Late into the night of April 14, 1865, Andrew Johnson paced the floor of his Washington hotel, anxious about his ability to master the awesome responsibilities looming before him. The next morning Lincoln was dead, elevating Johnson to he presidency at a time when the nation itself suffered from a deep and open wound. The healing process would require of the president surpassing clarity of vision, pragmatism, and tact. As he paced the floor of Kirkwood House, Andrew Johnson rightly worried whether historians a century later would conclude that he had followed the correct course.

Over a century later Johnson remains the only president to have been impeached. Yet both before his disastrous presidency and after, as mayor, congressman, governor, and senator, this Tennessean who had been born to utter poverty and who had never attended a single day of school displayed considerable skill as a political leader.

In this fine biography, the first full portrait of this president to be published in twenty years, Hans Trefousse resolves the enigma of Andrew Johnson by giving us a flesh-and-blood man whose tragic flaw was a stubborn attachment to the world of his earlier years.