>> i should have had johnson. it was, the temptation was quite great. if somebody had told me and number of years ago, at any point in my life, that i would have written a book about and johnson of would have told them their part crazy. it's not that i don't think he is an interesting person, he really is, and not that i did not of anything about them, but from most of my career as a historian at tried to avoid the time of reconstruction. it sounds strange for someone who writes about slavery, which is a difficult topic to write about, but i find it easier to deal with 17th century and 18th century and attitudes about race and slavery than i do dealing with reconstruction. there is something about it that is just maddening to me, and i think what it is is that it was a moment of opportunity.

when i think of the people in the 17th and 18th century who had primtive ideas about many things in the world, and there are lots of things that they don't know, i cannot totally forgive them, but it is not as your jc to me, exasperated to me as at a time when you have photographs, at things that are part of the modern era. you feel closer to those people, the people in that timeframe seem more like us than someone in the 18th century or the 17th century when i am writing about the development of slavery in virginia or jefferson's monticello. so when i read about reconstruction and this moment of hope it makes me angry. i'm able to be detached. the further back you go with matt -- that moment it makes me and you and i think about what could have happened and what dit happen and how close we were, how close the country was to a time when you really could have

done something to be in the process of racial healing, the process of making america really one for everyone. so, johnson would not have been my topic of choice. i've read about that era because i have to, but it would not be something -- i never thought i would actually study and write much about it. i got a phone call one morning from arthur slauson your junior, and he told me that i was point to be talking in general. i did get this letter in which he asked me to write the biography of andrew johnson for the american president series which is a very nice series, a very short, concise book about american presidents. it gets people -- sometimes people who actually fit, someone like george appleby did thomas jefferson, a great jefferson scholar. gary hart, george mcgovern.

and so there is a mix of historians and non historians looking at these presidencies telling the basic stories, but also giving your own individual spin on it. he asked me to of to the johnson book. i guess he figured i would put my individual spin on it. i agree to do it because arthur asked me, and i have great respect for him. i knew him from the papers. bieber both on the advisory committee. and also because paul dollop was the editor who was also the general series editor for the series. he was my editor for the book i did with burn and george. so these are to friends. you know how is. they asked me to do this. i said sure. i put aside my misgivings. i knew it was a fascinating topic with so much material. i wondered if i would be able to curb by natural feelings of antipathy about looking at this

particular time in american history and agreed to do it. that was many years ago. this book is, i have to confess, long overdue. in between that i wrote the hemming says of monticello. i came back to this seriously and finished it, and i'm glad that i did. so, the first thing i had to do was to think about how i approach this. now, andrew johnson is not known by lots of people. one thing people probably do know is that in almost every survey of likings of american presidents he is at the bottom. he is near the bottom, the bottom five. since 1997 i've participated in the surveys. sometimes i look at the results, sometimes i don't. he's usually in the bottom five. buchanan is usually the worst. this year, this past year when i did not participate in the

survey for the first time, i typically throw them out, but i didn't this time. he made it to last. he was the worst president just in time for the book. and. [laughter] and sent surveys, he is considered one of the worst and this year the worst. once you get down at that point it is released in paris to think about what the real story is. it is a significant issue. how do you sit down and write a book about somebody who is judged the worst of anything. just because someone is the worst one-year the worst does not mean that they are not important. that is the first realization. this man was president at one of the most pivotal times in american history and had -- there was a moment when the country could have gone one way or the other way, and he had a central role to play in that. it came to me, it's sort of hit

me that it's very important to focus on the life of andrew johnson because i really do believe that some of the decisions that he made during that time affect us even today. and the choices that he made, the trustee did not make, his attitude, style, all of those things helped to make us who we are. you have to pay attention. i say that history is not just about the people that you are like, all the people you love and would love to have dinner with and spend time with. it is about people who did things that were important that helped put us on the path to where we are now. and he is definitely a person who had that kind of, that role. so, once i made my mind to do this and understood how to approach it, it was relatively easy to sit down and get to work and try to tell his story in no way that would going to eliminate what american life was

like and what it was like during the time when andrew johnson left. johnson is different from jefferson in many ways, but the first thing, the first problem is that johnson did not learn to write and tell he was in his late teens. his wife, he married early. his wife taught him how to write. in those days reading and writing were different, separate, very separate things. many people who were taught to read, specifically the bible, but riding was not something that people thought necessarily put together. and so his parents were illiterate. neither of his parents could read or write. we know that they could not right because we have no record of them riding. people said that they were aliterate. he did not become literate and tell he was a young man. that poses a problem because even though he learned to write he was never very comfortable doing it.

