Swing Around the Circle

This article is part of a series about Andrew Johnson
Personal Early life Slavery Legacy Bibliography 15th Governor of Tennessee Governorship 16th Vice President of the United States Vice presidency Drunk V.P. inaugural address Assassination of Abraham Lincoln 17th President of the United States Presidency Inauguration Foreign policy Cabinet appointment Judicial appointment Conclusion of Civil War Reconstruction era Reconstruction Acts Civil Rights Act (1866) Swing Around the Circle Impeachment First inquiry Second inquiry Trial Managers investigation Efforts Timeline Articles of impeachment Vice presidential and Presidential campaigns 1864 National Union national convention election 1868 Democratic National Convention Post-presidency Return to Senate Death Cemetery Historic Site Family Eliza McCardle Johnson Martha Johnson Patterson Charles Johnson Mary Johnson Stover Robert Johnson Frank Johnson
v t e

Swing Around the Circle is the nickname for a speaking campaign undertaken by U.S. President Andrew Johnson between August 27 and September 15, 1866, in which he tried to gain support for his obstructionist Reconstruction policies and for his preferred candidates (mostly Democrats) in the forthcoming midterm Congressional elections. The tour's nickname came from the route that the campaign took: "Washington, D.C., to New York, west to Chicago, south to St. Louis, and east through the Ohio River valley back to the nation's capital".

Johnson undertook the speaking tour in the face of increasing opposition in the Northern United States and in Washington to his lenient form of Reconstruction in the Southern United States, which had led the Southern states largely to revert to the social system that had predominated before the American Civil War. Although he believed he could regain the trust of moderate Northern Republicans by exploiting tensions between them and their Radical counterparts on the tour, Johnson only alienated them more. This caused a supporter of Johnson to say of the tour that it would have been better "had it never been made."^[1] Critics simultaneously derided the tour as boring and irrelevant and as a platform for showcasing Johnson's weaknesses: "ill-tempered, illiterate, semi-insane, and thoroughly undignified."^[2] But the tour eventually became the centerpiece of the tenth article of impeachment against Johnson.