How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country (15 page)

But before all that, Lincoln exercised more power as president than any man before or since. Four months into his first term, he increased the army by 22,000, the navy by 18,000, and demanded a draft calling for 40,000 more men. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus (a legal action that stops presidents from arresting whoever they want), and proceeded to arrest whoever he wanted (in Lincoln’s case, that meant over 10,000 Southern sympathizers). He made the arrests public, a brilliant display of don’t-fuck-with-me-ship. He delayed Congress for four months so no one could stop him, and when it was time for reelection, he made all federal employees give 3 percent of their paychecks to his campaign.

Presidents, especially modern presidents, have so many eyes on them, and so many people to answer to, and a Congress that is often stubborn and difficult to deal with. There are so many checks and balances in place that, today, it would be laughable to accuse a president of being a tyrant. While I’m not calling
Lincoln
a tyrant, I
am
saying that he did whatever the hell he wanted for over four years. You know, like a tyrant.

That’s who you’re dealing with. A superstrong giant who can see the future and does whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it. Watch out for this guy. If Lincoln thinks for even a second that you’re standing in between him and power, he will not hesitate to wreck your proboscis. Just straight devastate it. Just wring the ever-loving fuck out of your worthless proboscis.

Andrew Johnson, our seventeenth president, just could not catch a break. Ever. If there was ever a president who could be called our Charlie Browniest, it would be Andrew Johnson. Sure, he was president, so clearly there are worse fates to have, but from the minute he was born until the minute he died, Andrew Johnson was an underdog who never belonged
anywhere
. Born poor and raised without a father, Johnson never attended school and was sold as an indentured servant to a tailor when he was just a boy. His poverty made him an outsider in his own town of Raleigh, North Carolina, and he had to put up with being called “poor white trash” throughout his entire childhood. He taught himself to read and write, worked hard, and was kind to the people he met, but he never really overcame his low background, not in the eyes of Raleigh anyway. Still, he wouldn’t let his detractors get to him; he was just going to keep his head down, stay sharp, and work hard. “Honest
conviction is my courage,” Johnson used to say. “You’re still a poor and stupid son of a bitch,” his childhood peers would likely respond before pulling a football away from him right when he was about to kick it.

While he was an indentured servant, Johnson studied and read and learned all about being a tailor, but, seeing bigger plans for himself, he ran away at the age of fifteen (his “owner” placed an ad in the paper offering a ten-dollar reward to anyone who returned Andrew Johnson). Johnson struck out on his own and started his career in politics serving as a mayor, senator, and eventually the governor of Tennessee, but unfortunately for him, he didn’t fit in there, either. As a Southerner who supported the Union during the Civil War, Johnson was hated by all of Tennessee, even though his position was “Hey, I like having slaves too, but wouldn’t it be better if we weren’t all killing each other?” It might seem strange that someone so disliked would even get elected as governor, but because this is Johnson we’re talking about, you have to assume that even his governorship was fairly Charlie Browny. A Tennessee governor in the 1800s was mostly powerless,
especially
a Charlie Browny one like Johnson. The Whig Party, while clearly on the decline nationally, was still very much thriving in Tennessee. Johnson couldn’t veto anything because the Tennessee legislature was still mostly controlled by Whigs, and he didn’t even really have the power to make any political appointments or influence legislation. He used his position as governor to raise his own profile so he could hopefully one day occupy the higher offices he actually sought, while everyone around him refused to call him “Governor” without throwing up those douchey, sarcastic air quotes when they said it.

Johnson moved on to the U.S. Senate but, despite his best efforts, Tennessee seceded in 1860. Most Southern Union sympathizers fled when their states seceded, but Johnson stayed in town to serve as military governor, a position appointed him by President Lincoln, a man whose authority a Confederate state like Tennessee didn’t even recognize. This meant that he had the very unenviable job of having to hold the state together and punish anyone who was
anti-Union, which involved shutting down Confederate newspapers, firing anyone in his office that didn’t support the president, and arresting pro-secession members of the clergy. Needless to say, this didn’t exactly make him a hometown hero. He stayed in Nashville, which was constantly under attack by Confederate rebels attempting to seize control, but he never let them take over, at one point swearing to his panicked staff that “any one who talks of surrender I will shoot.” By the end of the war, Johnson had restored civil government in Tennessee, but that didn’t stop the people from hanging A
NDREW
J
OHNSON:
T
RAITOR
banners all over town. Believing that “Despised Military Governor” was at least sort of a step up from “Powerless, Pretend Governor,” Johnson again kept his head down, worked hard, and continued to do what he thought was right.

