Davis County Clipper | 1981-01-14 | Page 60 | Andrew Jonhson

Andrew Johnson Among the presidents who experienced difficult times in office was Andrew Johnson, a self-educated man of great perseverance, born Dec. 29, 1808, in Raleigh. N. Car. JOHNSON LIVED in South Carolina a time and then moved to Tennessee, which he made his home. He was a member of the Senate when the Civil War began. Unlike most southerners, he remained re-mained in the Senate infuriating in-furiating many back home. Lincoln liked him and he ran with Lincoln in 1864 and was elected vice president. When Lincoln was assassinated, he became president. LIKE LINCOLN, he assumed the southern states had never been out of the Union, Un-ion, that their secession ordinances ordi-nances were invalid. And like Lincoln, he wished to ease their way back into the Union and restore unity and good will. But he was assailed constantly con-stantly by vindictive northern political leaders, who finally had him tried on impeachment charges in the Senate, the Chief Justice presiding. ONLY BY a one-vote margin mar-gin was he saved from impeachment. im-peachment. He did not seek reelection but went home to Tennessee and ran for the Senate. Sen-ate. He was defeated. He then ran for a House at-large seat in Tennessee but was defeated again. But in 1874 the Tennessee legislature elected him to the Senate again, which was fortunate, for-tunate, for he died in 1875, having devoted most of his life to an effort to moderate the nation's na-tion's divisions and restore unity.