American Presidents: Totalus Rankium - 17.2 Andrew Johnson

Episode Date: July 13, 2019

The country is torn apart, the war may be over but the president is dead - in steps Johnson; it is up to him to make sure that all the pain and suffering is not for nothing- that the country can learn from its mistakes and move forward. Sorry, he’s doing what? Oh dear…

Welcome to Totalus Rankium. This week, Andrew Johnson part 2. Hello and welcome to American Presidents Totalus Rankium. I am Jamie. And I'm Rob Rankin, all of the presidents from Washington of Trump. And this is episode 17.2, Andrew Johnson. The John man. You didn't seem too impressed last time. Well, I'll tell you why. It started owning slaves. Yes, there we go. Democrats. The Homestead Bill. Started owning slaves.

Yes, there we go. Democrats. The Homestead Bill. Oh my goodness. You're just reading words off your notes, aren't you? I am, yeah. Became a senator. Well, they're my notes.

I don't know what they mean. I don't even know why I take notes anymore. So when we're rich and famous, you can sell your notebook. Oh, yeah. It's an investment. Right, well, we're going to start the episode, honestly, at some point. But we have an apology first. Again?

Yeah. Again, we really try and make our history podcast as accurate as possible. Because people listen to this for information, to be entertained, but also for information. And if they go away with the wrong ideas, if they think something's happened and it hasn't really, it distorts history. Have people complained about Lincoln's turkeys? Oh, no, no, we're fine there. We're fine. I mean, that's history. That's definitely history. This is episode 15.1, where I'm afraid one of us attributed

the quote, I am the law, to the character Robocop. No, it's Judge Dredd, isn't it? When obviously it is Judge Dredd. That may have been me. Well, it was. I was saying one of us. I didn't want to blame you, Jamie. I knew what you were going to say when you said it. Yeah, in particular, we apologise to Derek Woods and Richard Boyce,

who have been waiting for this apology for a couple of months now and were quite upset when it wasn't in the last couple of episodes. I really don't know what to say. I want to apologise and I hope you can forgive me. And I shall endeavour not to make that mistake again. Right, so there you go. Turn the sad music off now. We're apologised up.

Right, you ready to start? Let's do this. Introduction. It's a blurry screen. Need to sort the resolution out. Right, you ready to start? Let's do this. Introduction. It's a blurry screen. Need to sort the resolution out. Maybe, maybe. But no, it's just blurry. Yeah, you've, like, hit the side of your TV and all sorts.

Yeah, nothing's working. It's just blurry. Right. The audio's all distorted. Like, kind of muffled? Yeah, muffled. Just kind of hard to figure out what's going on. Someone's speaking.

In fact, it sounds official and loud. In fact, it sounds like someone's introducing a speech or something. It's that kind of tone, but it's really hard to figure it out. The bobbing of the camera leads the viewer to realise that this is first person. You're seeing out the eyes of someone here. Okay, with cataracts. No, not quite. But you do realise that the blur and the audio distortion has gone on too long

for it just to be a fade-in effect. It's here to stay. So obviously the director's making a point here. Yeah. Artistic. Definitely. And then there's a shape that becomes a face and it appears in front of the screen. You can just about make it out.

Mr Vice President, Mr Johnson, it's time for your speech. The blurry vision spins a bit, and then you hear a Mr. Vice President, and then wobble to black. Interesting. Does he not want to be president? Interesting, eh? Hmm.

Is he drugged? Is he drunk? Let's find out, shall we? Let's find out. Okay. We left Andrew Johnson after he'd returned to Tennessee in an attempt to persuade his home state not to leave the Union. Yeah. Yes, he was viewed by many as a traitor in his home state,

and therefore it was a dangerous thing for him to return, as we saw. There was a couple of near-misses, shall we say. Although one of our listeners, sorry, didn't take a note of the name, really should take notes of these names Contacted us to point out that Lynchburg Where he was almost killed Lynchburg Yeah, apparently that's where Jack Daniels is made

Oh, Tennessee Whiskey Everyone had a whiskey to calm down afterwards Oh, this old number 7's lovely So yeah, it's dangerous him returning home But he does it anyway And he starts touring the state Giving pro-union speeches. They generally did not go down well.

Come on, lads. Come on, let's stay in the union. We'll be fine. In Kingsport, he spoke in a church, just to the congregation. Come on, we need to stay in the union. The first thing he did, however, was he walked to the front of the church, and he stood in front of the pulpit and then he very slowly and deliberately

pulled out his revolver and just placed it in front of him. And then he started speaking. That's fantastic. I'm going to deliver this speech. You're not going to like what I say. But we'll have no monkey business. No heckling.

Yes. That's what your mum said. Ow. He would have made an awful stand-up. Yeah, a bit thin-skinned. Yeah. That wasn't the only dodgy speech, though. In Rogersville, he was speaking in a courthouse

when a group of armed men came in and demanded that he stop immediately. And I'll quote Johnson here. I have been a Democrat all my life and I am accustomed to the rule of majority. If a majority of the crowd want me to stop speaking, I will stop. If a majority of the crowd want me to continue, I will carry on speaking regardless of you and your company. Nice. And the crowd said, yeah, go on then, carry on speaking. And he carried on his speech. Nice. And the crowd said, yeah, go on then, carry on speaking.

And he carried on his speech. Nice. So yeah, he's standing up. Yeah. And he's saying what he feels needs to be said. You guys are losers. Not quite that. No, right.

More, you guys need to stay in the union or you're a bunch of traitors. So yeah, lots of touring, lots of speaking. However, as we've seen, Johnson was fighting a losing battle. And in June 1861, Tennessee left the Union. It was no longer possible for Johnson to stay, and he had to flee the state.

Oh dear. He decided to leave his family behind, which must have been a nice conversation. So, ladies, a bit of news here. I'm off. I'm now branded a conversation. So, ladies, a bit of news here. I'm off. I'm now branded a traitor. And people are coming here to kill me.

So good luck. See you after the war, maybe. Bye. Yeah, no, the reasoning behind this is that he felt that his family would become targets if they travelled with him. But if they just stayed at home and stayed out of the war, then surely no one would stoop so low to use his family. Yeah, no one gets desperate in a war.

No, exactly, yeah. So it'll be fine. It will be fine. It is fine, by the way. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And actually, Johnson perhaps made a good decision here, because whilst he was travelling to Washington,

he was ambushed and shot at. Oh. Yeah. He manages to escape, however, but yeah, things are dangerous. Yeah. A bit wild. So, he makes it to the capital. He is the only southern senator to stay with the Union, which gave him a unique position

and also the ear of Lincoln, the new president. Yes. Yeah, because he's a southerner, so he's got the inside scoop. What do you know? What do you know? Please tell us we're dying here. Pretty much, yeah. The war started up, and Johnson was pleased to see that Lincoln was staying true to his line

that the war was to preserve the Union, not to end slavery. We're going to keep the Union together. To Johnson, the preservation of the union came above everything. As we discussed at the end of last week. And of course, that meant getting the seceded states back. Because if they've left, you've got to get them back

to preserve the union. Well, yeah, it's not really a union at the moment. Yeah, exactly. So, the war started in earnest, and Johnson watched the situation of his home state closely. Now, the east of the state, where Johnson was from, was largely pro-Union, and the west was largely pro-South. Yeah.

So he asked Lincoln many times to send troops to the east of Tennessee to help out. But Lincoln was still finding his feet, and this is also about the time that General McClellan was dragging his feet, if you remember. So nothing was really happening, much to Lincoln's frustration and also much to Johnson's. Yeah. So he joins the Committee of the Conduct of War. As in how he's progressing.

Just how polite people are, I think. What people are wearing that day. Excuse me, the Fifth Battalion didn't say thank you when Lieutenant George Stafford held the latrine door open. Yeah, things like that. Yeah. The conduct is awful. They were generally just keeping an eye on things and complaining that no one was getting anything done, I think.

We should form a new committee to resolve this issue. Let's face it, you're trying to prove that your democracy is working, then what better way than forming a committee to discuss something? It's what democracies do. It's what they're best at. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Take your sweet time with stuff.

Yes. So that kept Johnson occupied for the first part of the war. And then in 1862, things started to look a bit better for the Union Tennessee. Now, it's not cut and dry, but the Union had most of Tennessee under control. The East, however, was still held by the South. So the East of Tennessee, however, was still held by the south. So the east of Tennessee, sorry, was still held by the Confederacy. But a large chunk now is under Union forces. I'm sure everyone who lived there really appreciated that.

Some less so than others. But many did support it. Tennessee was definitely a split area. There were lots of pro-Union and Confederacy people in Tennessee. Anyway, Lincoln decides to treat the area as a conquered territory and appoints a military governor. Well, who better than a past governor of Tennessee? So, he turns to Andrew Johnson.

Andrew, got a request for you. Do you think of any governors that would be suitable for Tennessee? Andrew just grinding his teeth slightly. I don't know, sir. Maybe someone who's been there in the past and knows it really well. Maybe family links there, sir. Is someone who's from the bloody south

maybe? Yes, but I just can't think of any. Yeah, it was like that until it fades to black and then fades back up again. Johnson's tie is really loose. His hair's all messed up. There's drawings of himself with arrows pointing to him. And Governor of Tennessee hat. Yeah.

A band playing behind him. Yeah, yeah. Someone singing the lyrics, Johnson for Governor. He's the best. Yeah. Lincoln's still scratching his beard. What could we do? But eventually Lincoln gets the hint.

And Johnson is appointed military governor. You should have asked Johnson. Now, some criticise this move. Mainly people from the South. Well, yeah. Tough. You've succeeded.

Well, Johnson was a polarising man who many in the Confederacy hated and had proven himself to not be the most loyal in political parties. So can we trust him? If we were ever to do any work together, are we going to trust Johnson? However, he was loved in the North because he was a pro-union sovereign. And that was enough.

So the choice went through. Johnson was given some wide-ranging and somewhat vague powers. I mean, what is a military governor? I guess it's one of the first times I've sort of done this, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. What is this position?