at one point later on he mentions that he had -- he hurt his arm. he explained that as the reason that he did not write, but most people think it is because he was very self-conscious about it. his rating, most of his life he less self-conscious about it. if you look at the papers of andrew johnson, many, many more letters to andrew johnson and andrew johnson to other people. that poses a problem for a biographer right there. even though he remains an enigma to a lot of people there is still enough there to craft some sense of what he is thinking, feeling, and to the wise. johnson, you are at a disadvantage because we don't really have that to the same extent. the letters that we have that show when he was a young man,

lots of misspelling, lots of fanatic spellings. it's difficult to wrap your mind -- i mean, it was for me, difficult to wrap my mind around to he really was because you just don't have the kind of record that you would typically have, not somebody like jefferson, but of the president's is just not there. that is a big problem. and because we don't have a lot of his letters and there is not a huge repository of him explaining what he is doing, we don't have lots of stories about him. there is an autobiography. the principal biographer of andrew johnson is a man named hans who unfortunately died last year. i was hoping to be able to finish this book and show it to him because he is the one who went out and wrote 500 pages about johnson. he has covered lots of territory. my job was to cover some of the same territory more concisely, but also to put my span, my view

of johnson on to the picture. but we found, people tend to repeat when they are doing smaller and general biographies of andy johnson. there is not that much more. there had to be another approach demand that is where i -- my expertise and my study of race relations and slavery in that time comes in handy. it's interesting to think about the beginning of america and come to a point where you are focusing on a time when america falls apart and that has to be put back together again. so, i am with this -- i start out with this material that is not as voluminous high at -- as i have typically used to, but vy interesting considering where he came from. how did somebody like this go from being illiterate to a person whose parents were very pour to being someone who is in

the highest office in the land. he is born in north carolina to parents who, as i said, were electorate. his father died when he was three. is mother was of seamstress, and she also worked as a washerwoman and other people's homes. this causes a lot of talk. people suggested later on that maybe andrew johnson was not the sun of his father or that he was illegitimate. and i have gotten some criticism for mentioning this in the book even though hans' mentions it as well. what i try to do instead of just mentioning it, i wanted to talk about the context. to say something about how class affected the way that people viewed andrew johnson from the very beginning. because his mother works outside the home, worked as a made essentially people felt free to say things like that about the

family. i really doubt if she had been a married woman, married, respectable, middle-class woman if those kinds of rumors with be openly spoken about during that time. so from the very beginning it is not that he was just poor, his family was seen as a very marginal. there is a difference between what people would call a deserving poor, the port and people who are seen as really marginal. she marries again, his mother remarries and man who is as pour ashy, does not really improve their circumstances. and it gets so bad that she has to apprentice her two children. andrew johnson was apprenticed to a tailor when he was ten years old. his brother was a couple years older. he was supposed to be in the apprenticeship until he was 21. why it would take that long to become a tail like -- and it didn't, as you will see.

some of ten years old, apprentice to a tailor. he actually runs away. he and his brother run away. the language of an ivory produced in the book. basically a runaway servant at, the kind of thing you would expect to see people more familiar with with runaway slaves. reward, capture him, bring him back. this is the future president of the united states. this is what happens to him. he runs away, does not come back. he goes off and actually gets a job as a tailor and becomes very, very good at his job and actually even as an older man when he is a politician, a prominent politician, he makes suits for people. it's kind of cool. a president that to makes its. a sort of gender thing. it does not matter.

