Johnson, Andrew

Johnson, Andrew (1808–1875), vice president, seventeenth president of the United States.
As a Tennessee congressman in 1843–53 and senator in 1857–62, Johnson provided mixed signals on military issues. In 1850, he remarked that he might like to have one of his sons in the navy, and he worked to get Tennessee boys into West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy. Yet Johnson was at heart a small government Democrat, with special concerns about money and class privilege. Thus in a speech on appropriations in August 1852 he derided the “imbecile” congressional sons who got preference; proposed to close both academies; attacked the wasteful War and Navy Department bureaucracies; and called the army and navy expensive and oppressive in the European style.

Johnson was a strong nationalist, who favored expansion and strongly supported the administration during the Mexican War, even though he and President[The entire page is 410 words long]

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