By Msgr. Owen F. Campion

American Catholics found a friend in Andrew Johnson

The 17th president condemned bigotry of Know-Nothing movement

President Andrew Johnson's profile appears on no coin. No aircraft carrier bears his name. Controversy swirled around his term in the White House. When historians are most generous, they say that he was not skilled in handling conflict.

However, this fact remains. When anti-Catholicism genuinely threatened Catholic Americans, Johnson stood beside them.

That was his politics. Personally, he sent his children to Catholic schools. (One of his daughters became a Catholic, as did his son's widow.) He seemed to find Catholicism personally appealing. He regularly attended Mass while president from 1865 to 1869.

Johnson's political career began when he was elected alderman in Greeneville, Tenn., the town he moved to as a teen. He was elected mayor several years later. He then went to the Tennessee legislature and then to the U.S. Congress.

Blasting bigotry

At the time, the Know-Nothing movement was strong. The movement condemned American Catholics for being loyal first to the pope and then to the United States. Social stresses created by the flood of Catholic immigrants from Europe enflamed this bigotry. Challenging the Know-Nothings' anti-Catholicism took political courage. Nevertheless, Johnson went after them. His first speech on the floor of the U. S. House of Representatives defended Catholics and condemned anti-Catholicism.

When Johnson ran for governor in Tennessee, his Know-Nothing opponent made his defense of Catholics an issue. Johnson did not retreat an inch. Instead he blasted his opponent's anti-Catholicism. Johnson was elected.

Then he went to the U.S. Senate. A slave owner himself, he supported slavery. However, he wanted to keep the Union intact. Johnson urged Tennessee to remain in the Union as southern states began to form the Confederacy.

Despite his pleas, a huge majority of Tennessee voters approved secession. Every U.S senator from the other 10 seceding states, along with Johnson's Tennessee colleague, resigned from Congress and went home. Johnson refused to leave the Senate on the grounds that secession was unconstitutional.

Civil War came and Union armies overran Tennessee. President Abraham Lincoln had to decide how to govern the state since the sitting state government, committed to the Confederacy, had come apart. He named Johnson the military governor.

In 1864, Lincoln sought re-election. Looking forward to reuniting the country, he wanted a running mate from the South and chose Johnson. Johnson was elected vice president. When John Wilkes Booth's shot ended Lincoln's life on Good Friday 1865, Johnson became president.

Politically expedient?

Some, reacting to Lincoln's assassination hysterically, said there was a Catholic conspiracy to make the pro-Catholic Johnson the president.

Was Johnson's friendliness for Catholics and Catholicism politically inspired? He was a Democrat, contesting Know-Nothing politicians, the Democrats' archrivals. However, his speeches and writings suggest no national ambitions for himself. Until he ran with Lincoln, he only needed votes in Tennessee, where Catholics were few.

More likely, given his general political philosophy, he felt a kinship with poor immigrants, so many of who were Catholics. He himself had risen from poverty.

In addition, he was deeply devoted to the Constitution, with its guarantees for freedom of religion.

Maybe he simply wanted his children to have a good education, so he sent them to be schooled by the Jesuit priests and the Visitation nuns.

Still, he made friends with some of the priests in Washington, and he attended Mass at St. Patrick's Church in downtown Washington. He wrote that he liked the sermons.

Johnson's White House tenure, scarred by the unsuccessful effort to remove him from office through impeachment, ended in 1869. He returned to Greeneville, where local Catholics were building a church. Johnson donated what today would be $1,540. At its dedication Mass, he was seated in a pew.

Tennessee re-elected him to the U. S. Senate, but he did not serve long. He was at his Catholic daughter's home in rural East Tennessee when he suffered a stroke and died a few days later.

Catholics knew that Johnson was their friend when they desperately needed friends in high places. When Tennessee's first diocese celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1987, organizers asked Johnson's great-great niece, herself a Catholic, to be a lector at the anniversary Mass. It was a way to thank him for being a friend.

Msgr. Owen F. Campion is the associate publisher of OSV.