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ALS, four pages on two adjoining sheets, 5.75 x 9, May 10, 1859. Marked “Private,” a handwritten political letter from Greeneville, Tennessee, written by Senator Andrew Johnson amid growing divisions within the Democratic Party. Johnson offers a candid assessment of factional struggles within the party, writing: “…there has been a strange state of affairs in our ranks for the last two years both in Tennessee and in Washington, which has been doing us much injury as a party.” Discussing the approaching presidential election of 1860, he remarks: “You need have no fears as to Mr. B’s being the candidate of the democratic party in 1860…I have no doubt of his aspiring to the nomination…but it will be no go in my opinion,” before adding the prescient observation: “…do not think it of much importance who may be the nominee, unless there is some change in the bleak Republican feeling in the free states and more harmony in the democratic party.” In good to very good condition, with heavy staining, areas of paper loss, and splitting to the folds partially repaired with archival tape on the reverse.
Written less than a year before the election of 1860, Johnson’s letter captures the mounting tensions that would soon fracture the Democratic Party and help pave the way for Abraham Lincoln’s victory. Writing from his East Tennessee political base, Johnson laments party infighting in both Tennessee and Washington and dismisses the prospects of “Mr. B.,” almost certainly a reference to incumbent president James Buchanan, receiving the Democratic nomination in 1860. An insightful pre-Civil War political letter from the future seventeenth president, offering a contemporary glimpse into the partisan turmoil that preceded one of the most consequential elections in American history.
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