Andrew Johnson: Veto of the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill

About the Author

Andrew Johnson, the nation’s seventeenth president, was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on December 29, 1808. He began his career as a tailor with no formal schooling, but he acquired a reputation as a forceful and effective orator, thanks in large part to his wife, who taught him reading, writing, and arithmetic. After moving to Greeneville, Tennessee, he was elected alderman in 1828, mayor in 1830, member of the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1835 and again in 1839, state senator in 1841, congressman in 1843, governor in 1853, and U.S. senator in 1857. When the Civil War broke out, Johnson was the only southern senator to remain loyal to the Union. He attracted the attention of Abraham Lincoln, who appointed him military governor of Tennessee in 1862 and selected him as his running mate in the 1864 presidential election. Johnson rose to the presidency on April 15, 1865, the day after Lincoln's assassination. After leaving the White House in 1869, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1875 and was the only former president ever to serve in the Senate. His tenure, though, was short-lived, for he died on July 31 that same year.

Johnson was at the center of Reconstruction of the Confederate states after the Civil War. In his early life he had developed an intense dislike for the South’s monied slave-owning plantation class, and as vice president he gave every indication that the Reconstruction policies he would support with regard to southern “traitors” would be harsh. He believed, though, that blacks were inherently inferior and was a strong supporter of states’ rights, a position he made clear in his First Annual Message to Congress. Accordingly, his terms for readmitting the southern states to the Union were more lenient than had been anticipated. He granted a blanket amnesty to all but a few former Confederates and a pardon to the others on a case-by-case basis. He also installed provisional governors with the task of quickly assembling loyal state governments. In an effort to win back the loyalty of the South, in 1866 he vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill (initiated under Lincoln in March 1865) and, just a month later, the bill that became the Civil Rights Act of 1866. His veto of the latter bill was the first piece of major legislation in U.S. history that Congress overrode.

Johnson found himself at odds with Congress, particularly with the so-called Radical Republicans led by Representative Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner. This loose political group favored sweeping changes in American politics and society after the Civil War. They supported equality and voting rights for freed slaves and the harsh punishment of the South for the rebellion. At first the Radicals were pleased with Johnson’s hard-line talk, but they grew dissatisfied with his actual policies. In 1868 the Senate, led by the Radical Republicans, impeached Johnson, charging him with deliberately violating the Tenure of Office Act by replacing Edwin Stanton as secretary of war. The article of impeachment failed by a single vote, and Johnson remained in office. Earlier, in 1867, the House of Representatives had voted against articles of impeachment.