Eliza McCardle Johnson - Wikipedia

Good evening my friend Maj Marty Hogan and thank you for making us aware that October 4 is the anniversary of the birth of First Lady of the United States, the Second Lady of the United States, and the wife of Andrew Johnson Eliza McCardle Johnson.

Background from firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=18
"First Lady Biography: Eliza Johnson
Eliza McCardle Johnson
Birth Leesburg, Tennessee on 4 October 1810
Ancestry Scotch-Irish, English, possibly Dutch; little to nothing has been definitively traced about Eliza Johnson’s ancestors because of the lack of any primary information about her parents and their origins. Her father’s surname is Scottish in origin and the region where he lived and where his daughter was born was heavily populated by Scotch-Irish laborers and pioneers, an ancestry which has traditionally been attributed to Eliza Johnson. One genealogical source, Andrew Johnson & E. McCardle Ancestry, published by Accelerated Indexing System in Salt Lake City, asserts that her mother’s ancestors “may have come” from Plymouth, Massachusetts which was first settled by religious “pilgrims” seeking religious freedom from England, as well as some Dutch families who joined the group when it came first to Holland. Although her mother’s maiden name “Phillips” is English, it may have been Anglicized from another national origin.
Father John McCardle, date of birth unknown, Washington County, Tennessee. It is known that John McCardle worked as both a cobbler of different types of shoes and, according to records of 1824, as an innkeeper in the town of Warrensburg. It is also known that his income was low, though able to support himself, his wife and daughter. Nothing else is known of John McCardle and the few facts are not corroboratively documented; date of death, 1826, Warrensburg, Tennessee.
Mother Sarah Phillips, born 29 January 1789, Marshfield, Massachusetts; married 23 April 1809, place unknown; married secondly to Moses. L. Whitesides (birth and death unknown), 1833, Greeneville, Tennessee; died, place unknown. Eliza Johnson’s stepfather was known to be a silversmith who arrived in Greeneville, Tennessee from Ashville, North Carolina. What brought Sarah Phillips and, perhaps, her parents, from a small town in coastal Massachusetts to the relatively isolated mountain region of east Tennessee is unknown, as is how and where she met her husband; died, April, 1854, Greeneville, Tennessee.
Siblings Eliza McCardle was the only child resulting from her parents’ marriage. There is no evidence that her mother’s second marriage produced any children, either, thus leaving Eliza Johnson without siblings or half-siblings.
Eliza Johnson was the first of six wives of presidents who were born and raised as only children. The others were Ellen Arthur (who died before her husband’s presidency), Frances Cleveland, Grace Coolidge, Laura Bush and Nancy Reagan (whose mother’s remarriage brought a stepbrother to her family).
Religion Methodist
Education The Rhea Aademy, Greeneville, Tennessee, (date unknown, but within a range of 1816-1823)Details about Eliza Johnson’s education are not extant. Despite its being known as an academy, from the time of its founding in 1812 until the erection of a larger school building in 1825, the educational institution consisted of a small log cabin, where girls were educated, and the nearby Presbyterian Church where boys were taught. Among the classes available to Eliza McCardle were those in reading, spelling, writing, English, grammar, arithmetic, geography, composition, needlework, history, philosophy and, importantly, rhetoric. That Eliza Johnson wrote and spoke well and consistently read books on a wide range of subjects suggests she had something of a lengthy tenure as a Rhea Academy student. That she famously read books (along with newspapers) to her fiancé and husband Andrew Johnson might also indicate that she was still a student at the time they met in 1826 – and perhaps even as a young bride in 1827, for impoverished families did not expend their limited cash on books other than the Bible. While purely speculation, it may be that Eliza McCardle read to Andrew Johnson some of the schoolbooks she was given to use as a student.