It's like, there you go, you're now military governor. Here's your brush and kettle. What? Oh, I know. Make sure you turn it around three times after each use. Don't forget to declaw the rubber duck.

Yeah, maybe not quite that vague. His instructions, and I'm very much paraphrasing here, was, look, just keep the region loyal and in line until we can set up a real government over there. Not sort of astrology-style instructions. No. When Jupiter is rising. No, no, not vague like that either. Fairly

clear. Just keep them in line basically. Johnson himself made one thing clear however. He stated and I quote here, all traitors must be punished. Quite a hard line then. Yeah. He was setting a hard line there. He started by demanding oaths of

loyalty from all public officials. If you're any kind of public official in Tennessee, you have to swear an oath that you are loyal to the union. Wow. The mayor of Nashville wasn't too keen on this. So obviously someone doesn't value his own life very much. Well, he was thrown in prison. He wasn't executed.

All anti-unionist papers were closed down immediately and new pro-union papers were set up. Hit with propaganda. Got it. Or they just got the anti-union papers and just went through them all and just crossed out the word not. Yeah, it was quicker that way.

The union is good. Wonderful. That now works. We should leave the union. No, keep that knot in there. Oh, it gets complex. Yeah. Many in Tennessee objected to this. This seemed a little bit like military dictatorship to many.

It's a little bit free speech squashy. Yeah, but then many others pointed out, of course it's a bit military dictatorship-ish. We're at war. And it is a military dictatorship. Yeah, that's the whole point. At least no one's being executed in the streets. Yet. Yet.

So, yeah, it happened. Oh. No, not the executions. Okay. You'll be pleased to know. I mean, shutting down the papers and firing of people not swearing oaths of loyalty is pretty much as far as it went. Anyway, Johnson does this for a while.

And then, the following year, the rest of Tennessee came under the Union's control. There we go, we've got the whole of Tennessee now. Then Lincoln makes his Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863. And Johnson's a bit torn on this. We have seen that Johnson did not like slaves. Yeah. We kind of brushed upon that last week. But he had no problem with slavery.

In his mind, slaves priced out to the white man of jobs. So he didn't like the individual slaves. Yeah. But he's got no problem with the concept of black people being enslaved, apart from when they're taking jobs off white people. So he's morally bankrupt. Yes, yes he is. Okay.

Yeah. He's got no desire to see black men and women freed. Equally, however, he believed in the preservation of the Union more than anything. And over the last few years, he had come to believe, or at least accept, that slavery was always going to drive the Union apart. So if they're going to fix the Union,

actually they're going to have to get rid of slavery. So he's come around to the idea of emancipation. Again, not for moral reasons. Well, he would argue it is because he'd argue that he morally believes the union should get back together. But that's not morally the reason to get rid of slavery. It's a moral reason to keep the union together.

Yeah, it's an awful argument that just means that you are devoid of all empathy and compassion and just common decency. But there you go. He is a massive silly billy, isn't he? Yes, he is. Just wait. Oh, brilliant.

Anyway. So, keep the union together, get rid of slavery. That's his thoughts. He publicly declared that he was for government of his forefathers, with or without slaves, and would see the institution removed and all black men sent back to Africa so the union could remain whole.

Wonderful. Yeah. This should be criticised, obviously, but don't forget, even Lincoln was thinking along these lines at this time. Can we get the black population out of the country? No one was not racist. Anyway, so that's what he's thinking at this time.

Then the issue of black men in the army came up. Johnson wanted black men to be in the army, in limited roles, supporting the real fighters. You can't give a black man a gun. Who knows what they'd do? They can fetch the water. Yeah, he wanted to avoid a situation where black men were killing white men and were being paid by the government to do it.

I can kind of, of the time, I can sort of understand the reason behind it. However... Yeah, it's still hideous. Yeah. Yeah, but the tide was turning, and Johnson wasn't able to stop black men from joining the army. 20,000 black men were soon signed up. Wow.

I guess they're thinking, wow, pay. Yeah, pay and fighting for my very freedom. Oh, yeah, because they are fighting for emancipation, aren't they? Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is full-on war of independence for them Wow Never considered that before

This is not a squabble over politics for a huge swathe of American citizens. This is real freedom in the way that the war of independence arguably wasn't Well, no, it wasn't Anyway, right, by this time, Lincoln is thinking of re-election, or at least in the way that the War of Independence arguably wasn't. Well, no. Yeah.

Anyway, right. By this time, Lincoln is thinking of re-election, or at least members of his party were, because as we saw, Lincoln was quite busy. Someone probably just went up to him and went, Lincoln, it's election time soon. What? Already?

No. I'm busy. Is that something that you think they could have done Like postponed it Extenuating circumstances It is interesting that they really went ahead with the election But if you postpone an election It's admitting that you're in a lot of trouble Yeah if you remember

Things did actually look bad for Lincoln It looked like he was not going to be re-elected at all And those working for him Were desperately trying to come up with ways To keep McLennan from becoming the next president. Yeah, oh, the Dodge Army guy. Yeah, remember he ran against Lincoln. Now one suggestion was to get rid of the current vice president, a man I've not even mentioned before.

Clearly brilliant then. Yes, his name was Hannibal Hamlin. It's a good name. That's amazing. It's like a cross between a nursery rhyme and a serial killer. Yeah, it's good, isn't it? Brilliant. Hannibal Hamlin. Hannibal Hamlin. Hannibal Hamlin. Do you see everyone has to say his name a few

times to get it right? Yeah. Ah, Hannibal Hamlin. They'd play a drinking game where you drink and you have to say his name. Fast three times. Yeah. First person to mess up has to find the next round. Okay, after three. One, two, three. Hannibal Hamlin. Hannibal Hamlin. Ah, you're round.

Ah, dammit. Yeah. So, he's the current vice president, and there's nothing wrong with Hannibal Hamlin. Hannibal Hamlin. Hannibal Hamlin. But, it's just not doing anything useful, which I'm sure he'd object.

I mean, at this point, can we even name one vice president that has done something useful? That's a very good point. But yeah, at this point, can we even name one Vice President that has done something useful? That's a very good point. But yeah, their thinking is, perhaps we could put in a man to replace Hannibal Hamlin who could just, I don't know, be more of a symbol and represent Lincoln's desire

to end the war and unify the country. Someone from the South, perhaps. You know, unifying the country. In fact, perhaps? You know, unifying the country. In fact, stick with me here, it's a crazy idea, but why don't we actually get a Democrat? And it's like, Republicans and Democrats together. Johnson, Johnson, do you need a drink of water or something?

Yes, please. Yeah, eventually someone suggested, well, what about Johnson? I mean, he was hated in the South, but the South aren't voting. No. He's liked in the North, but he's a symbol of unity for the North and the South, if we ignore the fact the South hate him. Yeah. He's a symbol of bipartisanship.

Exactly. I mean, he's a sort of not real Democrat, but he is a Democrat, so this could work. Lincoln would run under the banner of the Union Party and have a Democratic vice president. Nice. Nice. So Johnson was contacted. He was given a wink and a nod. He was.

And before the convention took place, he knew full well that the vice president job was his. He started measuring up the office, what he was going to change. Yeah, definitely. New carpet. Vice president hat. Oak desk. Yes, exactly. No. Mahogany. Sure enough, he was nominated in the convention. But

as we've seen, it still didn't look good for Lincoln and Johnson. Lincoln's popularity was plummeting. So, Johnson took to travelling around the country and delivering speeches. Remember, he's good at speeches. Yeah, he's an orator. Really good oral skills. Yeah, he went hard against the traitors in the South.

And he was also warming to the idea of ending slavery. Because it had occurred to him that if you attack slavery, it's really easy then to carry on doing what he liked best, which was attacking the planter class. Oh, yeah. Those bloody snobs. Forgot about that. Because of this, this led to more and more black people

coming to see his speeches. Let's go and see the man who is just laying into the planter class. This sounds good. Never one to moderate his words, and always looking to please the crowd, Johnson in one speech spoke about how he was, and I quote here, almost induced to wish that a Moses may arise to lead blacks safely to the promised land of freedom and happiness.

Oh, that's quite nice. That is quite nice. Someone in the crowd cried, Johnson, you could be our Moses. Johnson was taken aback by this slightly. Moi? Well, I couldn't possibly. But he then said, again I quote, Well, if no one better shall be fined, I will be your Moses

and lead you through the Red Sea of war and bondage to a fairer future of liberty and peace. That's nice, isn't it? Yeah, very dramatic. Very dramatic. He even spoke of a future it? Yeah, very dramatic. Very dramatic. He even spoke of a future Tennessee government made up of white and black men. Whoa. Yeah, where people are judged on the content of their characters, probably.

This went down very well with his immediate audience. Yeah. It's quite nice, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Does it stack up with what we kind of know about him so far? Yeah. This isn't a change of heart from Johnson. It's lip service. Yeah, we Yeah. This isn't a change of heart from Johnson.

It's lip service. Yeah, we know that it's not a change of heart from Johnson because of what happens in the future. This was just all lies. He was playing to the crowd. He told them exactly what they wanted to hear. He knows how to work a crowd. Yeah.

Not the hecklers, though. No. Well, he knows how to deal with hecklers. Yeah. Yeah. He's short and to the point. So it was not Johnson's campaigning, but a change in fortune of the war that led to Lincoln winning the election.

Andrew Johnson had become the vice president-elect. Shortly afterwards, the Union forces in Tennessee finally managed to defeat the Confederate forces, meaning that a civilian state government could finally be established. Yay. Johnson was so invested in this that he wrote to Lincoln asking if he could skip the inauguration. I'm quite busy here.

I'm dealing with Tennessee. You don't need me there. I'm the vice president. The reply was essentially, you're the vice president. You need to do your duty for the country, not just your state. Get over here. Yeah. Yeah.

