President Andrew Johnson leaned heavily on wife Eliza

Eliza McCardle was born in 1810, the daughter of John and Sarah Phillips McCardle of Greeneville, Tenn.

John McCardle was a shoemaker and innkeeper. He died when Eliza was young; she then helped her mother make quilts and woven products to support themselves.

In 1826, a newcomer sashayed into Greeneville; a young man from Raleigh named Andrew Johnson. He set up shop as a tailor. At her first glimpse of him, Eliza reportedly told her mother, “There goes my beau.”

It was a whirlwind romance. Andrew Johnson and Eliza McCardle were married on May, 17, 1827. He was 18 and she was 16. This is the rest of Eliza’s love story….

Andrew Johnson had no formal schooling, but Eliza received a proper education as a young girl. She tutored her husband in reading, writing and arithmetic, while they sewed garments in the shop.

Eliza sent Andrew off to join a debate club at the local college to polish his public speaking skills. At the same time, the tailor’s shop became a gathering place for political jabbering,” wrote Steven Case of the State Library of North Carolina.

Eliza encouraged Andrew to pursue his interest in politics. He heeded her advice, serving first as a Greeneville town alderman and later as mayor. 

Andrew Johnson’s political career advanced rapidly. He was elected to the Tennessee legislature in 1835. In 1843, he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives and won. He served 10 years in that capacity. Through it all, Eliza Johnson remained at his side but in the background, wrote historian Maggie MacLean. 

“Eliza had a soothing, calming influence on Andrew’s easily ruffled feathers,” MacLean said. “She had a soft voice that could reach Andrew in his darkest moments.” 

Andrew Johnson, as a member of the U.S. Senate from Tennessee, was the only Southerner to remain in the U.S. Senate after the secession of 11 states in 1860-61 to form the Confederacy. 

Case reported: “Johnson’s support of the Union won acclaim in the North and infamy in the South”…but he attracted the eye of Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, who was elected U.S. president in 1860. 

Dr. Paul H. Bergeron, a history professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, stated that a Johnson speech in early 1864 resonated with Lincoln. Johnson orated: “Slavery is the cancer upon the body politic, which must be rooted out before perfect health can be restored.” After freeing slaves in Tennessee, Johnson proclaimed: “Slavery shall…no longer pollute our state.” 

Dr. Bergeron commented: “Lincoln jettisoned his first vice president (Hannibal Hamlin of Maine) and tapped Johnson as his running mate in 1864.” In the general election, Lincoln easily defeated Gen. George B. McClellan of New Jersey to win re-election. 

Less than six weeks into his second term, Lincoln was assassinated. Johnson was elevated to president on April 15, 1865. 

First Lady Eliza Johnson now suffered from tuberculosis and was an invalid, but MacLean reported that Eliza would listen from her White House bedroom and rise to “admonish her husband if he lost his temper.” 

In 1868, during the height of Andrew Johnson’s quarrels with Congress and the impeachment trial proceedings that he faced, MacLean said Eliza “held daily prayer vigils for his acquittal.” 

A single vote margin prevented Andrew Johnson’s removal from office, MacLean wrote. “I knew he’d be acquitted; I knew it,” Eliza declared when she was told the results of the Senate vote. Her faith in him never wavered.