Andrew Johnson National Historic Site

He worked as a tailor before he became president, and that thread runs through everything at this site in Greeneville, Tennessee. The Andrew Johnson National Historic Site preserves two of Johnson's homes, his tailor shop, and his grave within the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery — the complete arc of a man who rose from the workbench to the White House and back, all within a few square miles.

Johnson was the 17th president, inheriting the office after Lincoln's assassination and immediately inheriting the war over Reconstruction. His fight with Congress ended in impeachment in 1868 — and acquittal. The site keeps that reckoning alive: visitors receive a copy of the admission ticket to Johnson's impeachment hearings and vote annually on whether he should have been removed from office.

The tailor shop remains much as it was in Johnson's day, enclosed inside a memorial building erected by the state of Tennessee in 1923 to protect it. His homestead — a Greek Revival two-story brick house — is maintained as it looked when he and his wife lived there after his presidency ended in 1869. The cemetery on what is now called Monument Hill holds Johnson, his wife, and his son.