Washington Bogart Cooper, after 1866. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian
Seventeenth President, 1865-1869
Nominated vice president for Lincoln's second term, Andrew Johnson
was the only U.S. Senator from the South to stay loyal to the Union.
On becoming president after Lincoln's assassination, Johnson worked
hard to bring the country together again using Lincoln's policies
of leniency towards the defeated Southern states. But the wounds of
the war were too fresh, and not everyone was willing to give power
back to those who had broken away from the Union. Johnson lost the
support of the Republican party when he refused to sign a bill protecting
the rights of freed Southern slaves. When he persisted in following
Lincoln's plans for reconstruction of the South, Johnson was put on
trial by the Senate. In 1868 Johnson became the first president to
be impeached; he was spared removal from office by one vote.