and rude johnson. shea recount president johnson's residents to provide civil-rights to recently freed slaves and his inability to provide leadership to a nation recovering from the civil war. she spoke at the philadelphia free library. ..

but for most of my career as an historian, i've tried to avoid the period of reconstruction. and it sounds strange for someone who writes about lavery, which is a difficult topic to write about, but i find it easier to deal with the 17th century in the eat-in century in attitudes about race and slavery than i do dealing with reconstruction. there is something about it that is just not. and i think what it is is that it was a moment of opportunity. i think of the people the 17th and 18th centuries were very primitive ideas about many, many things in the world did you know there's lots of things they don't know, i cannot totally forgive them, but it's not as irritating to me, exasperating to me in the period of time when you have photographs, trains,

things that are part of the modern era and you feel closer to those people. the people of that time. see more like us than some of the 18th century for the 20th century would bring about development of slavery in virginia or chauffer sends monticello even. so when i read about reconstruction in this moment of hope, it makes me angry. i'm able to be detached. the further back you go, but that moment it makes me really angry when i think about what could've happened but did not happen and how close we were, how close the country westray period of time and it really could've done some thing to begin 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 read about the area because they have to, but it would not be something i thought i would ever actually study and write very much about it. i got a phone call one morning

from arthur schlesinger junior, telling me i was going to be getting a letter from him and talking just in general. i did get this letter in which he asked me to write the biography of andrew johnson for the american presidents series, which is a very nice series, a short concise book about american presidents. and they gave people a sort of -- well, sometimes you fit, someone like george b., of course she is a great jefferson scholar as kerry hard to debug, george mcgovern did begin. and so there's a mix of historians and non-historians, looking at this president is, telling the basic story, but also giving your own individual spin on it. and he asked me to do this to the johnson both. i guess he figured i would put my individual spin on it. i agreed to do it because arthur asked me to do it and i have great respect for him. i knew him from the papers of

thomas jefferson on the advisory committee for that and also because paul call up was the editor was also the general series editor for the series was my editor for the book i did with vernon jordan. so this has two friends. when friends ask you to do things, who asked me to do this? i said sure. i put aside my miss giving. i know it's a fascinating topic was so much material, but i wondered if i would be able to sort of curve by natural feeling about looking at this particular period in american history and i agreed to do it many, many years ago. this book as i have to confess long overdue. i wrote "the hemingses of monticello," which took a lot of time and then i came back today seriously and finished it and i'm very, very glad that i did. so the first thing i had to do

was think about how do i approach this? now andrew johnson is not known by lots of people. not a lot is known about him. one thing people do know is that in almost every survey of rankings of american president, he's at the bottom. it's in the bottom five. since 1997, i participated in the survey's and sometimes i look at the results and sometimes they don't. but he's usually in the bottom five. kennedy is usually the worse, but he's in the bottom five. this year, the pastor when i didn't participate in the survey for the first time, i was too busy. he made it to the last. just in time for the both. in some surveys he's considered one of the worst and this year he is the worst president. once you get down to that point, it's really splitting hairs to think about what the real story

with that. that's a difficult issue because had you sit to write a a book about somebody was judged the worst of anything. well, just because somebody is the worst or near the worst doesn't mean they are not important. and that's the first realization i had. this man was president at one of the most pivotal periods in american history and 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. and he came to me. it hit me that it's very important to focus on the life of andrew johnson because i really do believe some of the decisions he made during the time. affect us even today in the choices he made, the choices he did not make, his attitude, leadership style, all of those things helped make us who we are. for those reasons you have to pay attention to them. i think about that history is

not just about all the people you like. you know, all the people you love and would love to have dinner with and spend time with. it's about people who did things that were important and help put us on the path to where we are now. and he is definitely a person who had that kind of -- that rule. so once i made my mind to do this and understood how to approach her, it is relatively easy to sit down and get to work and try to tell his story in a way that was sort of illuminate what american life is like and what it was like during a time getting her johnson lived. now, johnson is different than jefferson in many ways. but the first problem is that johnson didn't plan to write a until he was in his late teens. his wife -- he married early. his wife taught them how to write. in those days, reading and writing were different, very

