The presidency of Andrew Johnson began on April 15, 1865, when Andrew Johnson became President of the United States upon the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and ended on March 4, 1869. At the suggestion of Attorney General James Speed, Johnson allowed a military commission to try the surviving alleged perpetrators of Lincoln's assassination. A six-week trial culminated in death sentences for four of the defendants, along with lesser sentences for the others. The events of the assassination resulted in speculation, then and subsequently, concerning Johnson and what the conspirators might have intended for him. J. Wilkes Booth.' Johnson regretted Grant's victory, in part because of their animus from the Stanton affair. A 2006 poll of historians ranked Johnson's decision to oppose greater equality for African Americans in the aftermath of the Civil War as the second-worst mistake ever made by a sitting president. Historian Elizabeth R. Varon writes:
n/a
n/a