Why is andrew johnson a bad president

Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson Richard M. Nixon Gerald R. Bush William J. Clinton George W. Bush Barack Obama Donald J. Trump Joseph R. Biden Jr. ZIP Code. Would Lincoln have better completed what one historian calls the "unfinished revolution" in racial justice and equality begun by the Civil War? Almost all historians believe that the outcome would have been far different under Lincoln's leadership.

Among historians, supporters of Johnson are few in recent years. However, from the s to around the time of World War II, Johnson enjoyed high regard as a strong-willed President who took the courageous high ground in challenging Congress's unconstitutional usurpation of presidential authority.

In this view, much out of vogue today, Johnson is seen to have been motivated by a strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution and by a firm belief in the separation of powers. This perspective reflected a generation of historians who were critical of Republican policy and skeptical of the viability of racial equality as a national policy.

Even here, however, apologists for Johnson acknowledge his inability to effectively deal with congressional challenges due to his personal limitations as a leader. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A.

Garfield Chester A. He also openly opposed the 14th Amendment. Although Johnson had supported an end to slavery in the s, he was a white supremacist. Somehow, Johnson survived the impeachment trial, possibly because there was no vice president to replace him, and moderates feared Benjamin Wade, the Senate president pro tempore who would have replaced Johnson.

The Radical Republicans also eventually failed, and Reconstruction had ended within a decade. Racial discrimination continued on into the middle of the following century. Among historians today, James Buchanan is the one president who is consistently ranked as low as Johnson. Buchanan's seeming indifference to the onset of the Civil War, and his own failings as a President, were monumental.

Toggle navigation. In the end, the Radical Republicans won control over Reconstruction and Johnson became a pariah. He served in the Senate and the House and as governor, and then military governor, of Tennessee.

It was when he was serving as military governor that Lincoln asked him to replace Hannibal Hamlin as vice president in the campaign. Previously a Democrat, Johnson switched parties for the election. Already an enigma because of his well-known independent streak and his earlier support of slavery, Johnson turned heads when he was possibly drunk at his own inauguration in Johnson suddenly found himself as president when Lincoln died just after starting his second term.

Johnson kept his job by one vote in a Senate trial. Arrayed against him were the Radical Republicans in Congress, brilliantly led and ruthless in their tactics.