separate things to many people who were taught to read. the writing was not something people but necessarily went together. and so, his parents were illiterate. neither his parents could read or write. we know they can write because we have marks. we have no record of them writing and people said they were illiterate. he didn't become literate until he was a young man. and that poses a problem because even if you learn to write, she was never comfortable doing a and at one point later on, he mentioned he sort of hurt his arm any sort of explain that as the reason he didn't write. but most people think it's because he was very, very self-conscious about it and is writing most his life he was self-conscious about it. if you look at the papers of andrew johnson, there were many, many more voters to andrew to

from andrew johnson to other people appeared so that poses a problem for a biographer ratepayer. we don't have it in her voice. thomas jefferson to 18,000 letters that he wrote over the period of his life and other kinds of documents and other things. even though she remains an enigma to lots of people, there was still enough there to craft some sense of what he's thinking, would be stealing and who she wants. johnson county are at a disadvantage because we don't have that to the same extent in the letters we have that show when he is a young man show lots of misspellings, lots of phonetic spellings of things. it's difficult to wrap your mind -- it was for me, difficult to wrap my mind around who he really was because we just don't have the kind of record you typically have. not to signify someone like jefferson, but other people who were president. so that's a big problem. and because we don't have lots of his letters and there's not a

huge repository of him explaining what he's doing, we don't have lots of stories about him. there's another biography. the principal biographer of andrew johnson is a man named hans who 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 the 500 page book about johnson and discovered lots of territory. my job was to cover the same territory more concisely, but also to put my spin, my view of johnson onto the picture. but he found people tend to repeat when they are doing sort of smaller or general biographies of andrew johnson. and there is not that much more. so there have to be another approach to him. and that's where my expertise or my study of race relations in slavery and that.

comes in handy. it is interesting to think about the beginning of america come to a point where you are focusing on a time when america falls apart and then has to be put back together again. so i start out with this material that is not as voluminous as i'm typically used to, but a person who i said it's very, very interesting, considering where he came from. how did somebody like this going from being illiterate, whose parents were very, very poor, to someone who has the highest office in the land. so is in north carolina too. so as i said of literate. his father died when he was three. his mother was a seamstress and she also worked as a wash woman and others peoples homes. this is the thing that caused a lot of talk. people suggested later they andrew johnson was not the son

of his father, you know, that he was illegitimate. and i've gotten some criticism for mentioning this in the book, even though honshu view matches as well. what i tried to do and just mentioning that, i wanted to talk about the contacts had to say something about how class affected the way people viewed andrew johnson from the very, very beginning. because his mother worked outside the home, work has been made essentially a summer home, people felt free to say things like that about the family. i doubt if she had been a married woman, middle-class woman if those kinds of rumors would be openly and broken during that time. so from the very beginning, it's not that he was poor. it was that his family was seen as marginal. there's a difference between what people would call the deserving poor, you know,

driving people who were seen as really marginal. she married again his mother remarried a man who is as porous sheet, doesn't improve circumstances during that and it gets so bad she has to apprenticed her two children. the andrew johnson was apprentice to a taylor when he was 10 years old. his father was a couple years older. he was supposed to be an apprenticeship until he was 21. why would take that line. it didn't take him not long. so he's 10 years old. he's apprentice to a taylor and he actually runs away. he and his brother run away and there is an ad, the language of it i reproduced in the book. it's basically a runaway servant outcome of the kind of thing you would expect to see people more familiar with with runaway slaves. you know, report everything,

capture him, bring him back and we'll pay your report. this is the future president of the united states. this is what happens to him. he runs away, doesn't come back. he goes off and actually gets a job as a taylor in another persons tailor shop and becomes very good at his job. as an older man, when he's a politician, he makes sues for people as a gift. i mean, it's kind of cool. you think of a president who can make suits. and the sort of gender thing doesn't matter because he is a taylor? that can't be a masculine thing to do, but that was his way of giving gifts to people is a very practical, real-world experience that he had. so he starts out very, very though. i'm one of the things i talk about is comparing him to lincoln who unfortunately this is about his first business. it's really tough.

