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Andrew Johnson Speech Against Secession, 1860

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Civil War Union Documents

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1860 Andrew Johnson's Speech Against Secession

1860, Printed Speech of Andrew Johnson of Tennessee in the Senate against Secession, Choice Very Fine.
Full title: "The Constitutionality and Rightfulness of Secession - Speech of Hon. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, In the Senate of the United States, On Tuesday and Wednesday, December 18 and 19, 1860," 23 pages, 9.5" x 6," disbound and without covers, otherwise complete. As the pages are numbered 1 through 23, this must have been published as a monograph. This is a fascinating speech in which Johnson defends his proposed three amendments to the Constitution providing for the direct election of the President and Vice President, together with Senators, as well as a convoluted plan to reorganize the Supreme Court to preserve sectional balance. Instead of dwelling on the proposals, however, this speech was actually a springboard to voice his opposition to secession. Sabin 36170n. Clean and readable, with no tears seen. Very Rare.

The Tennessee Senator, later to be Lincoln's 1864 Vice-Presidential running mate, and then the first President to be impeached, speaks his mind with the frankness that he demonstrated in Tennessee, when he defended himself with a gun against protesters who sought to muzzle his outspoken pro-Union views. Johnson identifies himself as a Southern man, opposed to secession. "If anybody must go out of the Union, it must be those who violate it. We do not intend to go out. It is our Constitution; it is our Union. Those who have violated the Constitution either in the passage of what are denominated personal liberty bills, or by their refusal to execute the fugitive slave law -- they having violated the instrument that binds us together -- must go out and not we."

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