RE DK POST AND ANDREW JOHNSON

"...We must not forget that quite a few white southerners held that view when the war began in the 1860s, and committed everything to the Union cause.  One such was Andrew Johnson, a poor white Tennessean, who remained in his seat in the Senate when Tennessee seceded and became Lincoln's vice president in 1864, with tragic consequences. (It turned out that Johnson hated free blacks even more than he hated southern planters.)..." DK

 

Reading J G Randall, Johnson was a tragic figure, and suffered tragic consequences, not for the reason DK mentions at all (very few whites, anywhere, did not detest and abhor the idea of free blacks in their state or town), but precisely because he tried faithfully to carry out Lincoln's policies regarding the aftermath of the Civil War, but his views were overruled fairly quickly by the radical Republicans in Congress who then, and for years, enjoyed a dictatorial monopoly of corrupt and constitutionally perverted power. 

See Randall, "Johnson and the Vindictives".