mccain is a tough act to follow. i mean, on the same surveys that i talked about, he's almost always mentioned as a bass. so you go from number one, the best to the worst in one terrible moment. that's what you have. you go from lincoln to andrew johnson, said he suffered by comparison. so that part. it's not just at the assailants which we would talk about, but he came after someone who was amazing to people in good ways and bad for the people who hated him, but a very towering figure to andrew johnson. we have this origin and to make him in some ways -- well, it strengthened lincoln. hardship can strengthen people in a particular way, strengthen them in empathy and vision and so forth.

but i think my take on johnson is that his hard life, being the gun on people, being thought of as trash made him hard and lots of ways. someone asked me, you would think that kind of apps that would make him sympathetic to back people, sympathetic to slaves. but no. the other side is what that can do is make you look for somebody to look down on. there's got to be somebody below you. and i think he took comfort perhaps insane like many poor southern white, i may live in a shotgun shack. i may not have very much, but i am white and 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 you can look down upon. and that seems to be the tack he took in life and to the detriment and his own personal demon really ended up the fact

the course of history of the united states of america. while he's in the tailor shop, he's a very smart kid, smart person. he listened to men who would come to the tailor shop to reach detailers and so to think about civic engagement. you know there are people in the shop who can't read and a man would come and read and you would read about it that the speeches. and johnson left speeches. he kept the book. the guy gave him the book he loved it so much. over the years, anytime he needed inspiration, he would rate this book is beaches. so at some point he realizes he gets into the face of the person the shop into the equivalent of taking it outside, but verbally they decide to invite people to watch them arguing it becomes clear he has a talent and his talent is public speaking. and that also links into lincoln

because lincoln was also a good speaker as well, but he was a different type of speaker. he could be very, very rough speaking. he was sarcastic and aggressive and people hadn't seen anything like it. and so, his fame grew. people suggested he might stand for office, which he did. he was very ambitious. good businessman, even though we started out poor, he made the right kinds of investments and actually bettered himself financially and he went into politics and he climbed the ladder to mayor, every single one he was on it up to the president. and so it is an interesting thing, an interesting comment on american life that someone could start out as well as he did and go to where he went. so even though i can be somewhat hard on him in the book, there is no question he was an extraordinary person. i think paul call up, my editor

has done all of these. he said all of these people are extraordinary to make it to the presidency. it's not like somebody is sitting around sunday is okay, i'm going to the white house. there is something they. other people see something in that person and the person sees something in himself. so far only he is involved in this and says i should go for that position. i should be at the top. and he was like an himself. so the book describes his assent and how he fashioned himself, try to fashion himself after his hero, andrew 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.

it saw that it seems that seem very progressive and popular way. populism has this sort of story buried. lots of time populists are in favor of measures you think would be progressive. he is for the homestead act, giving poor people and. he wanted public education. he was always a champion of public education committee thinking about back on his own life and how depraved u.s. he wanted a better shot for people, people who were privileged. the catch was the only one at that for whites. he was for the homestead act. when reconstruction came and there was the time to get land reform, the republicans in congress wanted land reform and the south to give the former and salespeople to give them land, to give them the kind of independence that johnson and others understood it.