at taylor makes suits. that can be a masculine thing, but that was his way of giving gifts to people. a very practical, real world experience that he had. so, he starts out very, very low. one of the things i'd talk about is comparing him to lincoln who, you know, unfortunately this is about, it's really tough. lincoln was a tough act to follow. i mean, on those same surveys i talked about he is always mentioned. you go from number one, the best to the worst in the one, you know, terrible moment. that is what you have, lincoln to andrew johnson. he suffers by comparison. that part of it, it is not just that he has failings, which we will talk about, but he came after someone who was, you know, amazing to people in good ways

and bad. people hated him. a very and towering figure. so, we have the humble origins that seems to make him in some ways -- well, it strengthened lincoln. hardship can sometimes strengthen people in a particular way, in empathy, and vision. but my take on johnson is that his hard life, being looked down upon, it made him hard in lots of ways. someone asked to come about, you would think that kind of a breaking the tough upbringing would make him sympathetic to black people and slaves. no. the other side is what that can do is make you look for somebody to look down on. there has to be somebody below you. i think he took comfort, perhaps, and sank, like many poor and seven whites, i may

live in a shotgun shack. i may not have very much, but i'm white. that is better than these people over there. so if you want to maintain that you have to make sure there is always somebody over there or under there who you can look down upon. i think that seems to be the tack that he took in life. it was to the detriment, his own personal demons really ended up affecting the course of history of the united states of america. while he is and the tailor shop, a very smart kid, smart person. he listened to a man who would come to the shop to read to the taylors. think about civic engagement. another are people who cannot read. and man would come and read. he would read about a book of speeches. johnson loved speeches. he kept the book. the guy gave him the book. he loved it so much.

over the years in the time he needed inspiration he would go back and read this book of speeches. so at some point you realize is because he gets into debates with a person, they are taking it outside, but verbally. they decide to invite people to watch them argue, and it becomes clear he has a talent. his talent is public speaking. that also links him to lincoln because lincoln was a good speaker as well, but he was a different type of speaker. he could be very rough. he was sarcastic and aggressive. people had not really seen anything like it. so his fame grew. people suggested he might run for office, which he did. ambitious, a good businessman. even though he started out port, he made the right kind of investments. he actually bettered himself financially. he went into politics and climbed the ladder from alderman, mayor, every single

run, he was on it up to the president. and some of it is an interesting thank. interesting comment on american life that someone could start out as low as he did and go to where he went. and so even though i can be somewhat hard on him and the book there is no question that he was an extraordinary person. one of my editors said that he had done all of these. all of the ones that have been done so far. all of these people are extraordinary. it's not like somebody is just, you know, sitting around one day and says, okay, you know, i'm going to the white house. there is something there. other people see something in that person. a person sees something in himself. only he is involved in this, but says, i should go for that position. i should be at the top. he was like that. so the book describes his ascent

and how he fashioned himself, tried to fashion himself after his hero, and jackson. he comes of age during the age of jackson. he is a unionist. he is for the common man. he campaigns for the homestead act. there are lots of things that seem very progressive and popular in a way, but as you know, populism has this -- it's a double-edged sword. lots of time they are in favor of measures that you would think would be progressive. he was for, you know, the homestead act, giving poor people and. he wanted public education. he was always a champion of public education thinking about that on his own life and how the party was. he wanted a better shot for people, people who were not privileged. the catch was the only wanted that for whites.

he was for the homestead act, as i said, but when reconstruction came and there was a time to give land reform, republicans in congress wanted land reform in the south to give the former enslaved people land to buy it -- to give them the kind of independence that johnson and others understood is needed. that is what land meant. if you don't work for people you can grow your own food. you can subsist on your own plot, and you are not beholden to anyone. he wanted that for whites, but not blacks. this populist part, there was a racist part of it contributing his thoughts about how this might expand to include everybody. he makes his political run at thinking of himself as a champion of the common man. as i said, he is for the union. he has no trust whatsoever with

