Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 – July 31, 1875) was the seventeenth President of the United States (1865–1869), succeeding to the presidency upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a US Senator from Tennessee at the time of the secession of the southern states. He was the only Southern Senator not to quit his post upon secession. He was representative of the slaveowning War Democrats from the border states who supported the Union. In 1862 Johnson was appointed military governor of Tennessee, and fought the rebellion there. Lincoln selected Johnson for the Vice President slot in 1864 on the "Union Party." As president he took charge of Presidential Reconstruction—that is, the first phase of Reconstruction—which lasted until the Radical Republicans gained control of Congress in the 1866 elections. His conciliatory policies towards the South, his hurry to reincorporate the former Confederates back into the union, and his vetoes of civil rights bills embroiled him in a bitter dispute with the Radical Republicans. The Radicals in the House of Representatives impeached him in 1868; he was the first President to be impeached, but he was acquitted by a single vote in the Senate.