you can grow your own food, and you're not beholden to anyone. he wanted that for whites, but he didn't want for blacks. the populace part was there with the racist part of it that inhibited his thoughts about how this may be expanded to include everybody in america. he thinks of themselves as a champion of the common man. ps i said is for the union. he has no trouble whatsoever with secessionists. so he alienated even before the war he alienated people at jefferson davis because that support for the homestead. the southern grandees, planters did not like the idea of giving poor white people and. they wouldn't have used the term, but they thought this is like welfare.

i mean, why are you giving these people land below market rate. why don't you work for it or why do they deserve the period that he was all for it. and from the beginning, there was causa trends about this further, his antipathy towards the southern planter. so he came up, making enemies all along the way. lincoln gets on the ticket because lincoln decided that he wants to signal to this that there is a future that the north and the south at a future together. though it was a symbolic gesture of unity for him to pick a southern from a border state. a nine. eastern tennessee and is moved to tennessee as a young man to put them together and say even in the south isn't participating in an election, they are saying look, i am liked about the southerner on the ticket. one of these days we can get back together again.

lincoln replaces hannibal hamlin who was from maine and didn't give him any political clout. severity as his vice president this person started out illiterates up until early manhunt as the vice president of the united states and people hated that. there were many, many people and he is not the kind of man who should be in this office. he's a disgrace. and you're reading these kinds of things. but then at the inauguration, he's drunk. he comes to the inoculation in this kind of fun to write. i had a lot of fun doing this. he had been no end in those days i think that that whiskey with secure for every them. maybe people think that now. any drink too much whiskey and there's a spectacle.

so all these things, people said we told you. those kinds of pete will and lincoln nevertheless stood by him. lincoln said no, and he is not a turn. he'll be fine. and of course, lincoln was killed not long after that and be ascends to the president and people are of course -- i mean, mortified doesn't even describe it. people in the north are traumatized. people in the south may have been happy about it, but they were not really celebrating it because they had just been defeated in war and they were in no position to really quote about sunday night that, even if anyone were inclined to do it. it was a dramatic, genetic time period. and there's johnson have to rise to the occasion. and during those days, he

actually does rise to the occasion. all the things that people said that the vice president has gone away, he knows what to do ceremoniously, symbolically. he rises to the occasion. and there is a honeymoon him for a time. until they get into reconstruction and this is the part of the story that sort of when i said i try to avoid all of this, when they begin to realize that he is not going to have any support whatsoever with the notion of black political rights, any kind of right after the civil war. he only grudgingly the abolition and he was the slaveholder himself. he didn't have a plantation, but he did as slaves. he was a supporter of slavery,

adamant about black inferiority. he said everybody says white people are superior to blacks, but we should raise them out. the distance would always be the same. he said this is a white man's man's government and they will remain a white man's government. and when somebody says that out loud because it adamantly over and over again and you have a policy from the republicans in congress and they are saying black folk, land reform, conservative political life for people and that is the president and congress and that is what it's all about. his vision of the south is bringing this up again to the union didn't encompass anything about people beyond taking amount of legal slavery.

the battle was joined between him and the republicans and that is what eventually led to his impeachment. one person who is a biographer of johnson started out lamenting for the fact when people write about johnson, all they cared about was reconstruction and impeachment, but mainly reconstruction. and then he says, you know what, there's not much else. so he had the screenplay and about all the other aspects of andrew johnson's presidency. but we buy alaska during this time. there's some problems in mexico we have to do. but those things are handled by his secretary of state. most of his time was spent on reconstruction and trying to abort the efforts of members of congress 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 is not a president. there is no confederate states of america. that did not exist. because it didn't exist, once the war is over and bring everybody back and it's like rewinding the tape except the slavery part and take the slavery out of it, but the south goes back to exactly what it was before fort sumter, before there was any conflict at all. that is a tough position to think because they had been freed. what you do with them? he realized he 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 a guardian of

the constitution, but had what i thought at the cast to cafeteria style. things he liked her constitutional. consider mike were unconstitutional. the constitution clearly says the we have the right to set rules for the government and everything to do with the district of columbia. so when congress gives black people the right to vote, he'd be chosen so that unconstitutional. this is not even like some kind of interpretation of it. you get a sense of a constitutional means to him. if i like it is constitutional. if i don't, it's not. so he that is right and protecting the constitution. we have to transform the south here you can just have people wander around and on status. i don't know what he thought, what they wanted, other than that they were supposed to be on domination of weight.