receptionists. and he alienated many -- even before the war he alienated people like jefferson davis because of his support for the homestead act. the seven grandees, planters did not like the idea of giving poor white people and. they thought it was -- it would not have used the term, but they thought this was like welfare. why are you giving these people land below market rates? why don't they go out and work for it? why did they deserve this? but he was all for it. and so from the beginning there were recalcitrants about this that furthered his antipathy says. he came up making enemies all along the way. lincoln, he gets on the ticket because lincoln decides that he wants to signal to the south that there was a future, and

north and south had a future together. it was a symbolic gesture of unity of him to pick a sudden, from the border states, from tennessee. moved to tennessee as a young man to put together. look. i am willing to have a southerner on the ticket. one of these days we can get back together again. he ends up on the ticket. lincoln replaces hannibal from maine who did not give any kind of political clout. there he is as vice-president. this person, as i said, started out illiterate up until his early manhood. the vice president of the united states. people hated that. many people who said he is not the kind of man who should be in this office. reading these kinds of things, and i even managed to feel sorry for him as you feel. but then at the inauguration and he is truck.

he comes to the inauguration. it was fun to write. he had been ill. in those days i think they thought whiskey was a cure for everything. many people thought that. he drank too much whiskey. so there is -- it would have been amazing if something like that would have happened today. you can imagine on youtube, cable-tv, everything. all of these things. people said, see, we told you. those kinds of people and those kinds of positions, this is what they are going to do. nick and -- lincoln, nevertheless, people said you should dump him. he said, no, i he is not drunk. he will be fine. of course, he was killed not long after that. he ascends to presidency, and people are, of course, modified does not even describe it.

the country was traumatized. people in the north traumatized. people in the south may have been happy, but they were not celebrating because they had just been defeated in war, and they were in no position to gloat about something like that, even if anyone were inclined to. it was a traumatic, traumatic time frame. there is johnson has to rise to the occasion. deterring those days immediately after lincoln's death he actually does rise to the occasion. all the things, people said the performance as vice president has gone away. he knows what to do ceremoniously and symbolically. he rises to the occasion. there is a honeymoon for a time until they get into reconstruction. this is the part of the story where, as i said, i've tried to a bordello this. they began to realize that he is not going to have any, any

support whatsoever with the notion of black political rights, any kind of rights for the friedman back after the civil war. he only grudgingly accepted abolition. he was a slave holder himself. he was not of large scale slaveholder. he did not have a plantation, but he did have slaves. a supporter of slavery, adamant about black inferiority. he said everybody has to admit that white people are superior to blacks. we should try to raise them up, but as we raise them up, they should raise ourselves even further so that the distance will always be the same. in other words, you know, that was his plan. he said this is a white man's government, and it will remain so. when somebody says that out loud and says it adamantly over and over and over again and you have a policy from the republicans, they are saying black votes,

land reform, some sort of political life for black people. the president and congress applaud. that is what is all about. his vision of the south, bringing the soft backhand to the union did not encompass anything about changing black people status beyond taking them out of legal slavery. that was of battle between he and the republicans. that eventually led to his impeachment. a person who wrote a book -- one person who was a biographer of johnson started the book out lamenting the fact that when people write about johnson, all they seem to care about is reconstruction and impeachment, but mainly reconstruction. then he says, you know what, there isn't much else. this grand plan to talk about the other aspects of andrew johnson's presidency, but its reconstruction. i mean, buying alaska.

there are problems in mexico that we have to deal with. those things were handled by his secretary of state. most of his time was spent on reconstruction and trying to thwart the efforts of republicans, members of congress to, as i said, wanted to transform the south. he believed that the south really had not succeeded. his view was that secession was illegal and because it was illegal they never left, jefferson davis was not really a president. there was no confederate, you know, states of america. there was nothing. because it did not exist once the war is over and you bring everybody back in, it's sort of like rewinding the tape except the slavery part. you know, take the slavery out of this, but the south coast back to exactly what it was before fort sumter, before any conflict of all. that is a tough position. 4 million people who had been