Which makes sense. Okay. Yeah. Four exclamation marks. That's angry. So Johnson heads to Washington to be sworn in. The day before the inauguration, a party was held in Johnson's honor, which is nice. However, Johnson perhaps drank one too many and he woke up on the morning of the

ceremony with a hangover oh there's something clicked yeah it's the introduction isn't it oh yes what do you do if you've got a hangover have a baraka there are no barakas um some sort of big greasy carby breakfast there's no big greasy breakfast. Oh, just be in pain and suffer. There's one other solution. Leeches. Yes, it's always leeches back then. Yeah, so he slapped on a couple of leeches. And then he made his way to the outgoing vice president's office.

Hannibal Hammond. They were going to go to the ceremony together. Old vice president, new vice president. He must be so bitter. It's like, I was the ceremony together. Old vice president, new vice president. He must be so bitter. It's like, I was doing my job. Nothing. And I've lost it? That's not fair.

Well, there is a theory of what's coming up. Oh, okay. We'll see. Because Johnson was feeling worse for wear. He would later claim that he was ill. Like, severely ill. We always say that. We have a friend that always says that.

Yeah. Oh, had a dodgy pint. No, you had 42 dodgy that always says that. Yeah. Oh, I had a dodgy pint. No, you had 42 dodgy pints. Yes. Yeah, it's typhoid fever apparently. Oh, was it? Yeah, yeah, of course it was, Johnson. Yeah, touched with the old typhoid. We were in Washington, no typhoid here.

Yeah, you were at a party last night, weren't you? Yeah, yeah, I was feeling really ill before I went. 18 tequila sunrises. Anyway, so, there he is, feeling worse for wear. He goes into Hannibal Hamlin's office to greet the current vice president and basically said, look, Hannibal Hamlin, I'm not feeling great. And then slumped down into a chair.

Hannibal had just the cure for a hangover. He pulls out some whiskey. Oh. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. See? Hair of the dog. That's what you need. That's the other cure. Why not just have a whiskey, Johnson? It'll sort you out.

Yeah, biggest day of your life. Go for it. Put you on your feet, it will. Johnson thought this was a splendid idea. Wonderful. I'll just have the one he said Pulls out the coffee mug Okay Say when

So the two sit around They have a chat, they have a drink And then I'll go on and have another I'll have another It's a day to celebrate Exactly According to Johnson He only had two whiskeys.

And he was ill. Yeah. But it's quite evident that he had more than this. Yeah. Yeah. He got blind drunk. Yes, he did. And then, off to the inauguration ceremony, they went.

Yay! Hannibal Hamlin probably softly smiling to himself. He was drinking cold tea. Yeah, probably. So everyone's there. Capitol building, senators, members of the House, judges, the cabinet, and obviously Lincoln himself. And Johnson stands up to speak first. Oh, fantastic. Oh, yes. And this is the intro. A bit just blurry. Someone going, come on, Johnson, it's your speech.

Would you like to hear his speech? If I just pour myself my wine, then yes. Okay. And I quote, I'm again to tell you here today, yet I am again to tell you all that i am a plebeian i glory in it i am a plebeian the people yes the people of the united states made me what i am and in this place that the people are everything we owe all to. If it might not be too presumptuous,

I will tell the foreign ministers sitting there that I am one of the people, and I will say to the censors and the others before me, I will say to the Supreme Court, which sits before me, that you all get your power and the place from the people, and Mr Chase, your position depends upon the people and I will see you, Mr Secretary Seward and to you, Mr Secretary Stanton and to you, Mr Secretary...

Mr... Who's the Secretary of the Navy? Ah, and you, Mr Secretary Wells. You, you, all of you. You all derive your power from the Navy. Ah, and you, Mr. Secretary Wells, you, you, all of you, you all derive your power from the people. That is honestly a quote. Wow. Including the, who is the Secretary

of the Navy again? That is fantastic. You really get a sense of, you get to know Andrew Johnson from this quote possibly more than anything we've seen so far. Yeah, that's how you know a person when they're drunk. Yeah, it's like he's still very obviously angry that all these rich people are running the country.

Yeah. I'm a pleb! Yeah. I'm a commoner! The members of the government just watched. Mouths open. Literally, yeah. Justice Samuel Nilsson, apparently,

just watched with his jaw wide open. Several were flushed red. Quite a few were just looking at the floor as Johnson was just sort of stabbing his finger at people. And another thing. I'm not finished yet! Try and drag him off. Well, one source claims that Hannibal Hamlin,

perhaps regretting giving this man whiskey, was yanking at Johnson's coat from just behind him. I'm finished! Trying to get him to sit down. No! Well, he did stop, or perhaps fell asleep. And then it was his duty to swear in the new

senators. Oh, fantastic. He picked up the Bible. You mother... No! Not that kind, Johnson. He picked up the Bible, possibly on the first attempt. A few drops. And declared, and again I'll quote here,

I kiss this book in the face of my nation, the United States. Again, real quote. Brilliant. And then he had to be relieved of the task. He couldn't finish it. That is absolutely brilliant. At that point he was just calmly moved to the side. Someone had found a bottle of whiskey at that point

and was just dangling it. Come on, come on. There you go. Oh, that must have been an awkward cabinet meeting the next day. We'll get to that. It's far more awkward than you'd perhaps think. Apparently Lincoln was just very disappointed. Of course he was.

This reminds me of a time. Yes, it probably did. Or he was probably grinning on the inside thinking, brilliant, this is another story. Secretly loving it. Lincoln gives his second inaugural address, a speech that he is famous for and goes down in history almost as much as the Gettysburg Address.

It's a damn good speech. He unifies the country. Or it was just a hell of a lot better than that drunken display that just happened before. Yeah, I mean, if you're going to compare. Yeah. We've got a photo of this, by the way. Oh, really? Yeah, this is a first.

Not just a photo of a president, but a photograph of an event I've just described. But here you go. You can see Lincoln in the middle, if you want to describe that for our listeners. So we've got, it's in front of a white building. That'd be the Capitol building. Lots of people facing the wrong way, but their heads are turned.

There's Lincoln standing in front of, not an altar, but he's holding a piece of paper in his hand. Lots of people behind him. A few in chairs. Oh, there's Johnson at the side. Yeah, if you look carefully, you can just make out the cone on his head. Yes. Yeah, yeah. That's a very rude gesture.

He's half lying down and the cone's sort of falling off. And he's giving a finger up to the crowd. He must be there. Is he the one standing on the banister? Yes, in all seriousness, he must be there. I did try and figure out who it was but the quality's just not good enough unfortunately. But yeah, there is in that photo guaranteed a really drunk man who wants the ground

to swallow him up right now. That is fantastic. That is amazing. I love pictures like this. It's phenomenal. Look at the hats. The top hat that guy's wearing. It gleams. That is a good, that puts Lincolns to shame. It does. So, yeah, there you go.

We'll put that picture up on Facebook and Twitter. That was a fantastic photo. But just Google Lincoln inaugural address photo, and it's the famous one. So, anyway, there we go. You can only imagine what Johnson thought when he woke up the following day. I like to think he had no memory of it. He thought, oh, that was a busy day. Right, first cabinet meeting.

Off we go. Not quite, not quite, because remember, he's the vice president. He doesn't get to go to cabinet meetings. No. The backlash was immediate, however. Some declared that Johnson should resign immediately. He's disgraced the office. This shows what happens when you let the likes of tailors play at politics.

You let the poor in, the riffraff. Class will out, what what. That kind of attitude was bandied around quite a lot. Tally humbug. Yeah. Others, less prejudice, simply worried that Johnson was not a great choice to begin with. Others, less prejudice, simply worried that Johnson was not a great choice to begin with. Perhaps, maybe, we shouldn't let him be vice president.

He's also a drunk, which we've only just found out. Lincoln, however, backed up his vice president, stating, and I quote, Andy ain't a drunkard. Did anyone correct him on his grammar, though? He didn't correct Lincoln on his grammar. That's true. He could tell you a story for 40 minutes about some grammar he heard one day. Yeah, best just let it slide. Yeah, I mean, Lincoln could hardly say anything different.

He was hardly going to say, yeah, the vice president I chose was bloody awful, wasn't he? Yeah, you've got to defend your mistakes. Yeah, exactly. And it's fine. The vice presidency isn't a real job anyway. He's not going to do any damage. He's there as a symbol. That's all. Okay? I mean, that's of course, and that's

the point where thunder suddenly struck. Someone's whacking the irony gong desperately in the background. Unless, of course, something happened to the president. In which case, who's vice president is very important. Yeah. But that'll be fine. That's fine, who's vice president is very important. But that'll be fine.

That's fine, and the sky's clear, and the person macking a gong just dragged off with a crook. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, life goes on. Johnson started to get to grips with the vice presidency job. He really got to understand how to pace his office and stare out the window. And in far bigger news, the South surrendered and the Union won the war.

Yay! Hooray! I'm sure there's probably more to it than that. However... There certainly is more to it than that, yes. But we're not focusing on the Civil War this week. And this is when Johnson figured he'd be able to influence things. I mean, putting the country back together.

He's a sovereign. He's primed to be hands-on in the reconstruction of the country. I mean, this is where I can stand out. And he really stayed firm when announcing traitors must be punished. So he's got his stance. He knows what he's doing. He's sure that things will improve shortly. Then one night, a few days later, Johnson was woken from his sleep by Leonard Farwell,

a politician living in the same boarding house as him, and he woke him up to tell him shocking news. The president had been shot and was currently lying in a boarding house close to death opposite a theatre. Apparently, both men succumbed to tears,

had a bit of a hug, and then rushed off to see the president. That's probably necking you with a whiskey before. Probably, yeah. It turned out the bad news was completely true. In fact, there was more. Seward, remember Secretary of State Seward, had also been targeted. I didn't know that.

Oh yes, the assassination of Lincoln wasn't just Lincoln. It was an attack on several men. Yeah, Seward was targeted. A man had entered his home pretending to bring medicine for Seward, who had been in an accident not long before. The would-be assassin was stopped by Seward's son at the top of the stairs. Oi,

who are you? What are you doing here? And why are you carrying four guns and some bombs around your neck? And why are you dressed all in black? With assassin on the back. Yes. And one of those, like, masks that just cover your eyes. Yeah, yeah. Like Mask of Zorro style.