he does something that surprises people. remember he hated the plantation owners. he thought he had died the south. here the strange notion that southern planters come in the large-scale planters and slaves were in a the against white people. and so he blamed them for the war, that the blacks in the unsaved people and their masters for inmate, trying to keep poor whites down. first he talked about punishing these people, but then he realized my greater enemy is not the senate people, but southern planter aristocrat. my inmates are the people in the north, republicans who want to change the south. and what he opted to do a set of punishing them was to put them back in power. so not only does he try to thwart the radical republicans

called the so-called radical republicans, he puts all the people and puts back into power of the people who are in power before the war, the very people he called traitors and said he wanted to punish them. he brought them back on lenient terms. he didn't require -- i mean, the sort of oath people had to swear to you didn't dispense with those. the oath that said they would never -- the loyalty he would dance with a lot of those any put them back into power. finally, republicans get angry about this and they bring on -- they impeach him, which remains a very drastic remedy, according to most americans. we've only done this twice in history to remove a president from office. he survives they can action in the senate by one vote. people think that really we

could talk a little bit about this. the people fell we had a year or so in his term and he would've been up anyway. the second thing was the person who would've taken over for him with her to be a wild radical. he believed in things like women voting, which of course made him like a martian. and so what came after -- what would've come after him and the fact he did not want to go on this term and some other things coming inmates in jails with people about this. they voted -- he escaped conviction by one vote. he's nevertheless anyone president who keeps vetoing bills whose his real plan was to unite conservatives in the north and south to create another political party to try to bring -- to take the country

back. i was his idea and he may be groups of the most conservative people wherever they live, to sort it and together and take back the country. it didn't work. he leaves office. but democrats don't really -- the democrats at this time are not democrats as you know like now. the parties have flipped from where they were. they didn't trust him and republicans truly were going to happen. so it goes back to tennessee and begins to plot my vindication. he ran for office. he's unsuccessful at hers, but it then his return the senate and he sees this as the vindication he was right and goes back up into a body that it tried to kick him out and he is there only for a few months and i was 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 to him and to mandate and probably will be forever close to us in some really significant ways that just because he didn't write. we don't have his voice very much on this. there's no question about his formal papers, how many of those things are prepared by other people, but we certainly don't have the kind of day-to-day statements from him. few in the dose from family about 10. the andrew johnson homestead has a website that has information about him as a slave holder, but not -- again, not huge range of material, which are one of the most significant effects on american life of anybody doing american history, even though he's judged as a worse

president. thurgood marshall and one of his opinions, one of his defense, he said that if america had done what it was supposed to have done during this time. come he doesn't cite andrew johnson talks about his reconstruction. at that point of sort of lost opportunity. and i think they you cannot name one person for all the good that happens all the bad that happens. but a president and this is my approach in the book. a president of the leader of the country as a symbolic leader. people in times of crisis, people don't look to the supreme court for the congress. there's too many of them. the president is the energy of the government and the president exercises actual leadership and symbolic leadership and the kind of leadership he exhibited during this time.

