Andrew Johnson was—and is—an American paradox. He never attended school, yet fought for public education. He was a Southern slaveholder who opposed secession and enforced emancipation. Born into poverty, he became the 17th president of the United States—and the first U.S. president to be impeached.
This new volume thoroughly examines the troubled career of our most unpopular president—not to resuscitate his reputation, but because his personal contradictions reflected those of his country: a democratic nation conceived in liberty, yet existing half slave and half free; an economy of yeoman farmers and independent artisans being swept into industrialization and a market system; a country fond of tradition, but caught up in social, economic, and political revolution.