Life before Marriage: From the few facts about her early life that are known, it is apparent that Eliza McCardle Johnson was the first among few First Ladies born into poverty. Contrary to what was first written in 1881, however, it was not true that “her father had been dead for many years” at the time she first met her future husband in 1826, but rather that same year. However, both Eliza and her mother worked to supplement John McCardle’s income, both being craftswomen who shared in his trade of making cloth and leather sandals, as well as the more traditional women’s product of quilts, both types of items being made for local sale. This seems at odds with the fact that her paternal grandfather Phillip McCardle possessed enough property to deed one acre of land on which a Washington County, Tennessee Methodist Church could be raised. According to her daughter, Eliza Johnson also learned to grow and cultivate root vegetables and to cook well.
Marriage:
17 May 1827, Warrenton, Tennessee; married to Andrew Johnson, tailor (born 29 December 1808, Raleigh, North Carolina; died 31 July 1875, Carter’s Station, Tennessee). In 1826, Eliza McCardle first met Andrew Johnson as he entered the town of Greeneville, searching for work as a tailor, along with his mother and stepfather. A popular legend claims that she told her friends that she found him appealing and might marry him. Johnson was unable to immediately find work in Greeneville, which he did in nearby Rutledge, where he worked for six months and maintained a courting correspondence with Eliza. He was able to find enough tailoring work to establish a business in a two-room house, using the front room for work and the back for living quarters, where he brought his new bride. At 16 years old, Eliza Johnson was the youngest-married First Lady. The couple was married by minister Mordecai Lincoln, the first cousin of Abraham Lincoln’s father.
Children: Five children, two daughters; three sons: Martha Johnson Patterson (1828 - 1901, see full biography below); Charles Johnson (1830 – 1863); Mary Johnson Stover (1832 – 1883, see full biography below); Robert Johnson (1834 – 1869); Andrew Johnson, Jr. (1852 – 1879)
Life before the White House:
Although Andrew Johnson had an inconsistent and limited formal education, he was able to read, write and speak at the time of his marriage. Eliza Johnson made her great and substantive contribution to the trajectory of his career in public service by helping to refine the quality of his written and spoken communicative skills. Their daughter Martha Patterson wrote of her parents in 1881 that, “it is a mistake she taught my father the alphabet as this he had acquired before leaving Raleigh…But little has been written about my mother as she always opposed any publicity concerning her private life. She was the stepping stone to all the honors and fame my father attained.” Eliza Johnson is quoted as clarifying, “I taught him to form the letters, but he was an apt scholar, and acquired all the rest of it for himself.” Finally, Andrew Johnson frequently credited his wife in public remarks with widening and deepening his education.
Most accounts of Andrew Johnson’s early life consistently credit Eliza Johnson with training and helping hone him into an excellent public speaker, be it for formal speeches or debates, perhaps a result of her having learned rhetoric at the Rhea Academy. Both the training in formal writing and public speaking took place in their small home across the street from the tailor shop where he practiced his trade and earned a small wage to support them and their first child.
Immediately after their marriage, she was known to have successfully persuaded him to register as a member of the Greeneville College Debating Society. The practical experience led to his emerging as a spokesperson and leader of a workingman’s party he organized and his successful campaign and election as Alderman (1828-1830) and Mayor (1830-1833) of Greeneville.
Eliza Johnson is also credited with cautiously managing their finances, and by February, 1831 the couple were able to buy a larger home to accommodate their growing family, their second child being born that month. Four of her five children were born within seven years of her marriage. In addition to continuing to manage the family finances, she saw to repairs of the brick home and grew and harvested produce on the property, in addition to the traditional tasks of making clothing, cleaning and cooking. When Andrew Johnson moved from local to state political office, first as congressman for Greene and Washington Counties (1835-1837; 1839-1841) and then as senator (1841-1843), he resided in the state capital of Nashville during legislative sessions. Eliza Johnson, however, remained in Greeneville. However, when Andrew Johnson returned, and spoke to local residents at rallies, Eliza Johnson was described in one account as having been in attendance as her husband expounded on issues directly affecting the working poor. She was also reported to regularly read local, state and national newspapers in the evenings and taking an active role in deepening the education of both her sons and daughters beyond what they learned through formal education.