it wasn't enough he didn't want everything all by himself, but he made it much more difficult for the right thing to be done and that's the real tragedy of this presidency. but again it's way more people should know about andrew johnson because i believe he felt jamaica's who we are today. think about land reform. and about the difference in wealth, the production of wealth in the black community and former slaves that land cover most of them instead of -- owning your own property. people say yes, but we got something good. his recalcitrant about all the laws that congress would pass in the solar rights bill, all of those things force them into passing the 14th amendment. and that's a good thing. but think about -- think about all the losses if he had not

opposed land reform, did not oppose black foot. if blacks had been exercising political rights in the 1860s are at me and from the 1860s as opposed to what happened. he set us back. he set the country back into whack people back tremendously because of the failure of his leadership or he was there as a earlier, but from the way he exercised his leadership, he said he wanted to preserve the country as a white man's government and he was able to do that for the longest period of time. and in historical circles, up until the civil rights movement, he was seen by many as a good president. if you read the so-called dunning school who champion johnson as the hero, who held stave off worthless rule and the

south. that historical school existed into the 20th century. to peb deployed a black reconstruction and he said as he would want to do, set the record straight very, very clearly. and once he did that, other people begin to take a second look at reconstruction. the people who were congresspeople. also if you see birth of the nation, you know, they blacks in congress and bare feet and these are some of the most educated people. these are really educated men, talented people who were in the top says in the whole birth of the nation done in school business really propped up inder johnson because it made it look like his attitude is for the one. after the boys and others, people begin to take a different look at reconstruction and understood he was more of a problem in any kind of solution.

so i am glad, i have to say even though it took a long time to do it and it's difficult to write about him on who, you know, you can hold responsible for lots of bad insert after, but had what through has is that point. and i hope i've managed to do that. and i make very strongly that case we cannot ignore, the delicious they are at too important at a time. for him to be unknown. we can explain a lot about who we are by looking at his life and the kinds of things he did during reconstruction and the trajectory of his life is a very american story in good ways and bad ways. with that, i like to take your questions. [applause]

>> thank you very much. we've got hands already. >> do you see any parallels between the tape that the country movement at andy johnson's time and the tea party and sarah palin? the mac well, the parallels in the sense that americans revere constitution. it's almost a sacred text. and anytime we're in trouble or anytime we want to make a point, we use the comp to two shouldn't say we want to get back to the document. even people on the left, not as much as they think they should, but people on the left lip to the constitution as they protect

your. i think it's different because -- if different in the sense. there's just been a war. almost 500,000 people died. certainly the south estimated. this is really life during wartime. this is not life during that kind of wartime. we've got worse going on overseas, but this is hyperbole, taking the country back. the country hasn't gone anywhere. you know, it liked these people are any real -- they took up against one another and those are really serious life-and-death kinds of issues. i think they are using that rhetoric, but it not to my mind as serious as the time. those people were in. it's more -- as frederick. it sloganeering. i'm not saying people don't have legitimate and a man not serious

about them. were talking about life-and-death certainly in the south. if you read eric's owner wrote the fifth book on reconstruction and i replied on not an appointed me to some of the materials of some of the things that were going on. this started talked about going to a town in texas and being 28 bodies hanging from trees, men, women and children. this was after the war is over, when people turned on blacks and try to reassert their control. they were playing for keeps that then. i mean, it doesn't compare to that i don't think i'm even though they might it does.

>> thank you coming to the free library of philadelphia "philadelphia inquirer" excellent talk. can you talk about education. i never quite understood by the radical republicans didn't press and push much more resources into providing education for the free slaves. the mac they did through the freedman's bureau. they tried to do that. there are really poignant stories about little kids sitting next to grown people and everybody trying to read. but they tried to do, but knight riders, people would try to be teachers and a comma there was a lot of a backlash because they didn't want people -- they didn't want blacks and schools. and so, they deftly try to do that. the schools, the howard's. i mean, higher education, harvard university started by general howard and they tried to do that, but in lots of these little places they were not in control of all of this and certainly once the military

leaves, education becomes really sketchy, even more sketchy for blacks during that time. so they tried, but there was a lot in violent opposition in many places. >> the lady on our left in the third row. >> windows johnson free his slaves were two d. free time? >> after they entered the war, they became free, not before then. he may have freed a couple before then, but not until her. >> what do you think johnson's argument that succession was void of michelle? >> well, lincoln said that, too. that it's illegal, that secession was illegal. the reason he said it is just that secession was illegal.