Yeah, yeah. Panicking, the man pulled out a pistol and shot at Seward's son. Lovely. The click rang out slightly because the gun misfired. Ah, balls. But the would-be assassin wasn't a would-be assassin for nothing. What do you do if your gun misses up highest? Try firing it again?

No, you use it as a club and you beat the man. Oh, wonderful. Yeah. Resourceful. Yeah, exactly. Seward's son went down. The assassin barged into the bedroom where Seward was, rushed forward and stabbed the Secretary of State in the face and neck five times.

Oh. Nasty. And then rushed out again. Bye. See you soon. However, as I said, Seward had just been in an accident, quite a severe one, and his jaw had broken. And he was wearing a clunky brace.

If you imagine back in those days. Oh, yeah. What a brace is like for your jaw. Big metal cage. Yeah, I mean, he was looking like a steampunk Iron Man. And this device protected him enough that he got hurt, but he wasn't actually fatally

stabbed. Wow. Yeah. So he survives. Goodness me. But that's not all. Because it wasn't just two people who were targeted that night. It was, in fact, three. And who was the third man? Johnson.

Johnson. Oh. Yeah. It soon came to light that an assassin had entered the bar of the boarding house that Johnson was staying in and ordered a drink and questioned the barman about Johnson. What's this Johnson fella like? The assassin then ordered another drink. Then another.

Bit of Dutch courage. Yeah. This assassin obviously went to the Andrew Johnson school of how to approach an important event. I love it. Tell you this about him, he gives a damn good speech. Well, I can relate to it.

I'm a blab! Eventually, the would-be assassin wondered out, throwing his knife away on the way. Wow. He changed his mind. He wasn't going to do it. They're going to tell him what to do. I didn't know which Johnson to start.

There's four of them. Exactly. It was interestingly soon afterwards discovered that this was not the only visitor Johnson had that day because earlier on in the day, a note was left for Johnson at the front desk. Ooh. I will quote here,

I don't wish to disturb you. Are you home? Jay Wilkes Booth. Wow. Yeah. Oh my goodness. This quickly led to some theories that Johnson was in on the plot, especially

as he becomes president afterwards. But this doesn't really stack up. It seems far more likely that this was just the conspirators trying to tie down the whereabouts of everyone, and just to make sure everyone was where they thought they were. But it's

interesting that Johnson got a note from John Wilkes Booth. That's amazing. Yeah. So anyway, back to Johnson. He arrived to find a dying Lincoln, but was soon warned not to stay too long. Because his brains are leaking all over the floor. Not that. It's Mary Lincoln's there, and she hates

you. Oh. So you're just upset. Don't take it personally. She hates a lot of people. As we saw last week. She had her problems didn't Mary? Yeah. And there was a lot of people she didn't get on with. And Johnson was one of them.

Anyway, Lincoln dies as we saw. And Johnson then was sworn in several hours later in a simple ceremony in his hotel room. So, there you go. Andrew Johnson, the poor tailor, is now the President of the United States. Leader of the free world.

So, what do you do when you're President? Try and sort things out. Yes, you do. And the first thing you need to do to sort things out is go and have a cabinet meeting. Oh. Oh. Yes. Oh. Yes. I guess they remember, don't they?

But this really isn't long afterwards at all. See, in my head it's like a year or two. Lincoln was right at the start of his second term. It's really not far into his second term at all. Yeah. So they certainly have a clear memory in their heads of the last time they really talked to Johnson. Photographic evidence as well. Yes.

You're that really blurry shape there. But Johnson asked the cabinet to stay on, and they accepted. Probably a good idea, just to be consistent. Exactly. He then discussed who could do Seward's job, because, after all, he was in a lot of pain and recovering. So, yeah. So they sorted that out, and then they planned for the presidential funeral.

In fact, he very quickly put a lot of fears to bed. This Johnson seemed organised and to the point. The funeral occurred with no fuss. Lincoln's body was escorted to the Capitol building by members of the government, where it lay in state for several days, before heading back to Illinois. And I'm thinking of giving a small speech. No! No, no, no, no, no.

Johnson said to Mary, of course, stay in the White House as long as you need. But understandably, Mary soon left. And there you go. He's now in the White House, set up. News came through that General Sherman had reached an amnesties agreement with a Confederate general without permission from Washington. That was the first bit of news to cross his desk. Hmm.

North Carolina would stop fighting and all property rights would not be infringed upon. Hmm. Right. What does that mean exactly? What do you mean by property? Fine property. Yeah. A little house, a little drawing on a picture of a house, a horse, a person.

Yeah, it was all a bit dodgy. Why exactly is General Sherman coming up with agreements? The cabinet and Johnson were furious that this general was making political deals, so Johnson sent Grant down to talk with Sherman to essentially say, leave the politics to us. Grant. This is Ulysses Grant. This is Ulysses S.

Grant, yes. Johnson then put a $100,000 bounty on the head of Jefferson Davis. The Jefferson Davis. Yes, the Jefferson Davis. Yeah, he's not actually been caught yet. So a huge bounty goes on his head. And then he is caught. Short version of that story.

Not wearing women's clothing. What? He was caught not wearing women's clothing. I call you not wearing women's clothing today as well. Yeah. No, there is a story that went round that he was caught wearing women's clothing, disguising himself as a woman to escape. The press gleefully announced this and drew many cartoons.

In reality, he was wearing his wife's overcoat in an attempt not to be discovered. But he wasn't wearing a dress and a pretty headpiece and stuff, which is how he was depicted in cartoons. Yeah. So, all the craziness of the assassinations and the end of the war slowly started to die down, and things started to seem a little bit calmer, and people started to look at Johnson and wonder what kind of president is this Johnson fellow going to be. So far, he'd made all the right moves,

especially to please the Lincoln supporters. If anything, the radical Republicans, who wanted Lincoln to go even further than he had on the issue of slavery, hoped that Johnson would support their view more than the ex-president. This might be a win for us here. I mean, Johnson's not southern planter class. No. He's southern, but he's a poor southern.

He knows what it's like. He's a pleb. Yeah, he said so several times. I'm sure he said the word pleb. Pleb, shleb. Yeah. Something like that. So, yeah, maybe this will work for us.

And, of course, the now free population of black people also had reasons to be hopeful. After all, this was the man who had made the Black Moses speech. Yeah. Yeah, he promised he'd be their Moses. I mean, a bit weird, but I mean, it's good. Yeah, he sounds like a guy that stands by his word. Yeah, and he'd been chosen by Lincoln. So, I mean, surely he would fight for them.

And what they really needed was the right to vote because many black people and white people who supported their cause, realised that without the ability for black people to influence laws, many feared the freedom of slavery would simply become a change in semantics. Yeah, well, it would. Yeah. So that's what black people are after.

Representation. Yeah, we need suffrage. Of course, those in the South feared that Johnson would be overly harsh. He had made no secret what he thought about traitors. They must be punished. He said this several times. Splendid. Yeah, so the South were a bit nervous.

Soon enough, the tough questions that needed to be answered had to be answered. First up was the question of Virginia. Virginia has actually just split into two. North and South, East and West? Sort of. Virginia question of Virginia. Virginia has actually just split into two. North and south, east and west? Sort of. Virginia and West Virginia. What? Yeah, which is what we have today.

This is awkward. West Virginia. Yeah, yeah, see? There's a West Virginia. Take me home, go to the road. Yeah, exactly. So there is a West and there's no East Virginia, though. It's just...

That is ridiculous. That's what annoys me, things like that. You've got North and South Vermont. Vermont? No. No, you really don't. No, that's Canada. Dakota.

Dakota, yes. Yes. Carolina. North and South Carolina, yes. Yeah. There we go. You're going to cut out the Vermont bit, aren't you? No.

So Virginia's now split in two. The Western part of the state had been far more pro-union, and they created their own government after the state seceded. Right. And then this was entered into the union as West Virginia in 1863. Oh. Yeah. So they allowed them to maintain their independence.

Well, their sort of, their own governance. Yeah, exactly. Johnson announced that the rest of Virginia would be brought back into the union. However, something that surprised many, Johnson did not mention anything about black voting rights. Everyone kind of assumed that

this was the direction it was going. States can start coming back into the fold, but no slavery, black voting rights. Johnson just didn't mention anything about it. In fact, as time moved on, it became clearer and clearer that Johnson's plans for putting the US back together was a really simple one. He was going to try and get everything back to how it was before the war

as quickly as possible, with the exception of slavery. Oh. Yeah. That's not what we thought. Yeah. Now, the likes of Sumner and Wade, we've come across both of those before, but huge abolitionists, radical Republicans. They were fighting for black votes and they were horrified.

They had spoken to the president not long before and he seemed to agree with everything they said. They left the meeting feeling quite hopeful. It's one of these meetings to say, so we'll get rid of slavery. And Johnson went, hmm, hmm. Yeah. You get the feeling Johnson yet again is just saying to people what they want to hear. Now, over the rest of 1865, Johnson started to accept the rebel states back into the union, asking nothing of them at all, apart from the acceptance of the 13th amendment. So, no slavery. The issue of black citizens voting in their states was entirely up to the new states.

The national government obviously could not intercede. Now, a lot of the reasoning behind Johnson's actions stemmed from a small but very important distinction. When the rebel states had seceded, had they? Ooh, this is philosophical now. Yeah. Now, there was an argument that because secession was illegal, the act could not be voted upon. Therefore, the votes were void and the states had never left the Union.

If the states had never left the Union, then the federal government could not impose laws upon them. However, if they never left the union, then the federal government could not impose laws upon them. However, if they had left the union, they were now territories and not states, and the federal government had the right to dictate the terms of their re-entry into the union. For example, your black citizens now have the right to vote. Now, this was a question that annoyed Lincoln,

who described it as, I quote, a pernicious abstraction. Seriously, can we just deal with the real issue instead of these abstract thoughts? But you can see what the problem is here. Johnson, however, saw it as simple. States could not leave the Union. It was just that simple. They didn't leave, didn't happen.