freed at this point. what do you do? there were people who realized that called for something, but he said no. the constitution does not allow what you are trying -- what you are attempting to do. he was very much, he said, a proponent of the constitution. he saw himself as the guardian of the constitution, but he had what i call a cafeteria style approach to the constitution. i mean, things that he liked or constitutional. things he did not like were unconstitutional. the constitution clearly says that congress has the right to set rules for the governor's and a thing having to do with the district of columbia. so, when congress gives black people the right to vote he vetoes it and says it's unconstitutional. well, that is in the constitution. this is not even some interpretation. you get a sense of what

constitution means to him. if i like it it's constitutional, if i don't it's not. so he thought that he was in the right, protecting the constitution. republicans thought something has to change. you can't just have people wandering around i don't know what they wanted other than they were supposed to be under the domination of whites. he does something that really surprises people. remember, i said he hated the seven grandees, the plantation owners. he wanted to punish them. he thought they had lied the south into war. he had a strange notion that southern planters, the large-scale planters and slaves were in a conspiracy against four white people. so he blames them for the war. the blacks and enslaved people and their masters. they were in league trying to

keep for whites down. at first she talked about punishing these people, but then he realized, by greater enemy is not those seven people, but southern planters, aristocrats. my enemies are the people in the north, the republicans who want to change the south. what he opted to do instead of punishing them was to put them back in power. and so not only does he tore off, try to thwart the radical of publicans, the so-called radical republicans, he put all the people who had been -- he helps to put back into power all the people who had been in power before the war, the very people whom he called traitors and said he wanted to punish. he brought them back on the new terms. he did not require -- have been, the sort of of the people had to swear to. he dispensed with the of, the loyalty of, he dispensed with a lot of those. he put them back into power. finally the republicans get

angry and bring on the impeachment, which was and remains a very drastic remedy according to most americans. seen as a drastic memory. try to remove a president from office. he survives a conviction in the senate by one of. people think that really -- we can talk a little bit about this. the people felt that he only had maybe a year or so to go on this term. and he would have been out anyway. the second thing was the person who would have taken over from him was considered to be of wild radical. he believe in things like the now voting. of course that made him a martian, like he was a mark. and so what would have come after him and the fact that he didn't have very long to go and some other things.

he actually made some deals about this. they voted -- he escaped conviction by one vote. he is nevertheless sort of a ruined president after that. he keeps to be telling bills. he has hopes of making a comeback, but his real plan was to unite conservatives in the north and south to create another political party to try to brain coming to take the country back. that was his idea. he had got no way, he needed groups of the most conservative people, wherever they lived, regardless of party to sort of band together and take back the country. it did not work. he can't get -- the democrats at this time are not democrats as you know. the parties have fled from where there were. they did not trust him, and the republicans surely were not going to have him. he goes back to tennessee and

begins to plot his been vacation. he runs for office. he is successful at first, but then his return to the senate. he sees this as the vindication. he was right all along. he does back up into a body that tried to kick him out, and he is there only for a few months and dies in 1875 of a stroke on a trip back to tennessee. so, it is an amazing story of a person who is, as i said, and enigmatic and probably will be forever closed to us in some really, really significant ways just because he did not write. we don't have his voice very much. there is no question about his formal papers, but we don't have the day-to-day statements from him, a few anecdotes for family

about him, that andrew johnson homestead has a website that has information about him as a slaveholder, but not -- again, not huge grants of material about this person who, as i said, as was one of the most significant effects on american life of anybody during american history, even though he is judged as the worst president. thurgood marshall in one of his opinions, one of his dissents, i believe it was. he said that, you know, if america had done what it was supposed to have done during this time, he doesn't cite andrew johnson, but talks about this reconstruction as a point of lost opportunity. i think that you can't -- you cannot blame one person for all of the git that happens all the bad that happens, but the