By 1840, Eliza Johnson was being assisted with her work at home by two African-American slaves identified only as “Dolly” and her half-brother “Sam,” legend claiming that the former had asked Johnson to purchase them, perhaps because of his local reputation for fairness. It seems unlikely that Eliza Johnson was consulted on the matter since she vehemently opposed the ownership of human beings, following a tenet of her Methodist faith.
She did likewise when Johnson moved to the national level of politics, being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and lived in Washington during the winter and spring sessions. During the full ten years of his tenure as Congressman, it is known that she visited Washington but it is unclear for how long or what length of time. She did, however, encourage her eldest child Martha to join him and the young woman was placed in a girl’s school there (see her biography below).
During vacations and weekends, Miss Johnson frequently accepted the invitations of First Lady Sarah Polk to participate in White House social events. Congressman Johnson had been a consistent supporter of his fellow Tennessean Democrat, President James Polk and the bond between their daughter and wife, respectively, reflected a mutual political trust between them. While it is known that Eliza Johnson did later interact with Sarah Polk, the extent of their acquaintance is unknown.
In 1851, following his congressional career and return to Greeneville, the Johnsons purchased a large home in town. The following year, Eliza Johnson gave birth to the last of her five children. While it can only be speculative, her pregnancy or childbirth may have weakened her system and left her vulnerable to contracting or first displaying the lung disability of tuberculosis. By the next year, 1853, when Andrew Johnson was elected Governor of Tennessee (1853-1857), Eliza Johnson had to limit her physical movement and was unable to join him in Nashville. She was only 43 years old. At home, she also began to confront the evidence of alcoholism besetting her sons Charles (later a doctor, pharmacist and surgeon with the Union Army during the Civil War) and Robert (an attorney, who committed suicide eight weeks after his father’s presidency ended).
To what extent her tuberculosis became serious enough to limit Eliza Johnson’s life is speculative, but small clues might provide some indication. In warm weather, she was known to enjoy walking at the base of the nearby mountains with her youngest son. She arranged and attended her daughter Martha’s wedding and often visited her other married daughter and new grandchildren in a nearby county, though whether she took the available railroads, was driven or drove herself by horse and carriage is unknown. While her work at home was within the traditional realm of homemaking, it also required managerial skills like directing one of their male African-American slaves, Sam, who often directly challenged the smaller and weaker woman yet never contradicting her. Eliza Johnson also personally went to collect the rent money from tenants who leased property that she and Andrew Johnson had invested in.
When Andrew Johnson was elected to represent Tennessee in the United States Senate (1857-1862) and lived in Washington, D.C. again while that body was in session, Eliza Johnson again chose to remain home in Greeneville. There she continued her financial management of their property and investments and the social welfare work she supported through her Methodist Church. Being the central figure in a family of an adult and a young adult son (one other adult son went to Washington with his father), two married daughters and their husbands, and a brood of grandchildren that would eventually number five was also a vital source of fulfillment in her life, despite her husband’s constant absence from it.
Ironically, the only period of her husband’s long pre-presidential career in Washington during which Eliza Johnson decided to come to the capital city of the United States were the months of it collapsing into Civil War, following the secession of the southern states, including Tennessee, from the autumn of 1860 just prior to the presidential election of Abraham Lincoln and through the springtime of 1861, when South Carolina seceded from the U.S. and the Union fired on Fort Sumter. The period would also include the inauguration of Lincoln. As the spouse of the only U.S. Senator from the South remaining loyal to the Union despite his state’s secession, Eliza Johnson would have been invited to the White House and have met the new First Lady, Mary Lincoln. There is no record of whether this occurred or not. There is, however, an eyewitness account of her being with her husband in attendance at a speech on the South Lawn of the White House, delivered by President Lincoln.