Yeah. What war? It's the law. They can't leave the union, so they can't have done. Well, some argued that this made as much sense as stating that no one's ever committed murder, because it was illegal. Right, yeah.

It's like, no, they left. They left. They formed governments. They raised an army, and we went to war, Johnson. They almost won. No, no, it's illegal. The votes are void. As it became clearer that this was Johnson's views, those in the South

could hardly believe their luck. I will quote someone writing to Johnson here from the South. In our estimation, you have been just, independent, statesman-like and highly satisfactory to us. Highly satisfactory. Oh yeah.

You've been absolutely brilliantly okay. Johnson started appointing men to positions regardless of their previous political alliances. That's not a ridiculous move. Including people who were prominent in the Confederacy. Playing devil's advocate.

Yeah. Adding a sense of unity. Because if it's all Northern led, you can understand why people in the South would be a bit miffed. It's like,

no, no, no, we're working together. It's exactly the reason why Lincoln wanted Johnson to be. Yeah, yeah, you can definitely make that argument.

Well, he gave amnesty to many who had held leadership positions in the Confederacy government, allowing them to gain political positions that they would have been disqualified from. And he was doing this whilst Congress were on recess. Oh. Yeah. Okay. He was filling in military governorships over areas of land,

and he was giving them essentially to the people who were just fighting against the Union. Okay, I mean, it's a bit dodgy, but... Yeah, his moves were actively helping the planter class of the South. Class of people. He hated. He's always professed to hate. Now, this has led to historians going, what on earth's going on here?

This doesn't seem like Johnson. He suddenly seems to be full-on pro-establishment from the South. Why this change of heart? Not him. No, no. Someone else in a suit. He died years ago. Jefferson Davis in a mask.

No, no, it's not that. Let's have a look into this, shall we? Why was he now defending the rights of a group of people who he claimed were responsible for stomping down on the poor? Is he really a plantercast? He's got to take off a mask. I'm a planter class myself. No, I wish.

That would be nice. No, it's quite simple, really. He hated the idea of black suffrage so much, it overpowered his hatred of the planter class. Yeah. Yeah. Several factors were at play here. For for one the three-fifths clause you remember that oh yeah yeah um well that's now invalid which is nice black people

now count as a full person how is that a thing how could that have ever been a thing yeah i know i know uh but it's gone now but of course course, this means that the voting bloc of the South has suddenly increased. Oh. That's interesting. If black people can vote. Second, there's no way in hell the newly freed black population are about to vote anything but Republican. So give black people the vote, then it would be the death of the Democrat Party, is what many Democrats thought. But the most important to the likes of Johnson, far more important than the

previous two, if you give black men the right to vote, then all politicians would have to court their votes, and then laws would be put into place to help the black population to try and get their votes. Johnson didn't want that. As we've seen time and time again, practically everyone was racist back then, but Johnson is full-on card-carrying racist. He just thinks that white men are inherently superior, and the idea of having a government that was not for white people was just unacceptable to him. I will quote, And another quote. Oh, Kerry's one. This one's even better.

This one's got levels of racism in it. It starts off soft and just gets hard by the end. Yeah, it starts off, I mean, you'll see when the extra level of racism suddenly kicks in. It's quite spectacular, this quote is. Right, here we go. Yeah, it starts off, I mean, you'll see when the extra level of racism suddenly kicks in. It's quite spectacular, this quote is. Right, here we go. Everyone would and must admit that the white race is superior to the black, and that we ought to do our best to bring them up to our present level.

Wait for it. Because the second level's kicking in now. And that, in doing so, we should, at the same time, raise our own intellectual status so that the relative position of the two races stays the same. Mm-hmm. Keep them subservient. Yeah. It's like, even if they are not inferior to us, we should engineer it so they are. Can I score him now on Disgrace Game? Yeah, we'll get to that.

It soon became clear to a horrified Republican party that the President was going to fight them at every turn. In particular, the Republican plan to give freedom and land. Now this was a fairly simple idea, perhaps an overly simple idea, it certainly had problems, but the general idea was we're going to pass a bill that gives all freed slaves a plot of land to live on that means that they could be self-sufficient and fend for themselves.

You might recognise this because this is essentially Johnson's homestead bill that he was so obsessed with. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But for black people. Oh. Yeah. Well, he doesn't like it anymore, does he? Johnson was not happy one bit. Poor white people need a leg up to help them, but if you just give land to poor black people, it will teach them to be lazy. Johnson killed off this bill by voiding

an agreement where land had been taken from rebels that was going to be used. So he manages to engineer it so he just can't go ahead. With many of the conservatives in the South getting back into power, and the freed population having no way to support themselves, the future was looking increasingly grim for them. I mean, what do you do if you're a freed slave? You've got to earn money. What can you do for work? Oh. Yeah. By this time, the provisional governors that Johnson had put into place while Congress was on recess were organising, and they created predictably conservative state governments.

They started passing laws to ensure that things stayed pretty much the same. So-called black codes were drawn up. This doesn't sound good. Oh, it's not. In Mississippi, all black people had to possess, every January, evidence of employment for the upcoming year. What? You had to prove that you were going to be employed for the rest of the year, at the start of the year.

What if you couldn't? Well, if you left your job before the contract was up, you would owe all your wages back. And you would be arrested. So you had to prove you were going to be in employment the whole year, and if you quit your job or you left, you'd be arrested and you'd lose all your wages. Essentially, slavery continued. Yeah.

Yeah. But that's not all. Oh, but it carries on. Wonderful. Oh, yes, because some of the laws were actually worse than it used to be. Again, in Mississippi, hunting and fishing was banned for black people, something that was encouraged before. After all, if the slaves fed themselves by hunting and fishing, the owners didn't need to feed them.

But now they were free, they could pay their wages for the food we give them, thought the planter class. What? Oh, it's the same price as your wage list. Yeah, and if we stop them from hunting, that way they'll be forced to pay for the food that we're giving them. Oh, for goodness sake. Yeah. No, this is really bad.

Yeah, yeah, it's really bad. Sorry, I know I promised rainbows and unicorns as soon as slavery ended. You said all problems would be solved at the end of the Civil War. Yeah, unfortunately I was wrong. However, unfortunately this isn't by far the worst that's happening. Oh, there's more. Oh, much more. Predictably,

and this was predicted by many at the time, this isn't retrospectively, violence against black people soared in the South. There's a lot of people resented what had happened during the war. Yeah. And we're looking for people to blame.

Yeah. And who do you blame when your society is changing and you don't like it? People that are different. Yes, the minorities. So, one man from the South wrote to abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, and I quote here, to leave the Negro to be doubted with by those whose prejudice are most bitter character against him would be barbarous. But that is exactly what was happening. And to Johnson, what happened in the States was down to the States. Nothing to do with the national government, and despite the reports that were coming through, the government did nothing.

Reports were coming through of men being whipped to death for refusing to obey their former masters. Black settlements being burnt to the ground. Men, women and children living there being strung up in trees. Reports of men literally being hunted for sport. In one case, a minister shot and killed a freed man when he protested that another black man had been asked to leave the church. Things were awful. If you were black and in the South, you might technically be free,

but this was now arguably the most dangerous time to be alive in US history for you. Because you don't really have a value now. Yeah. Before, if you killed a slave, you've lost some income. Now, and it's from the government, it's been okayed. Yep. Oh, this is... It's grim.

Groups started to be put together. These mobs. Mobs. Lynch mobs? Yeah, they had nice uniforms. Oh. Yeah. This is where we first start to see the Ku Klux Klan emerge.

Yeah, things are not good. Now, Johnson, aware that things were not good in the South, asked one of his military governors to go and inspect the region and send a report back. I am president. I should probably know what's going on down there. The report basically said that the president's actions were emboldening the hardline confederates. People who believed that the end was near when they lost the war now realised that they could cling on to their white supremacist way of life because the government didn't seem to mind.

By this point, Johnson had lost almost all support in Washington. Washington was mainly packed with Republicans that did not want this to be the way the war ended. The radical Republicans in particular despised him. The moderate Republicans, who were willing to work with the South, even thought that Johnson had gone too far. The relations between Congress and the executive branch simply fell apart. After Johnson had waited for Congress recess to bring back many states,

once Congress was back into session, they just refused to seat the newly elected representatives. Then Congress set up a committee to take charge of the reconstruction of the country. The states, they argued, had left the Union. Seriously, we had a war. They set up their own governments. Of course they left the Union. So they are now territories, and Congress, not the President, had the right to oversee the terms of their readmittance into the Union.

Congress dealt with territories, not the President. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.. I'm going to Yeah, two-thirds. It was in this fractious atmosphere that Frederick Douglass

and other prominent leaders of the black communities across America visited the president, hoping to talk to him and persuade him that perhaps there's a better way of doing things than this. Maybe you just don't quite understand, Johnson, how harmful you're being right now. The meeting didn't

go too well, and afterwards Johnson turned to his secretary and said, although I will be bleeping some of this out, those sons of bleeps thought they had me in a trap. I know that bleeped Douglas, he's just like any bleep, and would sooner cut a white man's throat than not. What are the bleeps? The first two are fairly mild.

The third one I'm not saying. Oh. Yeah. That's a really bad word. Yeah, it's a bad word. So, I mean, like I say, full-on racist. By this time, Johnson realised he had very little support in the capital, but he did have some support across the country and he attempted to capitalise on that

because he decided he's going to start up his own party. Never really got on with the Democrats, and the Republicans now despise him, so... Yeah, a new party, that would do. Of course, they're a racist party. He and his advisers decided to call a convention for like-minded politicians in the country

who were worried about the direction the country was heading in. After all, Congress had just passed the 14th Amendment that stated that black people were citizens if they were born in the US and had rights. This was all very worrying to many politicians. Troubling times for those in the country who were worried that America, once great, was going in the wrong direction. It's weird that every generation says that about their country, doesn't it? Yeah, they want it to go back to how it was when it was great. Make it just how it used to be.

But that weird struggle with the kind of defining when that time was, that's the troubling bit, isn't it? Oh, yeah, in the past, Jamie. It's in the past. It used to be so much better than it was now. It used to be great. Yes. Anyway, you said, what do they call themselves?

