Andrew Johnson rose to legislative power in Tennessee, but he joined with the Union in disavowing the Southern states’ secession and, as Abraham Lincoln’s vice president, supported ending slavery. As a president with humble origins, Johnson held resentment towards the southern planter elite, but neither was his attitude favorable to the now formerly enslaved. Conceiving that efforts to achieve equality for African Americans discriminated against white Americans, Johnson believed that the federal government should have no hand in aiding the transition of the formerly enslaved to freedom or citizenship.