When Lincoln died, Andrew Johnson became the President. Johnson was from the south, having been born in North Carolina. When he was 17, his family moved to Tennessee, which is where he grew up. He joined the Democratic Party, being a believer in states’ rights, and served as a US Congressman, then the Governor of Tennessee, then a US Senator. He was the US Senator from Tennessee when Tennessee seceded from the Union, but he opposed secession, and he alone of all the southern senators stayed at his post in the US Senate.
Once Tennessee was completely under Union control, Lincoln appointed him the military governor of the state. So as a sort of southern democrat, he was an odd choice for VP, in some ways, but Lincoln thought that it would help carry the northern democrats who were in favor of continuing the war. Luckily for Lincoln and Johnson, Sherman had captured Atlanta in September, just before the November elections, and so public support for Lincoln and the pro-war Republicans was strong. Adding Johnson ended up being helpful as well, as he took away votes from McClellan who had run as a Democrat.
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What is A Short Walk through Our Long History?
I think that if you want to understand the world we live in today, it helps to understand the important events of history. In this series, we are going to look at major events, people, documents, places, books, and ideas that have shaped history, and thus shaped our modern world.