The racist party? Not quite. No one's using the National Union Party name anymore. Anyway, you said, what do they call themselves? The racist party? Not quite. No one's using the National Union Party name anymore. So let's use that, they thought. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's the name Lincoln got elected the second time under. And this clearly is no way the same party whatsoever.

Let's use a nationalist union. Conservative Republicans and mainly Democrats could get together. They could figure out what exactly it would take to make the country great. And then they'd aim for that. Basically, lots of things that make people go, yeah! How can we make the country what it was before the war? Okay. However, this did not go as well as Johnson hoped.

Republicans and Democrats simply did not get on, even the conservative Republicans. It turned out there just wasn't that much support for him. So he decides to go on a tour to drum up support for his new political movement. He called this his swing around the circle, because he was just gonna like swing around several cities and come back.

For a couple of months in the summer of 1866, he toured many cities in the north and he delivered speeches. However, there was a slight problem. When he was a tailor and he was using his mockery and his sarcasm to punch up at the elites, the crowd loved it. Of course you'd love it. But now he was the president. When he's the elite. Yeah, he's got nowhere to punch but down but he doesn't know how else to deliver a speech so that's what johnson does as president he just stands up there and just berates people who are no longer above him but very much below him and it's never a good look punching down is it no no you just come across as a bit of a git.

Yeah. Yeah, what was once just good theatre just took on a different tone. And people weren't quite as happy with it. I can imagine giving out his speech, like, really kind of, yeah, and those people below me are absolute idiots. Stony silence crowd. Well, he announced that Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Somner were traitors because of their support for black rights. You see, his speeches no longer seem quite as fun as they used to be.

It's just not good when a president is bandying around the word traitor. It just makes people feel a little bit worried. I think anyone with political influence shouldn't really use that word. No, no, it's a dangerous word to be bandying around. It's bad feelings. Yeah. As you can imagine, he was heckled by many. Well, apparently he'd forgotten his revolver this time.

Oh, dear. And Johnson would just get into arguments with his hecklers. Your face is ugly. Yeah, pretty much. All in all, this tour did far more harm than it did good. He was just shown to be a petty bully pit loudmouth

who wanted to play for an audience was how he was coming across. The midterms came along a lot more Republicans got voted in, weakening Johnson. Back in the capital, Congress was passing bills that would aid the freed black population. Johnson would veto it, Congress would overturn the veto if they could,

and so on and so on. Government had pretty much ground to a halt because of the impasse. Things were scraping through occasionally. Things got so bad that many Republicans started to talk about the founding fathers. So bad. Let's discuss Washington. Yes. Washington. He was so militaristic. Yes. Madison. Didn't he used to torture animals? Splendid. Oh, John Adams.

He was a git. Didn't own slaves though. Well done him. A tour of Europe. Yeah, things like that. No, not just that. The founding fathers had foreseen that there might be a case in the future where a president was just simply awful. Oh, dear. And he needed to be got rid of.

Oh, is this the first idea of impeachment? Oh, yes. If enough of Congress supported it, the president could indeed be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. Misdemeanor? What would you class as a Mr. Meaner? There you go, you got it in one. That was the question everyone asked. It's quite vague. What does that mean exactly?

Someone asked, does that mean high crimes and Mr. Meaners? Do you have to do both? And he was just told to shut up, don't be stupid. Shh, get to bed. So yeah, I mean. What does it mean? And had Johnson done high crimes? Had he done misdemeanours? Can we impeach him?

Now, broadly, two views came out. There was the narrow view of impeachment that was the President has to commit a crime to be impeached. Fair play. Literally, a crime that could go to a court of law. That's what they've got to do. For example, Tom Head obstructing justice. Exactly. The broad view, however, was the president was acting in a way that obstructed

the government, was obviously hindering the government, or clearly damaging to the office, and therefore he could be impeached. So things the president might say, or how they present themselves in the country, to the rest of the world, that sort of thing. Yeah, so far more vague, that one. Now, many agreed that Johnson was definitely doing the latter. I mean, it was very obvious. Even when Congress overrode his veto,

Johnson was then using the executive office to set things up to ensure that the new laws were poorly established or simply not executed. He'd put people in charge of the new laws that he knew would just turn a blind eye to it. Yeah, so that man of Hindemann. Yeah, so he was finding ways to get round it. However, as we have seen in our lifetimes, it's very hard to accuse someone of damaging an office. It's harder to prove a president of obstructing his own orders. And that'll come also down to the people that follow the president.

Yeah. Because you've got people that say, no, he's just doing this. Yeah, it's really... You've got the defence element. It's really hard to make that argument. It would be far better, many argued, if there was something concrete that we could get him with. If we can't get something concrete, then let's just wait till he's elected out of office.

It's only a couple more years. But it must be so hard, though, like being... If you're a senator or a house representative, trying to impeach a president, that's basically saying our country's not running well enough. And if you're inside of the president, you may, it's easy to overlook things, isn't it? It's easy to justify certain behaviours. Ends justifying the means kind of thing.

Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it's messy, the broad view. The narrow view is far easier to define. Wait till we find a crime and then we can impeach. Everyone can just see what that is. However, many still looked for a reason to impeach the president, and an opportunity finally arose in 1867. The general in charge of the military district of Louisiana and Texas

had removed all the officials in office who had sanctioned a massacre of black and white unionists in New Orleans. So it's like, you guys ordered a massacre, no, you're not in office anymore. Johnson was outraged by this and ordered the general stay his order. Of course they could still be in office. Radicals were outraged by this. I think anyone with a sense of morality

should be outraged by that. Yeah, I should probably say, when I say radicals, as in radical Republicans, by this point a lot of the Republicans have radical opinions. Radical in this sense doesn't mean radical how we mean today, as in an extreme position. A lot of people were radical Republicans.

It was just, that's the name of their faction. So yeah, and they were outraged by this, and they attempted to rally support for impeachment. I mean, come on, this just isn't on. The president's clearly useless and just a horrible man. But no, moderates wanted to wait for the election. Unless he's done something concrete, illegal, we're waiting for the election. That's because you don't necessarily want to pull that trigger as well.

Yeah, it's never been done before. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a big trigger to pull. Yeah. However, later that year, Johnson then decided to fire the War Secretary, Stanton. He and Johnson had never got on, but Stanton had refused to resign. So Johnson looked to get rid of him. He started to make moves that he was going to fire the War Secretary, and the radical

Republicans moved at once. Because firing Stanton, they claimed, was in direct violation of the Tenure of Office Act. Which I imagine lots of people went, what? The famous Tenure of Office Act. Oh, of course. It's quite a recent one, in fact. Really quite recent.

It, in fact, had been passed in an attempt to strip power from Johnson himself. The day before. It stated that the President must ask for Congress's approval to remove any officials that have been approved by a previous president and congressional approval. So if you're a new president,

you can't just fire someone if Congress have approved them. Yeah. However, this was dicey legal ground because the wording of the Act made it clear that officials were subject to the Act from, and I quote here, the term of the president who appointed them and for one month after. So if you're the president and you've appointed someone, you can't just fire them. You've got to get Congress to agree. Or the next president can't for one month.

One month afterwards, you can fire them. So you have to wait a month, basically. Yeah, you're stuck with the month. One month afterwards, you can fire them. So you have to wait a month, basically. Yeah. You're stuck with the guy for a month and then you can fire them. Of course, Stanton was made war secretary under Lincoln. So he is within his rights of firing. Well, yes and no. And this is where it was debated a lot.

Because Johnson turned around and said, well, it's been over a month. Of course I can fire him. I don't know what you're talking about. The counter-argument came back that Johnson had, by accepting advice from the War Secretary and treating him as such, he had appointed Stanton de facto.

So he was covered. No, I don't agree with that. It's the same as us working in a school and you've had teacher takes over. They haven't appointed us, but just because they listen to our decisions doesn't mean they've appointed us. I'll ask you this then. If Stanton's not Johnson's war secretary, who the hell is he?

He's the war secretary that serves the country. Yeah. So if Johnson didn't want him as a war secretary, he should have got rid of him at the start, but he accepted him. So he therefore appointed him. Was there an official was there an official acceptance not an official one well there we go he's he i i know but he's doing the job right you can see just by this argument that this is this is how it went this is the kind of debate

that went on it was very dicey legal ground and i fully understand your point if you're really being strict to the letter of the law here, you can see Johnson's side. I think it is a weak argument to push, but they really wanted to impeach him, so push it they did. Congress moved to impeach the President for the first time in history. Again,

the narrow and the broad definitions of impeachment came into play because the moderates wanted to focus on the legal aspects of the case. That was it, no matter how dubious it was. It doesn't matter, this is a really weak argument. That's all we're focusing on. The radicals wanted to focus on the fact that Johnson was obviously an awful president, actively obstructing the laws, and in one case breaking one of the laws, sort of. It's a weak argument. I mean, come on, the man's a clear closet confederate i mean just look at him was essentially essentially their argument yeah so it was decided to go for the narrow view

we'll only focus on the legal aspect yeah and this kind of doomed the process yeah because perhaps an airing of all johnson had done would harden hearts against him. If you just dragged out all of just the obstruction and just how he's not helping. But that didn't happen. Instead, it was just a case of what? He fired one of his own cabinet members. What's the problem in that? Now, that's not to say that the case wasn't close. It certainly was. Three months of an impeachment trial took place. Johnson threatened to appear in Congress himself to defend his actions, but his lawyers persuaded him not to. You're a little bit too boisterous.

You might go off the handle and say something. His lead counsel also was very good, and many have to admit that the president's case really was quite strong here. Meanwhile, Johnson was talking to senators. He promised that if they voted for acquittal, he would stop messing around with the work of Congress. Another, I particularly like this, he offered a job

to if he voted for acquittal. Fantastic. Guess what job? Vice President. No, no, no. There's a War Secretary job going as it happens. Oh, that's just a stab in the throat, isn't it? That's brilliant. I bet he said it while looking at the Republicans.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Walk second job, do you want that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No one's doing that at the moment, are they? Because I fired them, legally. I'd do it again. Now, not only was this going on, it dawned on many that if Johnson was thrown out of office,

they had to check this, but apparently it turned out that Wade was next in line. And Wade's a radicalist, but like a radical radicalist. Right. He had some crazy ideas. It was bad enough that he kept banging on about giving rights to black people. But get this, he wanted to give women votes. What?

