{"id":116410,"date":"2023-10-25T16:42:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-25T20:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=116410"},"modified":"2026-04-26T14:10:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T18:10:49","slug":"lincoln-and-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/lincoln-and-johnson\/","title":{"rendered":"Lincoln and Johnson: A Conflict of Visions (Jon Meacham)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Why did Abraham Lincoln choose Andrew Johnson as his running mate? Did Johnson carry on Lincoln&#8217;s work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Historian and biographer Jon Meacham writes about the life and leadership of Abraham Lincoln in his book <em>And There Was Light<\/em>. He also discusses the drastic change of course in the presidency and nation after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-lincoln-assassination\/\">Lincoln&#8217;s assassination<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more to learn about Lincoln and Johnson, according to Meacham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-lincoln-and-johnson\">Lincoln and Johnson<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Lincoln\u2019s death meant that his vice president, Andrew Johnson, became the new president. Johnson took office on April 15, 1865\u2014the same day that Lincoln was pronounced dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lincoln and Johnson were running mates and served together for the duration of Lincoln&#8217;s administration. However, Johnson\u2014a conservative Democrat\u2014held very different views from Lincoln\u2019s. In fact, Meacham says that Lincoln chose him as vice president as a way to placate racist whites who would otherwise not have supported the Lincoln administration.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meacham says that <strong>Johnson\u2019s presidency was a disaster for race relations and Black social progress.<\/strong> After taking office, Johnson rejected many of Lincoln\u2019s ideas for postwar Reconstruction; Johnson was more interested in quickly restoring order and rebuilding the country than in protecting the rights and liberties of formerly enslaved people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, according to Meacham, Johnson didn\u2019t think that Black people were capable of governing themselves; therefore, he said that whites must continue to control the South. As a result, although the institution of slavery had been overthrown, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/white-male-supremacy\/\">white supremacy<\/a> continued in the form of legal segregation, lynchings, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jim-crow-segregation-nasa\/\">Jim Crow laws<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>President Johnson and Jim Crow Laws<\/strong><br><br>Meacham\u2019s description is quite a bit harsher than that of many other <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/about-the-white-house\/presidents\/andrew-johnson\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">accounts of President Johnson<\/a>.<br><br>Some historians say that Johnson seemed to agree with Lincoln\u2019s ideas at first, and he stuck to Lincoln\u2019s plan for Reconstruction. Johnson appointed special governors to the former Confederate states and instructed them to draft new state constitutions outlawing slavery and affirming the states\u2019 loyalty to the United States. Once that was done, the rebel states would be reinstated into the Union with all rights intact, as though they\u2019d never tried to secede.<br><br>Furthermore, while other sources do agree that Johnson fought against expanding civil rights and protections for formerly enslaved people, these sources say his resistance <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelatinlibrary.com\/chron\/civilwarnotes\/johnson.html#:~:text=To%20Congress%27s%20surprise%2C%20Johnson%20not%20only%20vetoed%20the%20bill%20but%20he%20also%20attacked%20it%20as%20race%20legislation%20that%20would%20encourage%20a%20life%20of%20wasteful%20laziness%20for%20Southern%20blacks.%20In%20response%2C%20Congress%20passed%20this%20bill%20five%20months%20later%20over%20Johnson%27s%20veto.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">came as a surprise to many of his colleagues<\/a>. The fact that Johnson was, apparently, not known for racism clashes with Meacham\u2019s assertion that Lincoln chose him specifically to appease white supremacists.<br><br>However, the <em>outcomes <\/em>of Johnson\u2019s presidency aren\u2019t in question. Due to Johnson\u2019s conservative beliefs in states\u2019 rights and a small central government, Southern states had free rein to use anything short of slavery to keep Black people powerless and subservient.<br><br>For example, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crf-usa.org\/brown-v-board-50th-anniversary\/southern-black-codes.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cBlack Codes\u201d<\/a> (more commonly known as Jim Crow laws) required Black people to hold jobs at all times or else be arrested for vagrancy; no such law existed for white people. Black Codes also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.history.com\/topics\/black-history\/segregation-united-states\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">legalized racial segregation<\/a>, thereby forcing Black people into separate (and usually worse) neighborhoods, schools, and jobs.<br><br>Finally, while racially motivated killings weren\u2019t officially legal, thousands of Black people were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/smart-news\/nearly-2000-black-americans-were-lynched-during-reconstruction-180975120\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">murdered during the Reconstruction era<\/a>. Most of those murders ended with nobody arrested or prosecuted, and the police themselves committed some of them.\u00a0<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why did Abraham Lincoln choose Andrew Johnson as his running mate? Did Johnson carry on Lincoln&#8217;s work? Historian and biographer Jon Meacham writes about the life and leadership of Abraham Lincoln in his book And There Was Light. He also discusses the drastic change of course in the presidency and nation after Lincoln&#8217;s assassination. Read more to learn about Lincoln and Johnson, according to Meacham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":116419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,33,275],"tags":[1309],"class_list":["post-116410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-people","category-politics","tag-and-there-was-light","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lincoln and Johnson: A Conflict of Visions (Jon Meacham) - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Lincoln chose Johnson as his running mate. But, they held very different views. 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