Despite being under Confederate Army authority, the people of eastern Tennessee, where the Johnsons lived, were largely loyal to the Union. With Senator Johnson speaking vigorously against the Confederacy and seeking Union protection of his region, Eliza Johnson became a target. Without warning, her Greeneville home was confiscated for use as sleeping quarters for Confederate Army troops. Forced from there, Eliza Johnson and her young son Frank and adult son Charles, had to seek shelter at the nearby Carter County home of her daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Daniel Stover, and three young children. The Stover home, however, was also located in the area controlled by the Confederate government.
In April of 1862, Eliza Johnson, along with other prominent Union families in that jurisdiction were given short notice to vacate by Confederate General Kirby Smith, who oversaw it. In one of her only remaining letters, Eliza Johnson responded formally but honestly that “in my present state of health, I know I can not undergo the fatigues of such a journey; my health is quite feeble, a greater portion of the time being unable to leave my bed.” Five months later, she wrote him again, this time declaring herself able to travel and requesting the necessary permits for movement within the Confederate-held regions and to cross into Union territory when necessary.
Starting in mid-September 1862, the privations endured by Eliza Johnson essentially made her a wartime refugee. For several nights, she and her daughter Mary Stover also prepared and smuggled food into nearby mountain caves where her son-in-law and his fellow Union military sought shelter and eluded detection by Confederates. In late September, she was detained for two days in Murfreesboro by Confederate General, Nathan B. Forrest which proved to be a degrading and harrowing episode. Having had no warning that the family would be detained in Murfreesboro, Eliza Johnson was literally forced to go door to door to seek to the homes of strangers and beg for shelter that night for herself and her family. Only begrudgingly was one home of Confederate sympathizers made available to them but denied the next night. On the second night, Eliza Johnson and her family were able to find shelter only in an abandoned restaurant, with no place to sleep, no food for sustenance, and no light. Eliza Johnson had apparently considered such a possibility, for she had brought candles from home and kept sandwich remnants from the previous day, which she gave her grandchildren to eat. Once permission from the Confederate capital in Richmond was wired to officials in Murfreesboro, Eliza Johnson and her family proceeded by train to Nashville, during which they were violently harassed and her sons threatened with death by fellow passengers who were Confederate sympathizers.
Although she and her family were given safe refuge in Nashville, arriving there on 13 October 1862, Eliza Johnson was soon notified that the alcoholism of her adult son Robert Johnson had deteriorated his condition and threatened his Union Army appointment as a Colonel. Stationed with his military unit in Cincinnati, Ohio, determination of his case was delayed, due to the status of his father as a U.S. Senator. With Andrew Johnson seeking to coordinate matter from Washington, Eliza Johnson and her family members left Nashville for Cincinnati in November of 1862, to personally intercede on Robert Johnson’s behalf. From there, with her son Frank, Mary Stover, and her three Stover grandchildren, Eliza Johnson sought a health treatment at a sulfuric spa in Vevay, Indiana. Joined there by her son-in-law Daniel Stover in early 1863, the party proceeded to Louisville, Kentucky. The anxious months and exposure to the elements had worsened Eliza Johnson’s breathing problems and she decided to then proceed to Nashville in May, rather than unite with her husband in Washington, where the weather would further deteriorate her condition.
Appointed by President Lincoln as Military Governor of Tennessee (1862-1865), Johnson made several dramatic references in public speeches to the treatment of his wife by the Confederate Army. This prompted deeper resentment of him and increased threats against his life. Andrew and Eliza Johnson had an emotional but brief reunion in Nashville when she arrived there with her family in May of 1863. He separated from them again weeks later, removing himself to Kentucky’s Union territory for his safety. Ongoing threats against him and their renewed separation nonetheless perpetuated anxiety for Eliza Johnson.
