Andrew Johnson Quotes
While this rebellion has emancipated a great many negroes, it has emancipated still more white men.
Under the pre-Civil War Southern economic system the poor whites had little chance of upward mobility and were in many wars as poorly off as slaves. Johnson saw this reform as much more important than the emancipation of the Negro.
Andrew Johnson Statement to a delegation from South Carolina Quoted in Nancy Isenberg, White Trash. 2016
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The Freedmens Bureau was created after the Civil War to assist newly emancipated Black slaves. In 1866, there was a debate in Congress to allow poor whites to obtain the services of the Freedmens’ Bureau. As a practical matter most of the poor whites were just as illiterate and poor as the ex-slaves. President Andrew Johnson was particularly anxious to assist the poor whites. See Quotation 643686.
These lines were quoted by W. E. B. Dubois in his The Souls of Black Folk, 1905
This prophecy written in the later years of Jefferson’s life turned out to be all too true. St. Domingo was an Island in the Caribbean where slavery produced a bloody war. The American Civil War would be far worse.
In the Civil War a drafted conscript could pay money instead of serving in the army. Many rich and middle class men did so leaving a higher proportion of the poor to be drafted. The song is sometimes misattributed to William Cullen Bryant.
Fitzhugh was a Southern iconoclast whose view of Northern labor was much like that of Karl Marx but who was an enthusiastic supporter of slavery. Fitzhugh was of the opinion that slavery would be reinstated in the North and his treatise agues for that. More and more intellectual opinion was coming to the conclusion that slavery must be abolished or made universal before Lincoln’s famous statement in his debate against Douglas. Although Northerners and Southerners had come to agree on this point, they disagreed about which alternative would and should prevail.
This is an important quotation because it shows that slavery was the principle reason that the South succeeded and began their rebellion. In the early 20th century, there was a movement to make the Confederacy and the rebellion more noble by promoting the idea that the Civil War was fought by the South for more lofty reasons such as States Rights, Original Construction, different economic philosophies and the like. This was a more noble cause then the right to deny other human beings their rights, to own other human beings who they could beat, torture, sexually use and even murder them was a pretty selfish and demeaning reason to have started a rebellion that would then cost more Americans their lives than any other American conflict. The succession documents and others of the Southern States and the Confederacy make it clear that slavery was THE issue and fleeting references to any of the others were only made to complain about the potential effect on abolition and the refusal of the abolitionist states to cease aiding and protecting fugitive slaves.
The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by the commander in chief as a wartime necessity. Any future President could undo that proclamation. However, the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery forever regardless of the desires of the Congress, Presidents, or State governments.
This fear was great among many who were abolitionists as potentially there might be mass slaughter of all Southern whites.
This was not an original notion with Abraham Lincoln. Seward and most of the “Radical Republicans” believed that the slavery issue had to be resolved and attempts to compromise were futile.
- Born: December 29, 1808
- Died: July 31, 1875
- Nationality: American
- Profession: President
Andrew Johnson was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. He assumed the presidency as he was vice president at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a Democrat who ran with Lincoln on the National Union ticket, coming to office as the Civil War concluded. He favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union without protection for the former slaves. This led to conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress, culminating in his impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1868. He was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.
