Historian Allen Guelzo on Andrew Johnson's Failed Presidency
Showing 4 Andrew Johnson videos from Charlie Kirk's video collection.
Historian Allen Guelzo argues that Andrew Johnson was fundamentally unsuited for the presidency he inherited after Abraham Lincoln's assassination in April 1865. Guelzo traces Johnson's rise from an impoverished, self-taught tailor's apprentice in Tennessee to state legislator, congressman, governor, and senator, noting that Johnson, a slave-owning Democrat, publicly denounced Tennessee's secession from the Union and vowed to stand by the Constitution even as his home state joined the Confederacy. Lincoln rewarded that loyalty by naming him Tennessee's provisional military governor in 1862 and later his vice president. But Guelzo contends that the compassion, discernment, and discipline the post-war moment demanded were qualities Johnson simply lacked, setting up the failures of Reconstruction that followed. A separate, unrelated video features Charlie Kirk defending Donald Trump against Oxford academics who compared his administration to Weimar Germany.