Existing comment:
Andrew Johnson, 1808-1875
Appointed military governor of the Union-occupied state of Tennessee by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, Andrew Johnson later became the seventeenth president of the United States following Lincoln's assassination. His lenient policies toward former Confederate states undermined efforts to extend civil rights to former slaves and earned Johnson the animosity of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Johnson was impeached and narrowly escaped conviction when he tried to remove his adversary.
This portrait was published by Ehrgott & Forbriger as part of a series of prints commemorating United States political figures at the height of the Civil War. A comparison of Johnson's portrait to that of Edward Stanton, hanging nearby, reveals that the only changes made between the compositions concerned the faces of the figures. To reduce costs, the printers reused a limited number of templates to respond to a demand for representations of the country's leaders.
Ehrgott & Forbriger Lithography Company, c 1862 |