Unfortunately, if you ask the average person what they think of when they think about Johnson, they’ll talk either about his impeachment or his drunkenness. Johnson was a good man and a hard worker but developed a reputation for being a drunk. Why? Probably because he was drunk as hell when he delivered his inauguration speech as vice president. That’s probably the reason. Lincoln, for his second term, chose the Democratic Johnson as his vice president as a display of strength and unity to the wounded nation. Then Johnson gave a long, repetitive, and ridiculous inauguration speech as a display of how much whiskey is too much whiskey.

Johnson’s speech, described by the
New York Herald
as “remarkable for its incoherence,” was all about the important lessons he learned growing up poor, and how great the country is, and how he loved America because of the
people
, man, and how “I swear it’s not just because I’m drunk, but fuck it, we should all just start a band.” Various staffers tried to shush or pull him offstage, but he wasn’t having it, speaking ten minutes longer than he was scheduled to. A senator at the time, Zachariah Chandler, said, “The Vice President Elect was too drunk to perform his duties & disgraced himself & the Senate by making a drunken foolish speech. I was never so mortified in my life, had I been able to find a hole I would have dropped through it out of sight.” Johnson wanted to make America feel beautiful that
day, and concluded his speech by saying, “I kiss this Book in the face of my nation of the United States,” and then
drunkenly kissing the Bible on which he took his oath
.

Of course that’s only half the story. The thing about history is that it’s written by the winners (also by me!). Even though Johnson was completely shitfaced for his wild, rambling speech, it wasn’t because he was an alcoholic by any means. Most people who knew Johnson knew him to have a drink or two once in a while, but that’s about it. In this particular case, Johnson had been sick for several months with typhoid fever, and his doctor prescribed him a few shots
of whiskey. (Medicine in the 1800s, man. What a fun time.) Obviously the combination of the whiskey and his illness produced that absurd speech and ill-advised Bible-frenching. The story could have ended there, but history is written by the winners, and all of the winners
hated
Andrew Johnson. His critics were loud and persistent, and that’s how Andrew Johnson, a self-made man who picked himself up and worked hard his whole life, went down in history as the drunken vice president.

Even the fact that Johnson was made president when he was is completely unfair in some grand, cosmic sort of way. Being president is never easy, but Johnson had to step up and fill in for one of the greatest presidents we’ve ever had, during Reconstruction, one of the roughest periods in our history. If Johnson had followed, say, Fillmore or Pierce or one of those other assholes, history would likely remember him more fondly. Unfortunately, his opening act was Lincoln, and that’s a performance
no one
can follow. It would be like following the Beatles, except the audience hates you, and instead of being as good as or better than the Beatles, your band is
Andrew Johnson
.

As president, Johnson was as disrespected as he was as governor, military governor, and human being, which is to say, very. His secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, vocally opposed Johnson’s reconstruction efforts and actively undermined his president’s decisions in the South (Johnson wanted civil authorities to have control over the South, Stanton wanted generals and other military leaders in control). Johnson, who was trying to both heal a wounded nation
and
live up to his predecessor’s legacy, had enough to deal with already and didn’t need some uppity war secretary second-guessing him at every pass, so he asked for Stanton’s resignation. Then Stanton refused. Then Congress, who
also
didn’t respect Johnson, passed the Reconstruction Act, which a) took away Johnson’s control over the U.S. army in the South, and b) took away Johnson’s ability to fire any cabinet members without the approval of the Senate. It was a move specifically designed to keep Stanton’s position secured, and when Johnson tried to fire Stanton anyway (Johnson ignored the
Reconstruction Act because it seemed unconstitutional to him, and also because “Come on, just give me a goddamn break, guys”), he was impeached. He managed to keep his job by
one single vote
, but the writing on the wall was clear. The people never wanted or expected Johnson to be president, his Congress hated him, and even his own cabinet members ignored and disobeyed him. Johnson was, again, on his own. It probably goes without saying that the Johnson presidency was unspectacular, but what the hell, let’s say it anyway. Johnson’s presidency was unspectacular. Johnson purchased Alaska for America, which was great, but sort of paled in comparison to Lincoln’s slave-freeing, war-ending one-two punch.