This was intensified in April of 1863 by the sudden death of their son Charles, killed instantly when his skull fractured after being thrown from a horse. Having moved successfully from publishing a small-Union newspaper to earning a medical degree and then being appointed a Union Army surgeon with the rank of Colonel, 33 year old Charles Johnson had become an especial point of pride for Eliza Johnson and his unexpected death was one from which she was said to have never emotionally recovered, forever sensitive even to the mention of his name. The one consolation during this period was that daughter Martha Patterson, her husband and two children rejoined Eliza Johnson and lived in the same home with her.
Campaign and Inauguration:
In early June 1864, Andrew Johnson was nominated as the National Union Party’s vice presidential candidate, on the ticket with President Lincoln who was seeking re-election. Eliza Johnson played no role in his campaign, a fact which stemmed not from disinterest but her role in handling a family crisis at the time. Robert Johnson’s alcoholism had so worsened that he was forced to resign as a Union Colonel. In August of 1864, Eliza Johnson brought him to the Lewis Sanitarium in Lexington, Massachusetts for recovery treatment, and simultaneous treatment for her tuberculosis and the first signs of it in her younger son Frank. After making the arduous wartime journey from Nashville to Boston, they first rested at a resort, “Pigeon Cove,” outside the city. Another tragedy soon hit the family when Mary Stover was widowed by the sudden death of her husband in December of 1864.
Eliza Johnson remained in Nashville, rather than attend the Washington, D.C. swearing-in ceremony of Andrew Johnson as Vice President in March 1865. A month later, upon learning that Lincoln had been killed and of the conspiracy to kill members of his Administration, her daughter wrote to her father that, “Poor mother, she is almost deranged fearing that you will be assassinated.
First Lady 15 April 1865 – 4 March 1869
55 years old
Eliza Johnson arrived at the White House on 6 August 1865, with an entourage including her two sons, her two daughters, her remaining son-in-law and five grandchildren. Deferred to as the central figure of the presidential household, the new First Lady was given the first choice of rooms on the second floor and made the small northwest corner space her bedroom with the adjoining larger room as her sitting room. Her sitting room became the gathering place for her family.
Among the relatively obscure First Ladies of the 19thcentury, few have been left with as distorted a legacy as Eliza Johnson. Small but key pieces of new documentation as well as a closer examination of original sources which led to this misreading of her White House incumbency may offer a more indepth and nuanced perspective on her.
Before leaving Nashville, Eliza Johnson had conferred with her younger and more passive daughter Mary Stover and her older, efficient one Martha Patterson, who had years of experience in Washington life, in deciding the part each would play in the presidential household. The explicit evidence of this is from a letter to President Johnson from family friend Lucie Williams Polk, widow of the late President Polk’s younger brother. Lucie Polk reported while visiting the Nashville home of her sister-in-law, the former First Lady Sarah Polk, she “heard her speak of Mrs. Patterson who report says will do the honors…”
Contrary to later, popular perception, Eliza Johnson did assume a public role as First Lady, but she restricted it to that of hostess at formal dinners and the visits of heads of state. Martha Patterson (see her full biography below) took on the task of hostess who appeared in the receiving line at the large open-house receptions to which the general public was admitted to meet the President. Mary Stover (see her full biography below) was to assist her sister at these public receptions, but also direct the tutoring and activities of her three young children and her young niece and nephew, as well as serving as daytime aide and companion to her mother in the First Lady’s suite. Nevertheless, both daughters were led at the direction of their mother. While Patterson did assume responsibility for determining how to restore some of the mansion’s glory on a limited federal budget, Eliza Johnson still oversaw the menus for both the family’s private meals and those served to guests, making a morning ritual of visiting the kitchens and interacting with the staff. Mrs. Johnson took more than a routine interest in cooking, and the former enslaved women who worked for the family i their Tennessee home credit her with teaching them finer skills in preparing various dishes, beyond the basics. Likewise, though Stover interacted with the tutor of the presidential grandchildren, Eliza Johnson met with the children in her sitting room, after their lessons.
