Trump’s 2018 Hasn’t Been as Bad as Andrew Johnson’s 1866

In late August 1866, Andrew Johnson set out from Washington on the first and still most infamous midterm campaign swing by a sitting president. Along for the ride in his private train car were General Ulysses S. Grant, Admiral David Farragut, Secretary of State William Seward and others — including, interestingly, the Mexican minister to the U.S., Matias Romero, a friend of Grant’s. General George Armstrong Custer and his wife, Libbie, were to join up a couple of days later.

The “Swing Around the Circle,” as the voyage to New York, the Midwest and back was dubbed, started well. There were huge, enthusiastic crowds in Baltimore and New York, where Johnson’s push for reconciliation between Northern and Southern whites was popular, and respectful ones in Philadelphia, where it was less so. The president was brief and dignified in his remarks, and the newspaper coverage overwhelmingly positive. There was one minor disaster in upstate New York when a young boy’s leg was crushed by a carriage carrying Grant, and Johnson’s tendency to begin every speech with “You are aware that it is not my purpose to make a speech …” was starting to engender a few snickers. But as the train headed southeast from Buffalo into Pennsylvania and then Ohio, the trip was looking like a clear success.