December 29th was President Johnson’s 210th birthday.
Normally the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery and the Greeneville Greene County History Museum would hold a Presidential Birthday Party It is a tradition for the current president to send a wreath on to the graves of predecessors on their birthdays. Because of the shutdown the celebration has been postponed. Another tradition trashed by the current incompetent administration. It is not a big thing, just a sign of the times.
Andrew Johnson is not a highly respected President. Certainly he had his faults and being the first president to be impeached didn’t help. In most surveys of historians he is ranked a the bottom with Harding and Buchanan. Only in the last two has there been one ranked lower (the current occupant).
He does have some admirable points. He was the only southern senator not to resign when their state seceded from the union. He was a loyal patriot to the country. Never attending school he learned to read. He did own slaves, but by accounts of National Park Service treated enslaved people better than could be expected for the times.
When he became president after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination he was faced with an impossible situation, a Democrat in a Republican government, reviled in the south and the north. Philosophically he supported states rights and resisted civil rights for African Americans .
He was impeached for trying to fire the Secretary of War in defiance of a law latter found unconstitutional.
He deserves better treatment from President Trump as do we all. He was a better President than Donald Trump according to the political scientists of American Political Science Association.