and the president exercises his power under the powers to club rebellions and so forth. if secession is illegal and they left, then you say they are like territory and congress wrote the territory. so if they matter of the separation of powers, it was a political -- political argument. but again, lincoln died so we don't know what he would have done what he really thought. but for him he said that was a pernicious abstraction. johnston ticket to her. he was very liberal minded on that. what i think is well, i mean, if they thought they could leave, they left. i mean, jefferson davis did set up a government. it's hard for me to pretend that they were not real, that what they had wasn't a real thing.

and i think congress should have been covering this territory and they think they should've kept the military rule a lot longer than it did to reconstruct them. so i understand the legal argument about it, but practically, realistically, they set up their own government and stop participating and went their own separate way a time. >> at a rate here in the third row. >> what was the base of support for johnson to be regarded as a traitor by the southern diehards . he was reliable, but abolitionists? >> evening while he was

president? while he was president, he didn't have that much support. he gets to be president because lincoln gets killed. and at this point he wants to try to make the base of these conservatives they talked about by being lenient with the former southern planters. but he tried to butter them up by not punishing them the way he originally said he was going to do. he wanted to build his party and he was successful at doing it. public opinion. about 10. once it became clear that he was not going to go on with reconstruction, the uniformly hated him. that's why he couldn't get the nomination after -- certainly after the impeachment nobody wanted in that. but he really didn't have very much support. he spent most of his presidency trying to build that i curried favor with southerners and sometimes appearing lenient northerners, but it didn't work.

he please nobody. he tried to be everything to all people and ended up no place until he manages at the end to get back to the senate for a period of time. but he was not -- it's interesting because he was a good politician to a degree because he could not come from nowhere to where he went. once he got into office, it was like he was out of his league, out of his depth. so he ended up with not many friends at all. >> about four rows back in the middle. what we get to make there, do you think he was a tragic figure? >> do i think he was a tragic figure? gosh, i think he was a tragedy, but a tragic figure -- [laughter]

i can't find anything about him. he didn't seem to have had a visible sense of humor and away. there is not a lot -- yeah he is a tragic figure. when you think of tragedy coming figure like a hero, somebody who has a grand, you know, persona and disorders are down. i feel -- i do think in a sense he is tragic because he wanted desperately to rise and he actually did rise in its an amazing story. and meantime you can't read until you're 19 years old and then your president at some point. but the growth, the tenacity, which served him well. that's why he was able to stay committed to the union. a tremendous personal sacrifice. he could've been killed. there are many people who wanted to kill him and he stood fast against all of that. but i think -- i don't know how

much self-awareness he had. the reason i'm hesitating about this. if you think of a tragic figure, tragic figure you have some -- i think you have evidence they have some awareness of the tragedy. i think he died again he was vindicated and he had done the right thing. and so he wouldn't have seen it. i mean, he was certainly upset about the impeachment and his failure, but i think you would've thought he was successful because he was. i mean, he really did save his return from being transformed. this was transformed until 1965 really, so he could count himself as success and away for a very, very long period of time. looking at him i think if he had been a real statesman -- he didn't have to do everything

radical republicans wanted, but he could've been a great president if he had made the right choices. all give you an example. pacific is very telling about him. at one point in his early career, there was a proposed oil to bring the railroad to eastern tennessee. and even though his constituents wanted that, he opposed the railroad cars if you brought the railroad, people would get to where they're going so quickly that she wouldn't need conference. so not to put in some taverns out of business, you can't have the railroad. yeah, that makes sense in a way x that -- except hounds bring up a lot of railroad routes. people had to walk places. when he leaves tennessee, he

