The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation

by Brenda Wineapple

Johnson didn’t listen well, and when nervous, as he evidently was, he repeated himself or rambled. He intended to be the black man’s Moses, he said. The two races, black and white, were natural enemies, he continued, and if “turned loose upon the other”—that is, if “thrown together at the ballot-box with this enmity and hate existing between them”—there’d be a race war. Working himself up, Johnson crossly added that he’d risked life and property in the war, and he certainly didn’t like, as he put it, “to be arraigned by some who can get up handsomely rounded periods and deal in rhetoric, and talk about abstract ideas of liberty, who never periled life, liberty or property.” Johnson referred to Douglass’ reputation as a speaker but seemed not to know Douglass had been enslaved—that he certainly had periled life and liberty—and he probably hadn’t read Douglass’ Narrative. But Johnson despised what seemed to him to be sophisticated rhetoric in others—especially blacks.