president, and this is my approach. the president is the leader of the country, the symbolic leader. people in times of crisis, people to look to the supreme court or the congress. the president is the energy of the government. the president exercises actual and symbolic. the kind of that he exhibited during this time was not enough to make -- he did not run everything all by himself, but he made it much more difficult for the right thing to be done. that is the real tragedy, i think, of his presidency. again, that is why i think what people should know about and johnson because i really do believe that he helped to make us who we are today. think about land reform, the difference in wealth, the production of wealth and the black community and former slaves that had planned. most of them, instead of being

sharecroppers. the difference between owning your property and renting it from someone else. people say, yes, we got something good out of it, the 14th amendment. all of the laws that congress was passing, civil rights, all of those things forcing them into passing the 14th amendment. that is a good thing, but think about, think about the loss, all of the losses if he d not opposed land reform, not opposed black political rights, if blacks had been exercising political rights from 1860, had planned from 1860 as opposed to what happened. he said us back, set the country back. black people were set back tremendously because of his, the failure of his -- or i should say, he would not say it's a failure, but from the way he exercised his. he said he wanted to preserve the country as a white man's government, and he was able to do that for the largest amount

of time. in historical circles up until the civil rights movement he was seen by many as a good president. if you read stories, school of historians of columbia and other places who championed johnson as a hero, who helped stave off nuclear will, in the south essentially, that historical school existed into the 20th century. w. e. b. du bois wrote a book called black reconstruction. he set the record straight very clearly. there are other people. once he did that other people began to take a second look at reconstruction. the people who were congress people, uc-berkeley, the nation, they get blacks in congress in bare feet. these us some of the most educated people. these were really educated man,

talented people who were in these offices. that whole banning school business be really propped up andrew johnson because it made it look like his attitudes were the correct ones. after the boy and others, certainly by the civil rights movement people began to take a different look at reconstruction and understood he was more of a problem than any kind of solution. so, i'm glad -- i have to say, even though it took me a long time, and it's difficult to write about someone, you know, responsible for lots of bad things that happened, and you have to try to have enough detachment to be able to present his good points as well as is bad points. i hope i have managed to do that. as i do think i make very strongly the case that he is a figure that we cannot ignore. he was there at too important a

time for him to be unknown to most people because i think we can explain a lot about who we are by looking at his life and looking at, you know, the kinds of things that he did during reconstruction. it is a very american story in good and bad ways. so, with that, i would like to take your questions. [applause] [applause] >> thank you very much. we have hand's already. fantastic. right here in the front row. >> to you see any parallels between that take back the country movement and that tea party and sarah palin? [laughter] >> well, parallel in the sense that americans revere the constitution, and some people say too much.

it's almost like a sacred text. anytime we are in trouble or anytime we want to make a point we use the constitution and say we want to get back to that document. even people on the left. i mean, not as much as they should, but people on the left look to the constitution as a protector. i think it is different because -- it's different in this sense. almost 500,000 people died, certainly the south was decimated. this was really life during wartime. this is not life during wartime, that kind of wartime. wars going on overseas, but this is hyperbole, i think at this point. the country has not gone anywhere. we know what i mean? these people are in our real -- they took up arms against one

another and fought one another. those were really serious life-and-death kind of issues. i think that they are using that rhetoric, but it is not, to my mind, has serious as the time that those people weren't. it's more -- its rhetoric. it is loaded. i'm not saying that people don't have legitimate concerns and are not serious, but this was -- johnson, we're talking about life and death. certainly in the south. the big book on reconstruction, and i relied on that input to me to materials about some of the things going on. you know, this guy talked about going to a village in texas, a town in texas and seeing 28 bodies hanging from trees, men, women, and little children, rivers with bodies floating down it. i mean, this was after the war

is over. people turned on blacks and tried to reassert their control. there were plans, there were playing for keeps. i don't know. it does not compare to that, i don't think. they might think it does. >> another question. >> thank you for coming. your excellent talk. could you talk a bit about education? i have never quite understood why the radical republicans did not push much more resources into providing education for the free slaves? >> well, they did through the friedman bureau. they tried to do that. there is really poignant stories about the kids sitting next to grown people. everybody trying to read. that is what they tried to do. those schools were attacked. people who tried to be teachers. there was a lot of a backlash

because they did not want people, the folks, they did not want blacks in schools. they wanted them in the field. it definitely try to do that. the schools, higher education, howard university, howard. they tried to do that, but in lots of little places they were not in control of all of this. certainly once the military leaves education becomes really, really sketchy, even more sketchy for blacks during that time. they tried, but there was a lot of opposition, and violent opposition in many places. >> the lady on the left in the third row. >> when did johnson free the slaves or did he freed them? >> after they ended the war, they became free. not before then. i think he may have read a couple, but not until after.

