ANNETTE GORDON-REED Andrew Johnson: The American Presidents Series: The 17th President, 1865-1869 Friday, March 4th, 6:30 p.m.
Andrew Johnson succeeded to the Presidency on Lincoln’s assassination, just six weeks after becoming Vice President. He had been the most prominent War Democrat in the Senate; Lincoln was running on a National Union Party ticket. He inherited an impossible task: to follow in the steps of a martyr; heal a divided country; and lead a radical Congress with which he was deeply out of sympathy. The first of our Presidents to be impeached, he was acquitted by one vote.
Gordon-Reed—the recipient of a 2010 MacArthur Fellowship, National Humanities Medal, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award—was recognized for dramatically changing the course of Jeffersonian scholarship, culminating in her 2008 book The Hemingses of Monticello: an American Family. She joined the Harvard faculty in July 2010 with joint appointments in the Law School, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
