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From Primedia Publications
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The Tailor of Greeneville
By Debra Williams
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President Andrew Johnson once dreamed of a simple life as a tailor in Tennessee |
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Greeneville is a quiet town tucked into an east Tennessee valley, about 75 miles east of Knoxville. Andrew Johnson arrived here in 1826, an uneducated man hoping to make a living as a tailor. Instead he embarked on a stormy political career that took him to the White House and into history as the only U.S. president to be impeached.
In Greeneville today you can visit two of Johnson's homes and his grave, all part of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site. The small house he purchased in the 1830s sits across the street from the visitor center. In 1851 Johnson bought a larger, 10-room house just a few blocks away on Main Street. Ironically, he spent his first night in Greeneville camped out on the banks of a creek behind this second house. Willow trees now shade the spot where he caught his first glimpse of Eliza McCardle, his future wife. We don't know if he was aware of the significance of this glimpse, but she was. Legend has it that she pointed him out to her girlfriends and announced her intentions to
have him as a suitor. They married in 1827 and had five children.
Like Andrew Jackson before him, Johnson had humble beginnings. Born in North Carolina in 1808, he was plunged into poverty at age three when his father, a hotel porter, died. When Andrew was nine his mother contracted him to a tailor, an arrangement that was supposed to last until Andrew turned 21, but he broke the contract after seven years and fled, eventually landing in Tennessee. When he reached Greeneville he still had a bounty on his head, yet through talent and hard work he became a successful tailor. According to his account books, he charged $3.50 for a coat and $10.00 for an entire suit. Pants went for $1.50. Johnson bought his shop in 1831 and had it lifted off its foundation and rolled on logs down Greeneville's steep streets to its present location.
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 | It was an astonishing success story for a man who had never attended a day of school in his life and learned how to read while a tailor's apprentice. | |
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The tailor shop, a tiny 13-by-20-foot log cabin, is on display in the visitor center, which also has several of Johnson's tailoring tools, including a thimble, a brush and a whetstone. Across the street is the house Johnson owned in the 1830s and '40s, when he was a rising Greeneville politician. The brick house has a comfortable porch, five rooms and a basement.
Aided by his gift for oratory, Johnson began a steady political climb and made his tailor shop the center of Greeneville's political life. In 1829, the same year Andrew Jackson was sworn in as president, Johnson was elected as one of the town's aldermen when he was only 21. Later he became Greeneville's mayor, state representative, state senator, U.S. congressman, Tennessee governor, U.S. senator, vice president and president. It was an astonishing success story for a man who had never attended a day of school in his life and learned how to read while a tailor's apprentice.
Yet Tennessee has been somewhat slow to honor Johnson, not erecting a statue of him on the state capitol grounds until 1995, long after statues of the state's other favorite sons, Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk, started watching over the capitol. His unpopularity stems not from his presidential legacy. Instead, the middle and western portions of the state have refused to forgive him for his stand on the Civil War.
Like most of his neighbors in the valleys of east Tennessee, Johnson remained loyal to the Union even during Confederate occupation. The state's middle and western regions, though, were fierce fighters for the Confederacy, giving it both some of its greatest leaders and some of its greatest battles. Although a slaveholder himself with no sympathy for abolition, he refused to side with his state when it seceded, and he was the only Southerner to retain his seat in the U.S. Senate. "Yes, in the language of the departed Jackson, let us exclaim that the Union, 'the Federal Union, it must be preserved'," he proclaimed.
"Many people feel he should have joined the Confederacy when his state seceded," explains Harry Roberts, a past president of the Greeneville Historical Society. "He stood by what he thought was right."
President Abraham Lincoln appreciated his stance and appointed Johnson as military governor of Tennessee. In his new position Johnson moved to Nashville, where he governed with a much firmer hand than his fellow Tennesseans had expected. He jailed ministers who refused to rebuke the Confederacy and showed no mercy to Confederate veterans and families.
Debra Williams is a freelance writer living in Tennessee. America's presidents have interested her since she saw the movie Young Abe Lincoln in second grade.
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