began to emerge among his trusted subordinates, tarnishing the reputation of the hero of appomattox and turning grant's name into a synonym for corruption. It seemed to America that the president was asleep at the wheel. Oh my God, you got the credit mobilier, you've got the whisky ring. You've got people lining their pockets from the federal coffers. War was grant. Where was this great general? I think it's true. Grant didn't know the whisky rings were going on, the Indian frauds were going on. The credit mobilier scandal was going on. There's no evidence that grant personally profited from any of this stuff. But he also had a rather naive faith in his subordinates, even though he wasn't personally involved. They put a taint on his administration because as another president said, the buck stops here. Despite the scandals, grants enduring popularity earned him a decisive reelection in 1872. His second term was marred by an escalation in southern violence. Things began to fall apart. After grant was reelected in the 1872, one southern state after another was recaptured by the Democrats, violence continued. During his first term, grant didn't hesitate to quell violence in the south by sending federal troops. But the political climate of his second term would not allow for such bold executive action. In 1873, an economic depression in the north contributed to a shift in public opinion about the problems of reconstruction in the south. People didn't want to hear about it anymore, they didn't want to pay for it anymore. Americans do have short attention spans. And the idea of an endless occupation of the south very few people had stomach for it. So by 1875, when the governor of Mississippi asked for federal troops to end an outbreak of electoral violence. Grant failed to act. By the end of his presidency, grant is sitting by without doing anything as one after another of the southern governments are basically overthrown by terrorist groups and reconstruction is coming to an end. Reconstruction wasn't grants only challenge. Another confounding domestic issue of the day was Indian affairs. Grant came into office hoping to pursue a peace policy towards the Indians. But it doesn't happen. There is no peace. There is more war. It was during grant's second term that George Armstrong Custer and his 7th cavalry were annihilated by Indians on the banks of the little bighorn river. Custer's last stand was the exception. Usually it was the Indians who were massacred. Tragically, during his administration, the conflict not only continued between the army and the settlers in the west and the Indians, but actually intensified. In the end, president grant is remembered more for his magnificent failures than his well intentioned efforts. France administration is considered one of the real failed administrations in the American history. Often ranks right at the bottom just above Richard Nixon. But grant stock is rising in recent years. In a lot of ways, he is not remembered and not credited for the really astonishing steps toward black equality that occurred during his two terms in office. It is this effort endorsed by a man of war who fought for peace, attempted but never fully realized during his administration that may be the true legacy of grant's presidency. Ulysses grant hated hunting despised harsh treatment of animals and the sight of blood made him physically ill.