balks. he just walked 70 miles. they're talking about touching outlands and so forth. so you have this said the lack of vision in a way. and so, if you don't know where you are deficient, it's hard for me to think of you as a tragic figure. and as i said, because he was successful, he actually did stay of up transformation of the south for many, many decades. i don't think you would count himself as a tragic figure. >> is also someone who would walk 14 miles to go to a lecture. >> in the snow. >> lady in the middle. >> you talked about -- right here. >> where you? >> he talked a little bit about his family when he was young. tell us more about his family

life as he became an adult. >> his wife helped him, as i said to my taught him to read and write. he had -- i don't really know that much about her. she wasn't invalid for many years and did not accompany him to the white house, did not stay with him and the white house most of the time. his daughter served as first lady most of the time. he was someone who seemed consumed by work. he was out giving speeches all the time. he was running for office, plotting and planning. you don't get a sense that much of his family life, other than that he was married. he had three sons and a daughter. one of his sons actually ended up committing suicide. he was an alcoholic and that was a great tragedy in his life. i talk a little bit in the book

a reference to one of the league of women, one of the women that he owned. they were taught to young children her. there is no proof of that. the only thing is that he buys her and she's about 15 years old and she has two children, you know, she's listed as black and her children are listed at the lonoke, meaning there are mixed race kids and people talked about that. some people criticized me about mentioning that, although someone has ripped a book about andrew johnson and his racial views talks about this and other articles that talked about it as well. i thought, here is a person who is enslaved person in this household. i thought it was important to mention that even at the possibility of deference to her, out of concern that you paint a picture of girls at that time.

because he could've been. we don't know that he was. i don't think when you're talking about a person is a slaveowner come you talk about all the aspects, not just buying and selling people. so we don't get a sense in the paris into jefferson where you have lots of letters back and forth between fathers and daughters and grandchildren and all those kinds of things and people commented on him. when people did say you like children quite a bit. he was good with children and they liked him. one of the people who was the son of a person who enslaved one of his slaves said that he even with balance black children on his knee. he liked children, which is sort of interesting when you think about the rest of the wife. i mean, he was able to be apparently childlike with children. but you don't get a sense of him as a warm and funny person

otherwise. >> we have time for one more question. we'll go to this gentleman here. >> you may not want to answer this or even respond to this, but have you ever speculated as to whether a different kind of johnson could have succeeded in vastly rearranging the events of the last half of the 19th century? >> sure, yeah. and i think he could us. i mean, a different kind of johnson would not affect to go along with everything the republicans had wanted to do. one of the things he did do that i try to convey or talk about in the book is that his

recalcitrance dvd and comfort to southerners. and people said, you know, we would've accepted anything in the media to aftermath of the war. we would've accepted any terms, but he gave us hope that the white man's government. and so, we need to look out. i think it will replay the role as leader was really important. if he hadn't so strenuously opposed voting rights, if he had not sabotaged efforts to bring about land reform, it's not to say the south would've rolled over, but when you have the enemy down, you know, when you got them down, that is when you impose terms and you move

forward. and rumors people said, you know, his action and both of them to be recalcitrant, cheap asp black coat, to clamp down any move for transformation. so it would not in the land of milk and honey. the south would not have rolled over and accepted flacks as equal citizens, but it wouldn't have been as bad as the last. and you know, a lessening of the problem, and a lessening the oppression i think would've made a big difference. so yeah, i have thought about it and i do think -- i think his particular brand of leadership was toxic and it's important for us not to think about where we are, to go back. but the importance of history, to go back and see how this got started and where we began to go wrong and what kinds of remedies we need to take.

i think it could've been different. history is all about contingent fees. and 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. her, the kerry gear ratio was unable to see through the transformation of the south because to him that was against everything that he believed. >> please thank join me in thanking annette gordon-reed. [applause] >> annette gordon-reed, law professor at harvard. she is author of "the hemingses of monticello," which won the pulitzer prize. her book on andrew johnson as part of the time spoke present serious. two and more, visit american