Several factors likely contributed to this arrangement. First was the lingering personal sadness of Eliza Johnson over the death of her son Charles Johnson and that of Mary Stover over the even more recent death of her husband Daniel Stover. Eliza Johnson had suddenly been thrust into the status of president’s wife under circumstances discouraging her fullest participation. The lingering trauma of Lincoln’s murder has been overlooked as a factor in the cautious public venturing the family determined to play. A threshold was crossed which previous political conflicts had never ventured and its mournful shadow still cast a fear of potential violence against the President or his representative family members. To assure the new First Lady of not only her safety but that of her husband, her first public ceremony, in February of 1866, involved a unique presentation to serve as a reminder of her husband’s escape from the widespread conspiracy around Lincoln’s death. Produced by the Historical Society of Wisconsin, it was an extravagantly leather-bound volume of testimony from eyewitnesses and participants who helped secure Johnson’s safety, written out in calligraphy penmanship.
Certainly, Eliza Johnson’s physical condition was the most important factor determining her limited public role. Closer examination of the nature of her condition and activities during the Johnson Administration, however, refute the miscast perception of her life as being one curtailed to knitting while seated in her rocking chair, in her White House room. The source which established this skewed view, Ladies of the White House (1881) drew on an 1869 Chicago Republican newspaper account which stated: “Mrs. Johnson, a confirmed invalid, has never appeared in society in Washington. Her very existence is a myth to almost every one. She was last seen at a party given to her grandchildren. She was seated in one of the Republican Court chairs, a dainty affair of satin and ebony. She did not rise when the children or old guests were presented to her; she simply said, ‘My dears, I am an invalid,’ and her sad, pale face and sunken eyes fully proved the expression.”
The Chicago Reporter article further makes two glaring errors, the first claiming that Eliza Johnson was older than her husband and the second being that she “taught the President to read.” Further, it was written in the Administration’s last days at which point characterizing her as an “invalid” was valid, but hardly reflected the sum of her time as First Lady. That, as the article states, she “has never appeared in society in Washington,” used terminology which meant social events of the residential and political elite yet ignored an unwritten coda which forbade the President and his wife from accepting invitations or appearing at public events, on the premise that they were the city’s social leaders whom all others deferred to. Lastly, the claim that “Her very existence is a myth toalmost every one,” is contradicted by the public mail addressed to her, the solicitation of her support for a charitable cause, and the spectrum of influential figures in politics and business whom she befriended or hosted as dinner guests.
The nature of what was called “consumption” in relation to the First Lady but was becoming more widely known by its name today of tuberculosis. A bacterial infection of the lungs, Eliza Johnson’s activities suggest that she manifested a common pattern of the disease, a cycle where the lung tissue is destroyed and then repairs, allowing for greater and then poorer breathing capacity. This accounts for the seemingly conflicting reports of Eliza Johnson having to remain seated at events while at other times she made lengthy rail excursions throughout the eastern United States. In 1867, for example, she inexplicably traveled along the eastern seaboard, stopping in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston and also going west and south from Washington to Pittsburgh and Louisville.
However unpredictable, Eliza Johnson’s consumption waxed and waned during her tenure as First Lady but as it gradually worsened, she became sedentary and lived a more confined life towards the Administration’s end. The bacillus causing tuberculosis was not discovered until after her death. Still, less than a year before the Administration ended, Eliza Johnson was still presiding as First Lady at formal White House dinners, as documented by a new piece of evidence.
