Swing Around the Circle

rdf:langString Swing Around the Circle

rdf:langString Swing Around the Circle is the nickname for a speaking campaign undertaken by United States President Andrew Johnson between August 27 and September 15, 1866, in which he tried to gain support for his mild Reconstruction policies and for his preferred candidates (mostly Democrats) in the forthcoming midterm Congressional elections. The tour's nickname came from the route that the campaign took: "Washington, D.C., to New York, west to Chicago, south to St. Louis, and east through the Ohio River valley back to the nation's capital". Johnson undertook the speaking tour in the face of increasing opposition in the Northern United States and in Washington to his lenient form of Reconstruction in the Southern United States, which had led the Southern states largely to revert to the social system that had predominated before the American Civil War. Although he believed he could regain the trust of moderate Northern Republicans by exploiting tensions between them and their Radical counterparts on the tour, Johnson only alienated them more. This caused a supporter of Johnson to say of the tour that it would have been better "had it never been made." The tour eventually became the centerpiece of the tenth article of impeachment against Johnson.