Gene Giannotta
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson became president after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated shortly after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox in 1865. Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat and old-school states’ rights advocate, joined the Republican Lincoln on the National Union ticket in 1864. But prior to his entry in politics, Johnson operated a ”thriving” tailoring shop in Greeneville. Of his business, Johnson said that he “always made a close fit, and was always punctual to my customers, and did good work.” But he would go on to be a much less successful president, with his administration in constant conflict with a Radical Republican Congress that demanded a more punitive Reconstruction after the Civil War than Johnson was comfortable with. He would be impeached by that Congress – the first president to suffer that fate – and failed to capture the Democratic nomination in 1868.