While it is established that Eliza Johnson hosted with the President a state dinner honoring Hawaii’s Queen Emma, one of the earliest-known printed invitation forms used by the White House, discovered in 2011, reveals that the First Lady’s presence that night was not a rare occurrence as has been previously believed. The invitation card begins with the pre-engraved words, “The President and Mrs. Johnson request the pleasure of [here the guests names were hand-written, in this case a Mr. and Mrs. Robinson] Company to Dine on [the day of the week was hand-written here, in this case, Friday] next at [here the time and date of the dinner was hand-written, in this case 6 o’clock March 14, 1868]. An Early Answer.” Julia Grant wrote that even if Eliza Johnson didn’t appear at the start of these, she “always came into the drawing room after the long state dinners to take coffee and receive the greetings of her husband’s guests.”
Suggestions that Eliza Johnson remained closed within the company of her family clan are also false. She formed friendships ranging from Isabelle Roest de Limbourg, wife of the Minister from the Netherlands to the U.S., to member of the Lawrence family which founded the town of Bayside, on New York’s Long Island.
Although the First Lady appeared outdoors to watch her grandchildren join the Easter Egg Roll festivities (which had informally begun during the Lincoln Administration), she stayed on the White House South Portico and thus remained inaccessible to the general public. Nevertheless, she received numerous letters from the public, usually being attempts to bring a matter before the President rather than address an issue related to her. Responding correspondence was handled by her daughters or the executive staff. There is no documentation that Mrs. Johnson ever answered the letters she received from strangers.
One public gesture which Eliza Johnson purposefully made as First Lady that perpetuated an important degree of political symbolism about the Johnson Administration’s Reconstruction policy has been largely ignored by historians. In 1867, the First Lady agreed to participate in a fundraising effort which garnered national attention. In response to Baltimore philanthropist Josephine Newcomb, who was seeking to create a large orphanage for thousands of southern children left without parents as a result of the Civil War, Eliza Johnson donated some personal items to be publicly auctioned in the fundraising effort. The orphanage was to be located in Charleston, South Carolina with the intention of it becoming the largest in the South.
That the orphanage would be racially segregated, with only white children, was not unusual for the time and unlikely the point of appeal for the First Lady. However, since the orphans came overwhelmingly from the poor working class may, perhaps, have been a factor, considering the President’s Reconstruction policy being overtly intended to support that social stratum, from which both he and his wife emerged. A second detail in the episode of Eliza Johnson’s support of the southern orphanage carried further political implication, and one which would have first been approved by the President. The First Lady agreed to let her name be used in newspaper publicity about the fundraiser, alongside women famously associated with the Confederacy: thus, Eliza Johnson, wife of the United States President was linked to Varina Davis, wife of the deposed Confederate States President and Mary Lee, the daughter of the Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
Eliza Johnson also figures in another previously ignored incident. Though her role is not explicit, it does suggest she had an adamant bias favoring the southern white working class versus the wealthy planter class, rather than a blanket favoring of the Confederate South over the Union North, a viewpoint reflected in the President’s Reconstruction policy. As the Tennessee Military Governor’s wife, Eliza Johnson had lived from the spring of 1863 to the spring of 1865 with her family in a large and beautiful Nashville mansion on Charlotte Avenue. The house had been confiscated from its Confederate owner, Lizinka Campbell Brown Ewall, with whom Eliza Johnson and her daughter Martha Patterson were, in fact, social friends.
With extensive land holdings, which she managed as an independent businesswoman, daughter of a former U.S. Minister to Russia, and friend of the Russian Czarina, Lizinka Ewall was a prominent leader of Nashville’s social elite. Fleeing her home there after Union occupation in 1862 she then married Confederate general Richard S. Ewall and assumed management of his military affairs. In early 1865, however, Mrs. Ewall returned to Nashville with a note to Eliza Johnson asking for “use of one or two rooms in my own house.” Eliza Johnson would not respond. Ewall’s daughter, however, later revealed that “subsequent events” (for which she provided no details) proved that “Mrs. Johnson showed it to her husband.” Whether it was the nature of Ewall’s demand or the confrontation manner in which it was made, Eliza Johnson had taken offense from it and this influenced not only her husband’s decision to relinquish no part of the house but to also deny and delay Ewall’s plea to have her husband released early as a prisoner of war. In her 13 July 1865 note to him, even Ewall acknowledges that making her plea was likely “making some mistake as in my note to Mrs. Johnson.”
