Sold – Andrew Johnson Endorsed Paycheck As the Only Southerner in Congress

By the end of February 1861, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas had seceded from the Union. Their representatives in Congress had all returned from Washington to their native states. Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee were awaiting events, but their leaders were showing sympathy with their fellow-Southern states and insisting that they must not be coerced into remaining in the Union. Thus, it was clear that their secession was a distinct possibility if the Federal government mounted a military response against already seceeded states. There was only one Southerner in Congress who took a position in opposition to secession no matter what it took – Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, who in December 1860 made a firey anti-secession speech. He followed up on this in an address on the floor of the Senate delivered on February 5-6, 1861, in which Johnson stated that he “planted myself…in vindication of the Union and the Constitution, and against the doctrine of nullification or secession…I am against this doctrine entirely. I commenced making war on it – a war for the Constitution and the Union – and I intend to sink or swim upon it.”?He attacked the doctrine of secession in detail, pleaded that it was illegal and would destroy the government, and ended by saying, “I intend to stand by that flag, and by the Union of which it is an emblem…God preserve my country from treason and traitors!” He also warned that war could result from secession.

By May, all of the Southern states, including Johnson’s Tennessee, had seceded. But he did not return to Tennessee, he stayed at his desk in the Senate, representing not merely Tennessee, but the proposition that secession was illegal and that the Southern states were not truly out of the Union.

Just days before giving this speech, on February 1, 1861, Johnson’s pay as a Senator was due. He received this imprinted check drawn on the Treasurer of the U.S. for $510.21, and labeled at left as “Compensation,” made out to A. Johnson, and signed by Asbury Dickins, who was in his last year as Secretary of the U.S. Senate. The check is endorsed by Johnson in full on the verso, and a notation in another hand indicates that Johnson took the funds in gold. So here Johnson is paid for his work as the only Southrn Congressman not merely opposing secession, but fighting it.

A search of auction records fails to turn up another official paycheck for any person who became President in either the 18th or 19th centuries, nor can we recall having seen any.