Andrew Johnson Birthplace

The tiny building where the 17th President of the United States was born in 1808. Andrew Johnson rose from humble beginnings to become president following Lincoln's assassination.

The Andrew Johnson National Historic Site in Greeneville preserves the homestead, tailor shop, and grave of the nation's seventeenth president -- a man whose life was defined by conflict that seems to echo through these buildings still. Andrew Johnson was born into poverty in 1808, never attended school, and was apprenticed as a tailor before settling in Greeneville and opening a shop that became a popular meeting place where he hired people to read to him as he worked. He rose from town alderman to mayor to governor of Tennessee before becoming the only Southern senator to remain loyal to the Union after Tennessee seceded -- an act of defiance that made him a hero in the North and a reviled traitor in the South.

The hatred followed Johnson home. When President Lincoln appointed him military governor of Tennessee in 1862, Confederate and Union armies took turns occupying his Greeneville homestead. Confederate soldiers from Looney's Brigade used the house as their headquarters and covered the walls with furious graffiti. During the National Park Service's 1956 restoration, workers discovered these messages hidden beneath wallpaper that Johnson's daughter Mary had applied before the family's 1868 return from Washington. The slurs included 'Andrew Johnson - Traitor of the South,' the taunt 'Fools names and monkey's faces are often seen in public places,' and a threat warning him to 'skedaddle for Lovejoy is after you and if he git you you are a goner sartin.' Confederate soldiers J.C. Calhoun and P.W. Reavis of Looney's Brigade inscribed their names on an upstairs wall, and one soldier, J.D. Williams, even drew a self-portrait. The homestead was also used as a hospital during the fighting that saw Greeneville change hands some forty times during the war.

Johnson became vice president on March 4, 1865, and forty-two days later inherited the presidency after Lincoln's assassination. His tumultuous tenure ended with an impeachment trial in which he was acquitted by a single vote. He returned to the Senate in 1875 and died later that year, buried beneath a marble monument inscribed 'His faith in the people never wavered' at the national cemetery approximately one mile from the homestead.

According to local legend, the homestead is haunted. Staff and visitors report feeling a distinct presence in the house, particularly during quiet hours when the building is empty of tour groups. The most striking account involves a candle seen burning in a first-floor window near the front door, held by an invisible hand. A witness watched the light until it moved away from the window, then reappeared moments later in the small window on the second floor directly above the front door -- far too quickly for any living person to have climbed the stairs and lit another candle. Some believe Johnson himself returns to walk through the rooms where Confederate soldiers once scrawled their hatred on his walls, a president who could never fully escape the fury of the Civil War even in his own home.

The site is operated by the National Park Service and includes the tailor shop enclosed in a brick memorial building, the early home the family occupied from the 1830s to 1851, and the ten-room homestead purchased in 1851, which contains original family furnishings and can be visited through ranger-guided tours.