I know. Insane. The man was clearly mad. There's no way we can trust him to be president. Insanity. So maybe we should just stick with the devil we know. And stick with Johnson. It was generally the mood that was starting to go round. Oh dear.

But interesting that we're actually starting to see some voting rights for women being discussed. Albeit only to be laughed at. Anyway, despite all this, when it came to the vote, it was too close to call. Johnson was confident, but couldn't be certain. 36 of the 54 senators needed to vote guilty. He needed two thirds.

The vote came in. Now, there are actually nine articles for impeachment in total, so nine votes, but obviously the first one's the one that's going to show which way people are going. So the first vote came in.

Remember, 36 to be found guilty. Guess how many votes? 35 and a half. Not quite. 35 guilty. 90 not guilty. One vote short. Then the next couple of rounds turned up an identical result,

and those opposing Johnson just gave in. He's managed to scrape through. We'll sort you out in the election. So, Johnson's got his presidency still, but he was very damaged and he had nowhere to go. The election was coming up and no one would touch him with a barge pole. The war hero Grant had won

the nomination for the Republicans and it soon became very clear that he was going to win. Big beardy Grant. Yeah. Johnson became a lame duck. Not even a lame duck, just a dead duck. Flows the other river, face down, beak down. He issued a universal amnesty that included Jefferson Davis. And his final address accused radical Republicans of trying to place,

and I quote here, the white population of the country under the dominion of persons of colour in the South was his final dig just before he left. And then he retired. He was given a hero's welcome at home. Really? Yeah. Although celebrations were short-lived

when his son committed suicide, which is just a nice little sad story at the end there. And over the next few years, Johnson sought election to the Senate. He wanted to go back. Tennessee was firmly Republican by this point, and he was Democrat. However, if you remember,

Johnson was always not quite being buffered by the same political winds as everyone else, and he was still very popular. Also, the restoration of voting rights for some rebels made a difference. And also, the restoration of voting rights for some rebels made a difference. And also, the Ku Klux Klan is suppressing black votes around this time. Wonderful. Which also made a difference. So, after three separate attempts, Johnson was made senator. He was welcomed

into the Capitol building with flowers and applause, apparently. Well done. Then, in 1875, he headed home and he suffered a stroke. A minor one that did not kill him. The second one did, however. That's a shame. Yes. His body was wrapped in the American flag and his head lay on a copy of the Constitution. He's dead.

Shall we rate him now? Yeah. Yeah. Statement! Zero. Now, now. What we rate him now? Yeah. Yeah. Zero. Now, now. What good did Johnson do? Well, his homestead bill would have done a lot of good

for many poor Americans who were struggling. I love that modal verb. Would have. Well, you see, that was Buchanan, remember? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So he never really got off the ground,

but it was a force for good, if you ignore the fact that it explicitly cut off a chunk of the population. But it would have helped people. So there's that. Seward bought Alaska during Johnson's term. Yeah, he bought it off Russia while everything was going on. I heard about that.

Yeah. That's a really awkward place to go, though. Well... I mean, of all the states to buy, that's really out of the way. Seward and Johnson were both mocked for buying this. I mean, it was a bargain, but it was also a wasteland. Four rubles. Yeah, it's one of those impulse buys, isn't it?

Yes. You go into a meeting with some russians you come out with uh a new state i mean alaska is beautiful but it's very out of the way and even more out of the way back then yeah because they had to winch it onto the main the continent well that was the original plan was to like pull it down so it was actually like where where seattle is now yeah yeah uh but then they realized that was just impossible yeah just far too surreal for the real world. So they didn't... Go back, lumberjacks. Take your swords away.

Yeah, they called it Seward's Icebox in the press. Yeah. So at the time, it wasn't seen as that great a thing. But I think over time, most Americans have come to accept that Alaska is part of their country. Yeah, it's a beautiful state. So, there you go. That's the good. Oh, he did build himself up from, what was it, farmer to...

He came from nothing to president. That is true, but I think that's going to be in the silver screen more than anything else. That's true. That's the statesmanship. Wait, wait, let me tell you the bad, and then you can decide how much of a zero you're going to give him. The fact that once

the Civil War was hard won by the Union, a president was put in charge that systematically sought to ensure that all gains made were then torn down is one of the most depressing things in US history. Things could have been good.

There was a glimmer of hope on the horizon and then you're just dragged back down into the mud again. What he's telling, though, and this is what... Because I've been thinking this as you've been sort of going through the narrative. There wasn't a second Civil War. No. So how bad were his undoings of everything? Was it more sort of a refined,

we've been through that hell, let's try and deal with this politically instead? Yeah, the country certainly were not in the mood to go back to war again. No, of course not. The South had given in, not just politically, but emotionally, psychologically. There are reports of politicians, I don't have a quote here, psychologically there are reports of politicians i don't have a quote here but i remember reading it saying the south were at a point where they were willing to give the north whatever they wanted so when johnson turns around and says no actually it's fine don't give us anything it's like oh thank goodness it's an opportunity missed a huge opportunity missed i guess i mean the north the north would want to sort of go this is not what you agreed or wanted.

This is just capitulating. Why did we fight this war? Exactly. If we're not going to solve any of the problems. Slavery is still in place in all but name. Is this going to be a problem? Now to be honest a lot of people would have said yes as long as it's gone in name because

then slaves can't outprice the white workers. And don't forget, most white people are against slavery just because they were worried about their jobs. Yes. Anyway, there's that. Reconstruction was never going to be easy. I mean, let's face it, this is a very tricky job.

But to give a defeated enemy practically everything they wanted only led the South to be emboldened. It meant that after tearing off the band-aid of the Civil War, the band-aid was essentially then firmly pressed back down with some more glue. Yeah. And then slowly peeled back over the next few decades.

Not even wood glue. Super glue, so it was really painful when it came off. Oh. Took a layer of skin off. Yeah. Some have tried to defend Johnson, so let's be fair to him here. Let's see the arguments for him. It has been argued that he was

president for the whole United States, not just the victors of the war, and he was looking out for everyone. And we did say that. Yeah. You know, try to balance it a bit. However, I would argue that the side fighting to literally enslave people lost the right to be represented when they literally chose to leave the Union. Also, he wasn't looking out for everyone, he was simply refusing

to compromise with Congress, and fought tooth and nail to stop them from achieving anything. Anything that in retrospect would have obviously improved the country. He wasn't fighting for everyone, he was fighting for the self. Yeah. Yeah. Another defence for him is that these were incredibly hard times for the country and it would have taken a succession of great presidents to sort things out. Yeah.

But not just presidents, also social ideas and values. Yeah, exactly. This is beyond one man to fix the problems and I fully agree with that. So generations still isn't fixed, so you could argue. Oh yeah, definitely. But the argument against this is Johnson wasn't trying his best and failing. He was actively aiding a system of government

that had been proven to cause terror to United States citizens and had already led to a civil war. Yes, and that's the difference. Yeah. If he had clear political beliefs, they don't translate through history. He seems to be more interested in being in power for the sake of being in power.

His allegiances to the political parties were shaky. The one thing you could say for him is he obviously he wanted the poor men of the country to do better and he disliked the planter class who trod down on the poor. But that goes out the window as soon as he

abandoned that, just because he hated the idea of black suffrage. Yeah. Yeah. Last thing I'll say, it's a very good job we've just had Lincoln to prove that you don't need a formal education to lead the country. Because if Johnson was the first person from a poor background with no education to be the president, that would have caused even more damage.

That's a good point. That's a really good point, actually. Yeah. But fortunately, we've just had Lincoln, who was pretty good. Yeah. So, yeah. He's broken that sort of divide, that barrier, a social barrier. Right. Now you can give him zero. Done it.

I've also put zero for you. Is that okay? Yeah, yeah. No, I'll go for zero. I will go for zero. It's just unremittingly terrible, isn't it? Yeah. Next.

Disgrace. Moving away from the state disgrace, we have his personal stuff. Not a huge amount of details because there's not much recorded on his life. We've got that charge against him when he was the mayor of the town he lived in. He was charged with assault and then the charges were suddenly dropped. Yes, because that person died. We don't know if that person died. Or were heavily beaten up.

We've got no idea. We just know that the charges went away. So there's that. He was brash, described almost as a bully while speaking. As we've seen, that kind of worked well in some contexts when he was speaking. But in other contexts, it worked against him. And then, of course, we have slavery. It's back.

He may have owned up to eight people at one point, so he was never a huge plantation slave owner, but he certainly owned of human beings. And as we saw last week, we have a few stories of Johnson being very kind to his slaves there are a number of stories that come down

of him talking to the slaves' children reading them stories buying slaves' family members so they could be together but of course that's what you would get handed down through a family history you're only going to get the nice stories aren't you I think we can discount the story of 14 year old Dolly asking to be bought get handed down through a family history. You're only going to get the nice stories, aren't you?

I think we can discount the story of 14-year-old Dolly asking to be bought because Johnson looked like a kind man. Because even if that is true, it's still a horrifying story. What we do know is that it's not long after that Dolly started having children and that father was almost certainly a white man. We have no idea. There's just no way of telling and that father was almost certainly a white man. We have no idea. There's just no way of telling who the father was, but we do know who had engineered the situation

so it could happen. I'm reminded a lot of Jefferson in this round. Yeah. Full-on card-carrying racist who either forced himself upon his slaves or allowed the situation to occur. It's very similar to Jefferson in that case.

Of course, Johnson doesn't have the prose that he also helped build a country and did all the stuff that Jefferson did that was good. Johnson just doesn't have any of the positives and just has all of this negative. So it's the idea of a president or a future president having relationships with a 14-year-old girl is a bit... Well, we're not sure the age of Dolly. No.