Several of Johnson’s contemporaneous biographers credit Eliza Johnson’s sagacity as a guide for him through his political rise. One source termed her a “counsellor” and “assistant.” Tracing the potential political decisions or policy her personal and emotional influence on him may have led to is difficult to assess. In examining the second floor configuration during the Johnson Administration, the oft-repeated claim that her sitting room was directly across the hall from his office seems dubious, since that space had already been appropriated for use as executive offices; more likely it seems the office referred to was a sitting room in the President’s personal suite, in which he likely worked and held private meetings. While the political animosity towards Johnson was based on his policy decisions, his irascible moods and impulsive bluntness discouraged his enemies from seeking compromise. Eliza Johnson’s greatest influence was an ability to defuse and reduce his confrontational rhetoric, greater discipline further serving his purposes. Her management of his public wardrobe was further evidence of her conscientiously maintaining his presidential dignity. She was also noted for wearing elegant clothing made from expensive fabrics.
To what degree President Johnson shared with her the details of his conflicts on Reconstruction policy with the Republican leaders in Congress and the subsequent 1868 trial for his impeachment and removal from office is unclear. However, Eliza Johnson kept herself fully apprized of the proceedings, making a close daily reading of political stories related to her husband from a variety of newspapers which she then clipped with a scissor and preserved in scrapbooks. Anecdotal claims pose her as showing him articles supportive of him in the evenings and those critical in the morning. Throughout the ordeal, she claimed to always believe he would be acquitted and she was overcome with emotional relief when she received confirmation of this prediction.
Evidence of his era’s racist attitude towards recently-freed African-American slaves is now widely attributed to Andrew Johnson, but there is scant evidence to draw any conclusion about Eliza Johnson. It has been speculated that the abolitionist policy of her Methodist Church put her at odds with her husband having bought slaves to work in their Tennessee home. At the least, there are accounts of her great personal concern for the well-being of African-American servants at the White House, to the point of her ordering that financial aid and medical care for provided for them.
Although she was First Lady before the critical momentum of the suffrage movement advocating the right to vote for women began, there is indication that Eliza Johnson believed in some degree of gender equality. Perhaps under the guidance of her mother from New England, where equal public education for female students was first enacted, Eliza Johnson was herself formally educated and insisted that both of her daughters receive that same chance, at the best possible institutions the family could afford, even though it separated her from the two girls who were, essentially, her closest friends. Further, after her daughter Martha had accepted her marriage proposal, the prospective groom approached Andrew Johnson for formal permission to marry. Johnson responded to David Patterson that, as the woman’s father, he had right to prevent or encourage what was her right to decide. It is unlikely Johnson would have so consciously expressed this unusual view had Eliza Johnson not fully shared it.
Life after the White House: The relief Eliza Johnson felt upon returning to her Greeneville home was lifted with hope seven weeks after the presidency ended as her widowed daughter Mary remarried. Just one week later, it was shattered on 27 April 1869, when the body of her son Robert Johnson was found in the house, a victim of his own suicide. This second death of an adult son, impacted by his alcoholism left Eliza Johnson broken in spirit, although the temperance pledge of her remaining son Frank, daughter Mary Stover’s remarriage, and the former president’s vindicating 1875 U.S. Senate election helped divert some of her attention on the tragedy. While the former president and his wife were in the home of Mary Stover Brown, he suffered a stroke and died. Eliza Johnson was too weak to attend his funeral service. She died five and a half months later.
Death and Burial: 15 January 1876 at Greeneville, Tennessee
Andrew Johnson National Cemetery, Greeneville, Tennessee"

First Lady Biography: Eliza Johnson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNSqworc6LI

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