Andrew johnson biography video on george

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Five days later, on April 20, Atzerodt was arrested in Germantown, Maryland, where he had sought refuge with a cousin.

Trial and Punishment

Captain William Doster, representing Atzerodt in court, claimed that his client was a “constitutional coward”, and that for this reason he was simply incapable of assassinating the Vice President.

Johnson raged against the interests of his state's planter class even to the point of wanting to create a separate mountain state from the poorer up-country regions of Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. Andrew Johnson became a US Representative for five times until 1853. The only child of the village shoemaker, Eliza had first spotted Andrew and his ragtag family when they pulled into Greeneville looking for work.

Tragically, Jacob died while trying to save two of his wealthy employers from drowning when Andrew was three years old. Tragically, his father died when he was 3 years old. She married Turner Daugherty when Andrew was still a boy, although the addition to the family did not much improve family finances.

In 1875, Tennessee returned Johnson to the Senate.

In the South, Johnson was deemed a traitor and hung in effigy in his hometown. He was militia governor until 1864 in Tennessee. As a Member of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 1840's and '50's, he advocated a homestead bill to provide a free farm for the poor man.

A few months later Congress submitted to the states the Fourteenth Amendment, which specified that no state should "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

All the former Confederate States except Tennessee refused to ratify the amendment; further, there were two bloody race riots in the South.

When Johnson allegedly violated one of these, the Tenure of Office Act, by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the House voted eleven articles of impeachment against him. There were conflicts as well within his administration, when he confessed to lay off Edwin Stanton Lincoln’s secretary, who later became one of his fierce detractors.

Empowered to discharge executive, legislative, and judicial functions, Johnson ruled with a heavy hand.

He pardoned all who would take an oath of allegiance, but required leaders and men of wealth to obtain special Presidential pardons. There he wanted to abolish a law giving bigger representation to slave possessor but his proposal was beaten. His tenure was controversial because his presidency was covered with heavy political harassment from Republicans.

Three accusations were presented in opposition to him but all failed to reach the required majority vote for impeachment. Both of these positions were usually identified with the "slavocracy," which he hated. A little later, Atzerodt confessed to a minister in his cell; the minister said later that Atzerodt had told him that Booth’s original plan was to kidnap the President.

According to the confession reported by the minister, Atzerodt had not known that Booth wanted to kill the President until two hours before he was shot.

The next year, he delivered a series of speeches in which he called slavery a “cancer upon the body politic,” and he appealed to Tennesseeans to pass a state constitutional amendment abolishing the institution.