>> right here. >> what do you think about johnson's argument that succession was void? >> well, you know, lincoln said that, it's illegal. secession was illegal. the reason he said it was because if secession is illegal then the president exercises his power under the powers to grow rebellion and so forth. if secession is illegal, legal and they left then you could say i like territories. congress' rules the territories. so as a matter of political separation of powers it was a political, political argument. again, lincoln died, so we don't know what you would have done a what he really thought. for him, he said that was an abstraction. johnson took it very, very much

to heart. he was very literal minded on that. now, what i think is that, well, i mean, if they thought that they could leave, they laughed. jefferson did set up a government. it's hard for me to pretend that they were not real. what they had was not a real thing. i think congress should have been governed as territories, and i think they should have kept the military rule a lot longer than they did to actually reconstruct. so i understand the legal argument about it, but practically and realistically they set up their own government and stopped participating. they went their own separate way >> yes. right here. >> what was the base of support

for johnson? after all, he was regarded as a traitor by the southern diehards and an unreliable president by the northern abolitionists. >> well, a 45 you know, you mean while he's president? while he's president he did not have that much support. he gets to be president because lincoln gets killed. at this point he begins -- he wants to try to make a base of these conservatives that i talked about by being lenient with the former southern planters. he tried to put them up by not punishing them the way he originally said he was calling to. he wanted to build this party, and he was not successful at doing it. public opinion varied. sometimes they like to and sometimes they hated him. once it became clear that he was

not point to go along with the construction the uniformly hated him. that is why he could not get a nomination, certainly after the impeachment, but he really did not have very much support. he spent most of his presidency trying to build that by, you know currying favor with the southerners and then sometimes the paring lenient to northerners. it did not work. he please nobody. he tried to be everything to all people and ended up the place and tell he manages at the end to get back to the senate for a brief amount of time, but he was not -- it's interesting because he must have been -- he was a good politician to a degree because he could not have come from nowhere to where he went, but once he got into office it was like he was out of, i think, out of his league. he pours out of his depth. he ended up with not very many friends at all.

>> about four rows back in the middle. to you think he was a tragic figure? >> a tragic figure? bosh. i think he was a tragedy. a tragic figure, you know, i can't find anything about him. he did not seem to have had a visible sense of humor. there is not a lot of -- yeah, i would think he is a tragic figure. [laughter] when i think a tragic, you think of somebody who has a grand, you know, persona and is sort of brought down. i feel -- id think in a sense he is tragic. he wanted desperately to rise and he did rise. it is an amazing story.

i mean, you can't read until your 19 years old, and then your president. that is the tenacity. it served him well. that is why he was able to stay committed to the union. i mean, a tremendous personal sacrifice. he could have been killed. there are many, many people who want to kill him. he stood fast against all of that. i think -- i don't know how much self awareness he had. he is actually the reason i'm hesitating. a tragic figure, tragic figures, you have some -- i think you have some evidence that they have some awareness of the tragedy. at think he died thinking that he was vindicated and had done the right thing. he would not have seen -- i mean, he was certainly upset about the impeachment and his failure to make it, to get the nomination again. at think he would have thought he was successful because he

was. he really did save his region from being transformed. it was and transformed until 1965. so he could actually count himself a success in a way for very very long. of time. looking at him if he had been a real statement and if he had -- he did not have to do everything the radical republicans wanted, but he could have been a great president. if he had made the right choices. alec give you an example. very telling about him. at one point in his early career there was a proposal to bring the railroad to eastern tennessee. even though his constituents wanted it, he opposed the railroad because if you brought the railroad people would get to where they're going so quickly that he would not need ends in

taverns. so, it's not to put in san tavern's out of business you can have the railroad. well, that makes sense in a way except, towns sprang up along railroad routes, and people had to what places. he had no work. when he left he would have to walk. they are talking about dodging not lands and so forth. so you have some sense of this lack of vision and away. and so if you don't know where you are deficient it is hard for me to think of you as a tragic figure and, as i said, because he was successful he actually did stave off the transformation of the south for many, many decades. i don't think he would count himself as a tragic figure.

