NYSL: Annette Gordon-Reed on "Andrew Johnson"

http://www.nysoclib.org/notes/2011/andrew_johnson.html

Pulitzer Prize-winner Annette Gordon-Reed recounts the tale of the unwanted president who ran afoul of Congress over Reconstruction and was nearly removed from office. Thrust into the presidency following Lincoln's assassination, Johnson faced a nearly impossible task - to succeed America's greatest chief executive, to bind the nation's wounds after the Civil War, and to work with a Congress controlled by the so-called Radical Republicans. Gordon-Reed, one of America's leading historians of slavery, shows how ill-suited Johnson was for this daunting task. His vision of reconciliation abandoned the millions of former slaves and antagonized congressional leaders, who tried to limit his powers and eventually impeached him. Although he was acquitted by a single vote, Johnson's administration left America with problems that we are still trying to solve.

Annette Gordon-Reed is the author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History and the National Book Award. She holds three appointments at Harvard University: professor of law at Harvard Law School, professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. A MacArthur Fellow and a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, she is also the author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy and other books.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• The New York Society Library
• Annette Gordon-Reed
• Andrew Johnson
• book
• 2011
• April