QuotesCosmos
Letter to William L. Sharkey, governor of Mississippi (June 1865).
“

If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their names and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, and would completely disarm the adversary. This you can do with perfect safety. And as a consequence, the radicals, who are wild upon negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempts to keep the Southern States from renewing their relations to the Union.

— Andrew Johnson

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their names and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, and would completely disarm the adversary. This you can do with perfect safety. And as a consequence, the radicals, who are wild upon negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempts to keep the Southern States from renewing their relations to the Union." in the context of "Letter to William L. Sharkey, governor of Mississippi (June 1865)." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Andrew Johnson" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

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#Andrew Johnson#completely#franchise#persons#states#color#constitution#consequence#adversary#relations#elective#radicals
Andrew Johnson

About Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson (29 December 1808 – 31 July 1875) was the seventeenth president of the United States (1865–1869), succeeding to the presidency upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a Democrat from the Southern states but had supported the Union in the American Civil War and had been nominated as the running mate in Abraham Lincoln's Republican campaign. He presided over the Reconstruction of the United States following the American Civil War and was the first president to be impeached, although he was subsequently acquitted by a single vote in the Senate. As President, he resisted efforts from the Republican Congress to remove white-supremacist supporters of the former Confederacy from state governments and to extend franchise and civil rights to African Americans. For this, historians usually rank him as one of the worst Presidents in U.S. history.