DEFENDER OF THE CONSTITUTION

Two biographies of Andrew Johnson will be published in March. The first, by Milton Lomask (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, reported 11 (J-11) is a competent historical account. This is a much more personal rendition geared toward a wider, popular audience. In it, Margaret Green dramatizes the most important events of Johnson's career -- his beginnings as a tailor in Greeneville, Tennessee, his meeting with Eliza McCardle, his intense interest in local and national politics and the development of his own political career. The stress throughout is on Johnson the man, seen by the author as a real and vital human being, worthy of forgiveness for human foibles. Thus, the fiasco of Johnson's Senate speech, the error he made in overlooking a plea for clemency for a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination, his rigid interpretation of the law, come through in a softer light against which his achievements shine. .A more readable, though less detailed, biography than the first.