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The Final Years:
Johnson returned to Greeneville in 1869 after Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated. Determined to prove that his course as president was justified, Johnson campaigned -- however, unsuccessfully -- for the United States Senate in 1869 and the U.S. House of Representatives in 1872. Finally, in January 1875, he was chosen to represent Tennessee in the United States Senate.
News of Johnson's victory attracted national attention because no ex-president had ever returned to serve in the Senate. During the special session of the Senate in March 1875, Johnson spoke out against the Reconstruction program and the political corruption of the Grant administration.
A few months later while visiting his daughter, Mary Stover Brown, at her farm in Carter County, he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed. Four days later, on July 31, 1875, Andrew Johnson suffered a second stroke and died. He was sixty-six years old. Friends and relatives brought his body back to Greeneville to be buried atop Signal Hill, now known as Monument Hill.
Vindicated at Last:
When Johnson removed Stanton in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, he believed the act unconstitutional. This view was vindicated in 1926 when the Supreme Court ruled it so. |