Papers of Presidents Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, and William McKinley Now Online at Library of Congress: Three Presidencies that Began or Ended with the Trauma of Assassination.

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The papers of a trio of U.S. presidents--Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, and William McKinley--have been digitized and now are available online for the first time from the Library of Congress. The three presidencies represented in these collections all began or ended with the trauma of an assassination. The papers of each president, however, offer different types and levels of documentation as to how each man faced the challenges of his administration and the style in which he governed.

* Papers of Pres. Andrew Johnson (1808-75). The Johnson collection includes about 40,000 items, mostly dating from 1865-69, including correspondence, memoranda, diaries, speeches, courts-martial and amnesty records, financial records, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, and photographs.

As vice president, Johnson, a native of Tennessee, succeeded to the presidency following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865. Lincoln's death plunged the country into further turmoil even as the end of the Civil War was within sight. The task of guiding the nation through Reconstruction fell to Johnson as he became the 17th president.

Johnson had been affiliated with the Democratic Party, but was added to a unionist presidential ticket with Lincoln, a Republican, in 1864. Ideological and political differences between Johnson and members of the Republican Party became quickly evident as they debated the conditions for Confederate states to rejoin the Union as well as the rights and protections of African-Americans after emancipation.

The issues of Reconstruction dominated Johnson's presidency, and his disputes with Congress ultimately led to Johnson's impeachment in 1868.

Johnson's perspectives on Reconstruction are particularly well represented in his papers, especially in the series containing correspondence, messages, executive documents, and amnesty records.

* Papers of Pres. Chester A. Arthur (1829-86). The Arthur collection includes about 4,400 items mostly dating from 1870-86, including correspondence, financial records, scrapbooks, and other papers related to his presidency.

Arthur had become vice president as part of a presidential ticket that combined opposite wings of the Republican Party with Pres. James A. Garfield in the election of 1880. A mentally disturbed office seeker, Charles J. Guiteau, assassinated Garfield to install the more patronage-friendly Arthur as president. Garfield survived for 80 days before dying on Sept. 19,1881. Arthur would...