Contributed Photo / Greeneville’s Andrew Johnson, 17th president of the United States, didn’t have a bust in the Tennessee State Capitol until 1979.The tug of war between Gov. Bill Lee’s office and state legislative leaders over the bust of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest in the state Capitol building brings to mind the treatment of statuary in the same building of a former president of the United States.
Andrew Johnson, the Tennessean who acceded to the nation’s top office upon the 1865 assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, found no love in the Capitol building until 1979, 104 years after his death.
Tennessee’s other two presidents, Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk, already were well represented there. An outdoor statue of Jackson was erected during the 19th century, and at least three busts of the seventh president were created in the 20th century. Polk is buried on the Capitol grounds, and a bust of him was created in 1961.
But Johnson? Well, it’s complicated.
A 1979 Associated Press article intimates the 17th president, a Democrat, was shunned by his Democratic brethren, who had long dominated the Tennessee legislature, because of his association with the, uh, War of Northern Aggression.