Our 17th U.S, President is 206 today. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina on Dec. 29, 1808, Andrew Johnson succeeded to the Presidency following Lincolns assassination in mid-April 1865. He served the rest of Lincolns second term, leaving the White House Mar. 4, 1869. Johnson was impeached and escaped removal from the Presidency by a single vote in a 1868 U.S. Senate trial. President Johnson was everything President Lincoln was not -- divisive, vindictive and politically tone deaf. Wrote The New York Herald when he became Vice President: To think that one frail life stands between this insolent, clownish creature and the Presidency! May God bless and spare Abraham Lincoln! Johnson is our only ex-President to be elected to the U.S. Senate. He only served a few months before his death at the age of 66. In his only floor speech, in March 1875, he denounced the Grant Administrations Reconstruction policy. Johnson died July 31, 1875 following a series of strokes. At his request, his body was wrapped in the American flag and his head laid to rest on a copy of the U.S. Constitution. Following services, Johnson was buried on land he owned outside Greeneville, Tennessee at a spot he had marked with a willow tree, whichhad been taken as a shoot from a tree grown at Napoleon Bonapartes tomb on St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. nps.gov/anjo/index.htm
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 22:52:23 +0000
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