Andrew Johnson's First "Swing Around the Circle": His Northern Campaign of 1863

Andrew Johnson's First "Swing Around the Circle": His Northern Campaign of 1863 William C. Harris During the late summer of 1866 President Andrew Johnson went on a speaking tour ofthe North to win support for his conservative Reconstruction policies. This celebrated "swing around the circle" was a disaster, not only for Johnson's cause but also for his reputation in history. Encountering hostile crowds as he traveled from the Northeast to the Midwest, Johnson responded with vindictive and undignified language. When the tour ended in mid-September, the president's mild plan of Reconstruction lay in ruins, and he was viewed in the North as a greater friend of Southern rebels than of Unionists. Historians have concluded that Johnson, in his decision to speak in the North, had made a grievous mistake in thinking that he could establish rapport with a Northern audience by employing the crude techniques of East Tennessee stump speaking.1 They have assumed that the president's Southemism, combined with his failure to protect the fruits of Union victory in the war, made him an unwanted person in the North. The debacle of his 1866 speaking tour also has led some historians erroneously to deduce that Johnson, though a wartime Union hero, never had an important political following in the North.2 A speaking tour ofthe North in 1863 suggests a vastly different Northern 1 See Eric L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnsonand Reconstruction (Chicago: Univ. ofChicago Press, 1960), 429-30; Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction. 1865-1877 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 112-15; James E. Sefton, Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1980), 106, 140. 2 Allan Nevins, 7Ae Warfor the Union: The Organized War to Victory, 1864-1865 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 197 1), 75-76; James A. Rawley, The Politics ofUnion: Northern Politics during the Civil War (Hillsdale, Illinois: the Dryden Press, 1974), 155-56; Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 54, 114-18. Civil War History, Vol. XXXV, No. 2, « 1989 by the Kent State University Press 154CIVIL WAR HISTORY opinion ofJohnson during the war. This first "swing around the circle" has been overlooked by historians and also by Johnson's biographers.3 Begun in late February at the urging of both Republican and War Democrats, Johnson's Northern campaign took him to the major political centers of the lower Midwest and Middle Atlantic states. Everywhere he spoke he received an enthusiastic reception from supporters of the war and from Republican leaders. In sharp contrast to his experience in 1866, Johnson's fame grew as his swing through the North progressed, climaxing with a rally in Washington and a rousing speech by him in the House ofRepresentatives with President Lincoln and his cabinet in attendance. Early 1863 was a critical time for the war coalition in the North. Lincoln 's Emancipation Proclamation, the arbitrary arrests of dissidents, the pending enactment of conscription, and the repulse of Federal armies at Fredericksburg and elsewhere had triggered a wave of opposition to the Republican party that threatened to end Democratic support for the war. The lower North and the border slave states were especially vulnerable to the attacks on Republican war policies. Horatio Seymour, in assuming office as governor of New York in January, sounded a rallying call for Democrats when he declared that the war could not be won if the Lincoln administration persisted in its unconstitutional policies, including the Emancipation Proclamation. In Indiana and Illinois, Democrats gained control of the legislatures and, under the influence of militant peace advocates , threatened to withdraw state troops from the South. Republican Governor Richard Yates of Illinois survived the crisis in his state by proroguing the legislature. In Indiana, the Republican minority denied the Democrats a quorum in the legislature, leaving the state government and support for the war on a precipice. Republican Governor Oliver Morton frantically reported to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton that the intent of Indiana Democrats was to recognize Confederate independence and dissolve midwestern ties with the New England states. In Ohio and Pennsylvania , the showdown over the war would come in the fall 1 863 elections, while in the border...