He
wasn't elected president—he became president when Abraham Lincoln
was tragically assassinated.
He
had no vice president—nobody had ever thought through what would
happen if a VP had to step up to the top job, and then something had
happened to him! (The Constitution has since been amended, so
now there is a succession for vice presidents as well as presidents.)
Andrew
Johnson was a Democrat—even though he ran for election with
President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican! Lincoln was famous for
consulting people with all sorts of opinions, especially those with
ideas that opposed his own, but that wasn't the reason he selected a
person from an opposing party as his running mate. Instead, Lincoln
was looking forward to the end of the war and reunification, and he
chose a running mate that would show the South that he was dedicated
to welcoming Confederate states back into the nation rather than to
punishing them for leaving.
Andrew
Johnson was not only a Democrat, he was a Southerner—he was from
the state of Tennessee, which had broken off from the Union and
joined the Confederacy! At the time that Tennessee seceded (broke
away), Johnson was a Senator from Tennessee—but he refused to quit
his post in the Senate and join the Confederacy. He was convinced
that, if the United States really did break up, there would be not
just two countries, but many small countries, each with its own form
of government. I guess he thought that scenario didn't lend itself to
a peaceful future! So Johnson spoke up loudly against the Confederacy
and for Lincoln.
Johnson
was (like Lincoln) a self-educated man with a poor family and few
formal schooling opportunities.
And I'm telling you all of this because today is his birthday—Andrew
Johnson was born on this date in 1808.
Coincidence
presented as mystery
Have
you ever heard about that list of mystical connections between John
F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln? Both of these presidents were
assassinated, and both were succeeded by Southern Democrats with the
last name of Johnson. There are a lot of other similarities, as well
– according to lists of 16 to 40 similarities that circulate on the
internet and elsewhere.
Many
people look at one of these lists and marvel at the eeriness of so
many coincidences. “It can't be JUST coincidence!” they think.
“There has to be some sort of weird cosmic connection between these
two assassinations!”
Actually,
these lists of Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences are examples of
“cherry-picking” and fudging data. ANY two presidents (or anyone
else, for that matter) would have as many similarities—but there
are also millions of differences. For example, the fact that the
names Lincoln and Kennedy have seven letters each is
trivial but true; on the other hand, the two presidents' first names
have different numbers of letters (Abraham has seven and John
has four), their nicknames have different numbers of letters (Abe
has three and Jack has four), and their middle names are a
completely different situation, since Kennedy's middle name,
Fitzgerald, has ten letters and Lincoln didn't even have a
middle name! Furthermore, Kennedy is frequently referred to as JFK,
and Lincoln is never referred to with initial letters. So the list
just cherry picked the one similarity, name-wise, and didn't mention
all the differences.
An
example of fudging data (also known as lying) is the so-called
coincidence that Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln and Lincoln
had a secretary named Kennedy. President Kennedy did, in fact, have a
secretary named Evelyn Lincoln, but President Lincoln did not have a
secretary named Kennedy. Several items on the list are either
mistakes, lies, or worded so oddly (such as referring to a tobacco
shed as a warehouse) that they may as well be lies.
If
you want to see a thorough description of why lists of
Lincoln-Kennedy similarities are flawed and misleading, check out this Snopes article.
Also
on this date:
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