Virginia and Tennessee Railroad Co. signed by William Mahone - Issued to Andrew Johnson - 1869 Autographed Stock Certificate

$100 8% Bond issued to Andrew Johnson and signed by Confederate General Wm. Mahone. Portrait and biography included.

General William Mahone  (1826-1895) A member of the first graduating class of Virginia Military Institute (VMI), he was trained as a civil engineer. He helped build Virginia's roads and railroads in the antebellum and postbellum (reconstruction) periods.

As a Major General of the Confederate Army, Mahone is best known for turning the tide of the Battle of the Crater against the Union advance during the Siege of Petersburg in the U.S. Civil War.

Mahone became a political leader in Virginia, led the Readjuster Party and helped obtain funding in 1881 for a teacher's school which later grew to become Virginia State University. Small of stature, he was nicknamed "Little Billy".

In 1853, he was hired as chief engineer to build the new Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad. Still in use 150 years later, Mahone's corduroy design withstands immense tonnages of modern coal traffic. He was also responsible for engineering and building the famous 52 mile-long tangent track between Suffolk and Petersburg. With no curves, it is a major artery of modern Norfolk Southern rail traffic.

In 1854, Mahone surveyed and laid out streets and lots of Ocean View City, a new resort town fronting on the Chesapeake Bay in Norfolk County. With the advent of electric streetcars in the late 19th century, an amusement park was developed there and a boardwalk built along the adjacent beach area.

As the political differences between north and south escalated in the 2nd half of the 19th century, Mahone was in favor of secession of the southern states. During  Civil War, he was active in the actual conflict even before he became an officer in the Confederate Army.

After Virginia seceded from the Union in April, 1861, Mahone helped bluff the federal troops into abandoning the Gosport Shipyard in Portsmouth by running a single passenger train into Norfolk with great noise and whistle-blowing, then much more quietly, sending it back west, and then returning the same train again (again with much noise, etc.) creating the illusion of large numbers of arriving troops to the federals listening in Portsmouth (and just barely out of sight). The ruse worked, and not a single Confederate soldier was lost as the Union authorities abandoned the area, and retreated to Fort Monroe across Hampton Roads. After this, Mahone accepted a commission as Lt. Col. and later Colonel of the 6th Virginia Infantry Regiment in the Confederate Army. He was promoted to Brigadier General in November, 1861.

Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States, served from 1865 to 1869. He assumed the presidency after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. A Southern Democrat, Johnson ran with Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket in 1864. He favored restoring the seceded states to the Union without protecting the freed slaves and pardoning ex-Confederates, leading to conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress. He was impeached by the House of Representatives in 1868 but acquitted in the Senate by one vote.

Johnson, born into poverty and illiterate, apprenticed as a tailor and worked in frontier towns before settling in Greeneville, Tennessee. He served as alderman, mayor, and Tennessee House of Representatives member before becoming a senator in 1857. During his congressional service, he championed the Homestead Bill, which was enacted after his Senate resignation in 1862. Despite Tennessee’s secession into the Confederacy, Johnson remained loyal to the Union. Appointed Military Governor of Tennessee in 1862, he was Lincoln’s running mate in 1864, symbolizing national unity, and became vice president after a successful election.

Johnson implemented his own form of Presidential Reconstruction, directing seceded states to hold conventions and elections to reform their civil governments. Southern states returned old leaders and passed Black Codes, but Republicans refused to seat them and advanced legislation to override them. Johnson vetoed their bills, and Republicans overrode him, setting a pattern for his presidency. He opposed the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave citizenship to former slaves. In 1866, he toured the nation to promote his policies, but Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, restricting his ability to fire Cabinet officials. He persisted in dismissing the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, but was impeached and narrowly avoided conviction. He didn’t win the 1868 Democratic presidential nomination and left office the following year.

Johnson returned to Tennessee and was elected to the Senate in 1875, becoming the only president to serve in the Senate afterward. He died five months into his term. His strong opposition to federally guaranteed rights for African Americans is widely criticized, and historians consistently rank him as one of the worst U.S. presidents.

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