Qualla: Andrew Johnson National Cemetery

Andrew Johnson National Cemetery: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NPS, Public domain. In 1847, Andrew Johnson sat down and wrote out his preferred funeral arrangements. He wanted his body taken to some mountain peak and either left for the vultures or burned to ash, so that the smoke might pass off in triumph over the God-forsaken and hell-deserving, money-loving, hypocritical, backbiting, Sunday-praying scoundrels of the town of Greeneville. Five years later, in 1852, he bought twenty-three acres on a rise just outside town called Signal Hill. He pointed the spot out to a friend and said this was where he wanted to rest. Johnson kept his promise to be buried away from the town, more or less. The hill where he lies became Monument Hill, then the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery in 1906, and today holds over two thousand graves.

Image: NPS | Public domain

Andrew Johnson National Cemetery: The Man at the Center

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mathew Benjamin Brady, Public domain. Johnson became the seventeenth president on April 15, 1865, when Abraham Lincoln died from John Wilkes Booth's bullet. The accidental president inherited Reconstruction at its most consequential moment, and he used the office to sabotage it. Johnson opposed civil rights for the f...

Image: Mathew Benjamin Brady | Public domain

Andrew Johnson National Cemetery: How a Hill Becomes a Cemetery

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NPS, Public domain. Johnson was buried atop Signal Hill on August 3, 1875, in a Masonic funeral. Three years later, on June 5, 1878, the city erected a 28-foot marble monument over his grave — tall enough that the hill was renamed Monument Hill almost immediately. His daughter Martha Johnson Patters...

Image: NPS | Public domain

Andrew Johnson National Cemetery: Who Else Rests Here

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NPS, Public domain. Beyond Johnson and his immediate family, the cemetery now holds soldiers from every American conflict from the Civil War through the War on Terror. That breadth is unusual — when the Park Service took over in 1942, it briefly closed the cemetery to new interments to preserve its ...

Image: NPS | Public domain

Andrew Johnson National Cemetery: An Epitaph You Have to Squint At

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mathew Benjamin Brady, Public domain. The grave marker's inscription — his faith in the people never wavered — was meant to honor Johnson's lifelong populist self-image as a tailor's apprentice who rose to the presidency without formal schooling. It also obscures whom that faith excluded. Johnson's people did not inc...

Image: Mathew Benjamin Brady | Public domain