This collection consists of 14 letters from U.S. President Andrew Johnson, eight letters from others, two signed checks, and a copy of Johnson's apprenticeship order, 1822 to 1870.

Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808-July 31, 1875), the seventeenth president of the United States, was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, the son of a porter and a seamstress. He was apprenticed as a tailor and relocated to Tennessee, where he set up a tailor shop in Greeneville. In 1827, he married Eliza McCardle (1810-1876); the couple had five children. In 1835 and 1839, Johnson was elected as a Democrat to the Tennessee House of Representatives, and in 1841 to the state's Senate. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1843, serving until 1853 when he became governor of Tennessee. In 1857, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. During the Civil War, Johnson was appointed military governor of Tennessee following the recapture of parts of the state by Union troops. In 1864, he was elected vice president on the National Union Party ticket with Republican Abraham Lincoln and became president after Lincoln's assassination on April 15, 1865. In May, he offered amnesty to most former Confederates who signed an oath of loyalty. An enslaver prior to the Civil War, Johnson did not endorse Black suffrage during the post-war Reconstruction period, considering voting rights to be a state matter. He also opposed the Freedman's Bureau Bill in 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868. The purchase of Alaska, negotiated by Secretary of State William H. Seward, was completed during Johnson's presidency in 1867. In February 1868, he was impeached by the House of Representatives over his violating the Tenure of Office Act by removing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton; a Senate trial failed to remove Johnson from office. The Democratic Party did not choose Johnson as their candidate in the 1868 presidential election. In his remaining months in office, he issued amnesty to former Confederates and pardons to surviving Lincoln assassination conspirators. In 1874, Johnson was again elected to the U.S. Senate, but served only five months before his death by stroke at age 66.

4.5 Linear Feet (1 flat box, 1 oversize folder)

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