Andrew Johnson

When Abraham Lincoln was re-elected in 1864, his running mate, Andrew Johnson—the only southern senator who supported the Union during the Civil War—became vice president. However, he was vice president for only a few weeks before Lincoln was assassinated, after which he became the seventeenth president of the United States.

Johnson’s presidency was marked by a struggle with Congress over reconstruction. In particular, the executive and legislative branches argued over the status of the former Confederate states. In his State of the Union address of December 1867, excerpted below, Johnson contends that the southern states should not be considered a separate nation. According to the president, during the war the South was a rebellious faction, not a hostile nation. Therefore, because the southern states had never been separated from the...