Again, to be fair, we just don't know. So this is speculation, but it just brings to light just how horrible everything was. It was just awful. Anyway, I'm going to go with the same I gave Jefferson, because we've got precedent now, so we can now compare. We both gave him minus seven each. We gave him slightly more to begin

with, and then we knocked it down after thinking about it for a bit, just in case there was someone who was even worse later on. Even though it should be politically based because this is on his personal life, his personal views influenced the latter half of his presidency.

Yeah. I'm going to go for minus eight. Which gives him a minus 15, which means he's now on total of minus 15. Silvers Green. Born in a log cabin, his father died rescuing others, remember? Drove into the lake and then he got ill

and then he died ringing his bell. Ding, ding. Yeah, the fact fact that I honestly think that story is possibly more interesting than many of Johnson's says something about Johnson actually maybe I'm slightly unfair there because he was then forced to work in a tailor's, he ran away remember and he proposed to someone who turned him down

then he just taught the country a bit learnt how to tailor a bit more, made his own way, until his family asked him to help them settle in the West. They were attacked by mountain lions and bears, maybe. Yeah, that's a fun one. Cougars! You could definitely do something fun on that episode.

He met his future wife, he married Eliza soon afterwards. Cameo part for someone there. Yeah, yes. She really isn't featured in Johnson's story much. Cameron Diaz. Yeah, why not? He built up his business.

He started his debating society, remember? Oh, massive debating society. Oh, yes. Yeah, he was good at that. He starts his political career. He put the Toffs in their place. And people loved it. And then he went to the House of Representatives.

He pushed forward his homestead bill. He then got gerrymandered out and became the governor of Tennessee. Then went back to the Senate and pushed his homestead bill through again. Only for it to be vetoed right at the end. That could have been dramatic. That could work. The war, obviously. Quite a loted right at the end. That could have been dramatic. That could work. The war, obviously, quite a lot going on in the war.

We brushed past quite a bit of that because I didn't want to get bogged down too much in the war. That's a good call. But, yeah, obviously you could always do good drama in the war. Yeah. That's going to work well. He's there as military governor running Tennessee, trying to establish this state that's literally torn apart. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Then he becomes vice president and delivers a drunken speech. And I said to her. Yeah. Then Lincoln died, and suddenly he's president. Right. The poor boy who struggled to eat is now president. The radicals were hopeful.

The black population were hopeful. The decent human beings were hopeful, but their hopes were dashed because it turns out that Johnson's a massive git. He is then impeached, but the impeachment fails. I think the impeachment would be interesting. Yeah, you could definitely make something out of the impeachment. And then the end of the term, and then he dies of a stroke.

Sad. I mean, a lot of stuff happens in terms of interest it would hold you yeah and i think it's that tale of two hearts as well kind of like it seems really nice works hard then he starts the hints of him being a git yeah then those gittish tendencies get more and more and more to where at the end of it you hate him you think i'm glad he's dead at the end but A bit like me in the podcast. That's how we started. Actually, no, I respect it.

Oh, really? Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no. Kill him with fire. That's how it sort of went. Yeah. Yeah. It's one you really want to like when you first start off the story of the

tailor. And then by the end, you're just like, no, go away now. Yeah. I want to do the next president. But it's a story rising up from the bottom to get to president. And that's impressive. Lincolnesque. It is.

It's like the dark side of Lincoln, isn't it? Yeah. Oh, he's like the dark link. You could definitely do a miniseries based on Lincoln and Johnson. Yes. Watching the two of them grow up. That would be fascinating. Comparing their lives. Remember, Johnson was married by Lincoln's

cousin, if you remember. So you could have a little tie in there. See, that would be interesting. I'm going for a five. What are you going to go for? Going from log cabin to president, I think, automatically gets you a good few points. Yeah. But there's nothing really dramatic.

There's no big moments, really. You've got Lincoln's death, though. You've got that, the assassination attempt. You've got the drunken speech. That's the comedy episode. Yeah. There's definitely enough there for him to get points, but not huge. No. I'm going mid-marks.

You're going five as well? I'm going five as well. Let's do it. Total of ten. Next. Ten versatility. Okay, here we go. Weirdly normal.

Odd, isn't it? Very dark background. Very dark. Yeah, I mean, black background. He's wearing a black suit. He looks a bit like Tommy Lee Jones. He does. Yeah, he really does. He looks more like Tommy Lee Jones. He does! Yeah, he really does.

He looks more like Tommy Lee Jones in photographs of him. This doesn't capture that that much. You got your phone? I've just typed in Tommy Lee Jones. It's like, my God, he looks just like him! He's uncanny! He started in Men in Black.

So the screen needs to go way up. There you go. There's a photo of him. Oh, he did. Oh. Yeah, he's... Oh, geek reference. He looks like a character from Star Trek.

Oh, does he? Which one? He looks a bit like Garrick. Or the actor that plays Garrick. Andrew Robinson. Got the same first name. No, I'm still sticking with Tommy Lee Jones myself. So we know who would get to play him.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Obviously, Tommy Lee Jones was in the Lincoln film was he? yeah playing Thaddeus Stevens we need to watch that because I watched that about 4 years ago with a friend and I barely remember I was drinking wine at the time we definitely do it's not bad but it's not great

it's a man in a dark room who looks a little bit like Tommy Lee Jones you can't see where his suit begins and the background begins either I think it's below par to be honest it's a 3 it's just a face of a man isn't it yeah it's not great

put me down for a 3 as well so that's a 6 divided by 4 that's a 1.5 for... His face. Cam's ability. Right. You ready for some bonus? Oh, first though, let's work out.

What's he on at the moment? Minus 3.5. Our lowest score so far is minus 2.5. So all he needs to do is pick up one point in the bonus round to draw or more than that to get away from the bottom. Here we go. Goal bonus. Terms.

None. Yep, no full terms. Because he did not serve the full term. He finished Lincoln's. I'm going to skip one. I'm going to go straight to election. Election. None.

Obviously he was not elected. No. So then back to assassination. Now here we was not elected. No. So then back to assassination. Now, here we have a debate. Oh, no. Our rules are, one, two, if you're assassinated, one, if someone tries to kill you, but we've never really defined whether that is as president

because he was targeted in an assassination attempt whilst he was vice president. Okay. I'm not saying this because I don't want to spoil the point. Genuinely, he wasn't president. I've always assumed it as an assassination attempt as president. That is a very good point. And even if that wasn't valid, my argument was going to be, can you call someone drinking in the bar a few floors below you and then

walking out the room in an assassination attempt? The guy didn't go through with it. No, there was no attempt. There was no attempt. He's come close to getting something here, but he wasn't president. You're right. So that is a zero for assassination, which gives him the score of a minus 3.5. Well done, Johnson.

You're officially the worst yet. Good. There have been some awful ones so far. Good. Good. Bloody good. Yeah. Right.

I've got one more question to... We've got one more statement to make. American or American? Well, obviously not. No. No. No. No. I think things could have been good, Johnson,

and you ruined it for everyone. I hope you think about what you've done. While you're rotting in your shallow grave with a presidential banner around your face and an American flag wrapped around your body. Great. Right, there we go. That's our slightly depressing episode this week.

We've got Grant next time. He's got a beard. That will cheer you up. Great. Right, there we go. That's our slightly depressing episode this week. We've got Grant next time. He's got a beard. That will cheer you up. Yes. I think I know what he looks like. Oh yeah, yeah. A man with a beard. Big, not fat, but sort of well-defined. I think I've seen an image of you to see as S. Grant. Nice.

The name alone. So anyway, we've got him next time. So we will see how he does. Rock that The name alone. Yes. So anyway, we've got him next time. Yes. So we will see how he does. Rock that. See if he can beat minus 3.5.

It will be hard. Okay. Thank you very much for listening. Please leave reviews on iTunes. Get in contact with us via Facebook and Twitter.

And you can download us on Poppy and iTunes. Yep. Please do that. Until next time though. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. I believe he's making us fill in these forms.

Every single bloody time. He says, he says, does John, that this improves our professional development. Tones our skills, he says. Yes, right. Have you started your form yet? Yeah, well, I've put my name,

John Killey McDuff. Your real name? Actually, no, that would be silly, wouldn't it? That's incriminating. You're right. I'll put Mr. Stabby McStabby in the face. That will do. There we go.

Good alias. Strong alias. Right. That's all right for him. He called the president. Bloody show-off. Target. Johnson.

Vice President Johnson. There we go. I've got Seward. I'm not quite sure how to spell the name. So S-U-E-W-O-O-'ve got Seward. Not quite sure how to spell the name. So S-U-E W-O-O-D Seward. Great. Right. Okay. This box

here. Method of execution. Yes. I shot him. I did. I shot him. Shot him? Into the room he was sleeping in. Yes. Dark room. But yeah. Okay. Shot him. I'll go with a stabbing stabbed him you stabbed him yeah right in the face five times oh yeah clean kill well overkill but

definitely dead then yeah uh leases on the next bit effectiveness of kill out of ten. Okay, um, ten. I mean, there's no way he's not dead. I definitely shot him. Uh, ten. I'm gonna go for a three. A three? You stabbed him five times in the face, man. There was a cage in the way!

What do you mean there was a cage in the way? He had a broken jaw. It's like a big goldfish cage bowl around his face. They didn't cover this in Assassin's School. Oh. He may have choked his own blood, but it's unlikely. Right, anyway, last box. Self-assessment. I'm going to give myself an A.

Because my target definitely died. I'll have to give myself an E. Oh, F. Fine. What's that out the window? Oh, F. Fine. What's that out the window? Oh, nothing, nothing. Just someone announcing Lincoln's death, probably. Just don't worry about it. Is that Andrew Johnson?

He's outside giving a speech! You didn't kill him at all! Oh, God. F. Hello, and welcome to American President's Totalus Rankium. I am Jamie. And I'm up ranking all of the... popes. That's not even us. It is.

That's a different podcast. Oh, what is wrong with me? Right. And I'm Rob ranking all of the presidents. That's it.