The Yankee From Tennessee Author:Noel Bertram Gerson ...traces Andrew Johnson's startling career in this fine biographical novel--a drama of stormy political years climaxed by near impeachment. Here is told Johnson's remarkable climb to the Presidency, beginning as alderman of Greenville, Tennessee, rising to the position of governor of Tennessee, and winning a seat in the Twenty-Eighth Congress.... more » Mr. Gerson vividly depicts Johnson's tenure as Lincoln's Vice-President, his ascension to the highest office upon Lincoln's assassination, and the attempted impeachment of him by a radical Republican Congress. Here, too, are re-created the early years of Johnson's life--his struggle against poverty, his self-education with the help of his patient and understanding wife, Eliza.
"The Yankee From Tennessee" is a moving biographical novel of the controversial, yet strong and sincere man that was Andrew Johnson--and of the age in which he lived, one of America's more decisive periods.
Here is a fiction version of the life of Andrew Johnson, the former indentured servant and tailor who became President of the United States, narrowly missed impeachment, was the first former President ever to be elected to the Senate, and a man whose conscience led him into difficult paths. Although a politican of enormous personal popularity and great oratorical gifts he failed to keep Tennessee in the Union during the Civil War and, as a Southerner whose convictions on the inviolability of the Union matched those of Abraham Lincoln, he won many enemies. In Washington, still representing his constituents although considered a traitor by his state, to test the Constitutional principle of the division of powers, he deliberately engineered his own impeachment and his faith was justified. What emerges from this book is the picture-in-balance of a man who was right -- and knew it -- almost every step of the way and of his public and private life. It includes details of the lives of his five children and his wife Eliza as well as enough general background on the Civil War to make his career and the devotion and hostility he inspired understandable. (The point of view is thoroughly Northern.) Carefully researched, this is as sturdy and steady as this author's previous novels. --Kirkus Reviews Copyright (c) VNU Business Media, Inc.« less