Andrew Johnson and the Tennessee State Museum

Andrew Johnson, seventeenth president of the United States, died today, July 31st, in 1875. He was

sixty-six years old and had recently been elected to the United States Senate by the Tennessee state legislature. Johnson is generally considered among the bottom, and quite possibly worst, among the presidents of the United States. Granted he inherited a difficult situation upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln six weeks into his second term, but Johnson managed it as disastrously as one could with his racism; his opposition to the extension of civil rights during Reconstruction, a move that encouraged white resistance and the violent repression of blacks in the South; his complete lack of sympathy for the freedmen; his impeachment and escape of removal from office by a solitary vote in the U.S. Senate; and his demonstrated pattern of unfitness for office through his behavior. My view of Johnson has always been much colored by Eric McKitrick’s Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, which is, admittedly, a dated work almost sixty years old. It is not the only work that I have read on Johnson, to be sure, but McKitrick’s emphasis on his subject’s psychological shortcomings sticks with me. 

While Johnson was a terrible president, he seemed to be an ingenious vice-presidential candidate in 1864 on the National Union Party ticket, the name that the reflagged Republican Party used to appeal to war Democrats. As a pro-war Democrat from a southern state who opposed secession and was the only member of the entire southern congressional delegation that remained in his seat after his state seceded, and who served as war governor of Tennessee, Johnson offered a powerful example of national unity during civil war to the ticket. By showing up to his inauguration as vice president visibly intoxicated, Johnson got off on the wrong foot. With the exception of receiving some well wishes and support following Lincoln’s assassination, it was almost all downhill for Johnson.  

How is Johnson portrayed in the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville? I only ask because I was there earlier this month. And I must say upfront that it is a large and impressive museum that examines the Volunteer State's history from pre-history through to the current day. First, the museum celebrates him as one of the state’s famous sons and one who became president, like Andrew Jackson

and James K. Polk before him. Second, they emphasize that he was a common tradesman who worked his way from illiterate poverty to the White House. He was a tailor know for always being well dressed (unlike his gangly predecessor who often appeared slovenly). The suit to the right is an example of Johnson’s handiwork. Third, they illustrate his work as a pro-Union war governor and emphasize his role in pushing for the ratification of the 13^thAmendment. Yes, he used readmission as a lever to obtain ratification and the ultimate end of slavery, but he also failed to use that same power to ensure civil rights and welcomed state constitutions containing the infamous Black Codes that so restricted the freedom of blacks that it was a form of pseudo slavery. Although the Radical Republicans and President Ulysses S. Grant did much to undermine the Black Codes, many of their features would re-emerge in the post-Reconstruction segregated, Jim Crow, South. 

Academic scare of my life!

In 1907 Crane & Company of Topeka, Kansas published ex-buffalo hunter John Cook’s memoir Border and the Buffalo. Cook’s book stands out in the historiography of the buffalo literature for its singular account of General Philip Sheridan advising the Texas state legislature in 1875 to abandon an effort to protect the buffalo. Cook quotes Sheridan as praising the buffalo hunters for advancing civilization, taming the Native Americans, and making the Great Plains habitable for white settlers, their farms, and livestock. Moreover, in Cook’s telling Sheridan advises that the legislators supply the buffalo hunters with ammunition to aid them in their service to manifest destiny. Cook’s story with his juicy Sheridan “quote”, implying that the US Army supported the buffalo slaughter as a total war measure to destroy the Native American resistance was repeated all through the secondary literature on the buffalo all throughout the twentieth century. And, I will confess that I too cited this “quote” in my master’s thesis. 

In American Serengeti— a most enjoyable history of the charismatic megafauna of the Great Plains — environmental historian Dan Flores discredits Cook’s account. Granted, he is not the first historian to do so. At the least Cook’s story is an uncorroborated tale that cannot be verified in any other source, and at worst is a total fabrication. Flores sees the use of the Cook quote as an example of how untrained popular historians trusted a source too uncritically and kept repeating the error decade after decade. 

This is the context in which I got the scare of my academic life. As I was listening to the audiobook of American Serengtion my noon walk I got hit like a bolt out of the clear blue with the biggest shock of my academic life. Here are the words: “It has appeared in books as recent as a 2012 biography of William T. Hornaday himself (p. 122).” The “It” is in reference to Cook’s fabricated story. This scared the living hell out me because all I could think of is that this might be a reference to my biography of Hornaday, Most Defiant Devil(MDD). Now, I have to say that MDDwas published in 2013, but I did not catch the year in my initial hearing. Did I somehow quote Cook’s Sheridan, even though I knew it was suspicious? Was I so bogged down in all the other details that I somehow missed some old note card made its way on into the manuscript? As soon as I returned to my office, I pulled the copy of MDDoff my shelf and was relieved to find that this was no reference to MDD. Instead, Flores was referring to Stefan Bechtel’s Mr. Hornaday’s War, another example of a popular historian who did not consider the sources critically. What’s more, Bechtel cites a website for the quote, not even the original source. Although I was greatly relieved that Flores was referring to another biography, I must candidly admit that I was sorely disappointed that he had not consulted mine!