Andrew Johnson, A Unique President Quiz

Answer: December 29, 1808

Johnson was born in Raleigh, NC to Jacob and Mary "Polly" Johnson, a poor working-class family. His father died in January 1812, allegedly from an illness that resulted from his saving three men from drowning the previous year.

Answer: He fled an apprenticeship and a threatened lawsuit

Johnson fled Raleigh when he was 15 years old after a neighbor threatened to sue him for pelting her house with bits of wood. He was also running from a local tailor, James Selby, to whom he was legally apprenticed until he was 21. Going first to South Carolina, Johnson later attempted to reconcile with Selby. When Selby refused, Johnson left for Tennessee.

Answer: Tailor

Johnson worked as a tailor in North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, before finally settling down and opening his own store in Greeneville, TN. Throughout his life, observers often noted his "fine clothes."

Answer: Democrat

Johnson fancied himself a Jacksonian Democrat. He opposed federal spending to the extreme, often voting against federally funded improvements (such as railroads) for his home region of eastern Tennessee.

Answer: Union

Lincoln and Johnson ran on the Union ticket. Lincoln was a Republican, and chose Johnson as his running mate because Johnson was a so-called "War Democrat," who was popular in the North because he was the only U.S. Senator from the South to vocally oppose secession.

Answer: He didn't have one

Johnson never named a vice president. This became significant during his impeachment three years later. Many senators did not want to find him guilty in the ensuing trial, because they did not want Benjamin Wade (then the presiding officer of the Senate) to become president. At the time, Wade was first in line for the position if Johnson was removed.

Answer: He was a racist

Johnson was a firm believer in white superiority and opposed the idea of equal rights for black Americans. He also believed that states could not leave the United States of their own volition, meaning that they should be granted all of their pre-war rights and be able to elect their own governments as soon as the civil war ended.

He also felt that military governments, which Congress wanted to oversee southern states, were a form of despotism.

Answer: His dismissal of the Secretary of War

The bulk of the charges filed against Johnson focused on the dismissal of his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton -- which many in Congress felt was a violation of the Tenure of Office Act. Stanton, alone in Johnson's cabinet, opposed the president's attempts to stifle Congress' reconstruction acts.

While no one ever accused Johnson of theft, lawmakers had failed in several previous attempts to link him to Lincoln's assassination and to a scheme where Confederate officials sought to purchase pardons.

Answer: The purchase of Alaska

Ridiculed at the time as "Johnson's Polar Bear Garden," the purchase of Alaska (then called Russian America) can be viewed now as a move of remarkable foresight. Johnson did not get along well with Grant and hated the idea of black suffrage. Johnson did have many foreign policy successes, notably the acquisition of Alaska and Midway Island and the removal of the French from Mexico without bloodshed, but these were largely the work of his Secretary of State, William Seward.

There was little, if any, foreign policy involving Spain during his tenure.

Answer: Serve in the U.S. Senate

Johnson was re-elected to the U.S. Senate by Tennessee in early 1875 (six years after the end of his term as president), only months before his death on July 31, 1875.