A Failed Rescue

In his introduction to Andrew Johnson's Civil War and Reconstruction, Dr. Paul Bergeron, who spent more than a dozen years editing Johnson's papers, asks the question: "why engage in yet another attempt to deal with this man" who has been "so difficult to understand?" (p. 6) By way of an answer, Bergeron declares his belief that Abraham Lincoln's controversial successor to the presidency "has been vilified enough" (p. 6) and that, despite the "mixed record, at best" of his administration, Johnson should not be "judged a failure" (p. 8). Although I fully appreciate and respect Bergeron's effort to reclaim some measure of historical dignity for a historical subject to whom he has dedicated years of his life—after all, I too have spent years trying to bring a challenging historical figure's better self to light—I must beg to differ when it comes to Johnson. It is true that, particularly during his tenure as president, Johnson survived repeated and significant challenges to his leadership and to his "core convictions" (p. 3). But stubborn survival alone should not be equated with "success," especially given that, as president, Johnson was actively engaged in undermining some of the most important goals of the North's Civil War.

Throughout the book, Bergeron seems to suggest that Andrew Johnson should be revered simply for his determination to "establish his leadership" and his willingness to "wield power." (p. 22) "He exercised leadership and power convincingly and successfully" (p. 41), Bergeron writes of Johnson's efforts to create a functioning civil government in Tennessee in 1864, as if that is all readers really need to know. Speaking of the early months of Johnson's unexpected presidency, Bergeron comments that Lincoln's successor "shouldered the mantle of leadership and power very ably" (p. 72); that, in the process of selecting provisional governors for the states of the defeated Confederacy, he "exhibited strong leadership and wielded power quite effectively" (p. 78); and that, in his efforts to reconstruct the South generally in the summer and fall of 1865, Johnson's "leadership and power" were both "tested and vindicated" (p. 83). Certainly few students of the Civil War era would dispute that President Johnson was immensely obstinate and clung as firmly as he could to the reins of power that had fallen into his hands. But I would argue that it is a mistake to suggest that acknowledging Johnson's sheer endurance in pressing for his goals (p. 3) should discourage us from condemning his significant faults and his far-reaching blunders while occupying positions of great power, especially the presidency.

In truth, even Bergeron seems unable to resolve for himself the conundrum he has presented to the reader: how to rescue from his many critics a "strong" leader of the past whose policies and practices were often despicable. Perhaps inevitably, Bergeron himself equivocates, admitting that Johnson's inflexibility was "frequently a decided handicap for him" and that it "often" led him to behave like a dictator (p. 3). At the same time, Bergeron somewhat half-heartedly offers the explanation that, while Johnson can rightly be considered a frequently "maladroit" leader, he did not mean to be. Nor, he writes, was Johnson "malicious or mendacious" (p. 3). As the biographer of Lincoln's judge advocate general, Joseph Holt, with whom Johnson had a series of violent political conflicts that centered on his (Johnson's) malice and mendacity, I cannot agree. Indeed, it did not surprise me that Bergeron minimized any discussion of the 1865 and 1867 trials of John Wilkes Booth's co-conspirators in the Lincoln assassination, out of which Johnson's famous clashes with Holt arose.

Bergeron's discussion of the reaction to Johnson's assumption of the presidency is also perplexing. He provides limited evidence to support his claim that "immediate reaction to Johnson's sudden elevation was generally positive and hopeful and, strange to say, more so than some persons had felt about Lincoln" (p...