Andrew Johnson: Stitching up a torn country

Presidential

The Washington Post

History, Government, Education

4.5 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2016

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What kind of president can repair America's deepest divisions? Michelle Krowl of the Library of Congress walks us through Andrew Johnson's time in office right after the Civil War and sheds light on why he struggled to bring the country together.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Andrew Johnson episode of Presidential.
0:08.4	If you listen to the previous episode about Lincoln, you'll remember how one of the things
0:13.0	we talked about was the power and beauty of Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address,
0:19.2	the one that goes with Malice Tornon, with Charity for All.
0:24.1	It's one of the most famous speeches in American history, so you might have been sitting there
0:28.6	listening to the episode and thinking, you know, what would it have been like to witness
0:33.4	that momentous second inauguration of Lincoln's in 1865?
0:39.0	Well, it would have been interesting, because right before Lincoln gave that speech, his
0:47.1	new vice president Andrew Johnson gave his own address and he was absolutely horrendously
0:55.6	drunk.
0:57.1	So Johnson gets up for his swearing in for his speech and it's kind of embarrassing.
1:03.9	At one point he's talking to the various cabinet members and he points to sewer and stand
1:09.2	and he looks at Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Wells and he can't remember his name and he
1:13.8	talks and says, now who's the Secretary of the Navy?
1:17.0	Oh yeah, you, and you know, it's just, it's not, it's not an auspicious start for Johnson
1:23.8	as vice president, a senator from Michigan.
1:27.8	He writes to his wife and he says something to the effective, you know, if there had been
1:31.1	a whole nearby, I would have crawled into it.
1:34.5	Six weeks later, Johnson is suddenly and surprisingly the actual president of the United States.
1:44.2	I'm Lilian Cunningham with Washington Post and this is the 17th episode of Presidential.
1:54.8	The guest you just heard talking a minute ago is Michelle Crowell.
2:15.2	She was on last week's episode, she's an expert in the manuscripts division of the Library
	...

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