>> he is also somebody that a lot 14 miles to go to a lecture. >> in the snow. >> the lady in the middle. >> he talked about -- where are you? he talked about -- a little bit about. tell us about his family life as he became an adult. >> he had his wife that helped him, as i said, taught him to read and write. ahead, we don't the air, about her feet she was an invalid of. she did not stay with him and the white house. his daughters served as the first lady. he blast killed. he was somewhat consumed by work. he was out giving speeches all the time. he was running for office.

he was plotting and planning. you don't get a sense that much of his family life of the and that he was married, three sons and a daughter. one of the suns ended up committing suicide. he was an alcoholic. that was a great tragedy in his life. i talked of little bit about it in the book, of reference to one of the in one of the enslaved women, there is talk that he had children with her. the only thing is that he buys her. she is about 16 years old. she has two children, you know, see is their mixed-race kids. people talk about that, that that was possibly true. people criticize me about mentioning that.

a person once written a book about andrew johnson and his racial views talks about this. other articles as well. i thought, here is a person who was having an enslaved person in his household. i thought it was important to mention that as a possibility of of deference to her and concern that you paint a picture of the lives of a slave girls because he could have been. we don't know that he was, but i don't think -- when you're talking about a person who was a slave owner you have to talk about all the aspects of that, not just buying and selling people. we don't get a sense -- again, this is kent in comparison to jefferson were you have lots of letters back and forth between fathers and daughters and grandchildren and all those kinds of things and people commenting. one thing that people did say is that he likes children quite a bit. he was good with children, and they liked him. one of the people who was the

son of a person enslaved, one of his slaves said that he would even bounce black children on his knees. he liked children which is sort of interesting when you think about the rest of his life. he was able to be apparently childlike with children. you don't get a sense of him as a warm and funny person otherwise. >> we have time for one more question. will get to this gentleman right here. >> jefferson. >> you may not want to answer this or even respond to this. have you ever speculated as to whether a different kind of job could have succeeded vastly

rearranging the last half of the 19th century? >> oh, sure. the app. and at think he could have. i mean, a different kind of johnson would not have had to go along with everything that the republicans have wanted to do. one of the things that he did to and i tried to convey in the book is that his insurance gave aid and comfort to others. the comments. we would have accepted anything in the immediate aftermath of the war. we would have accepted anything, any terms, but he gives us hope of a white man's government. and so we knew to hold out. and so i think the role that he played, i think the symbolic role of the president as leader i think was really important.

if he didn't have so strenuously opposed voting rights, if he had not sanitized efforts to bring about land reform, this is not to say that the south would have rolled over and would have -- when you have the enemy down, prostrate, we have been down. that is when you impose terms a new ford. rumors people said, you know, his actions emboldened them. past the black codes, to sort of tamp down in a move for transportation. it would not have been the land for malcolm honey. the south would not have rolled over and accepted blacks as equals citizens, but it would not have been as bad as it was. you know, a lessening of the problem, and the lessening of

the oppression, i think, would have made a big difference. yes. i have thought about it and i do think that he is -- i think that his particular brand of presidential was toxic. it is important for us to think about where we are, go back. that is the importance of history, rewind, go back and see how this cut started and where we began to go wrong and what kind of remedies we need to take. at think it would have been different. history is all about contingencies. we ended up with a person who was strong enough to stand for union and understood the importance of the union, but because of his own personal character, the character issue, he was unable to see through the transformation of the south because, to him, that was against everything that he believed.