Editing the papers of President Andrew Johnson began at UT in 1956, and the project was completed in 2001. Sixteen volumes were produced. The first volume of the papers (1822 to 1851) was accepted by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson on December 14, 1967. Funds from the National Historical Publications Commission, the Tennessee Historical Commission, and UT supported the project. Dr. LeRoy Graf and Dr. Ralph Haskins began the project. Dr. Paul Bergeron became editor in 1987.
In 1987 the project to edit the papers of Andrew Jackson moved from Nashville to UT. Also in 1987 with the move of the James K. Polk editing project from Vanderbilt to UT, the editing projects of the papers of all three United States presidents from Tennessee were combined into the Tennessee Presidents Center on the UT campus.
The bulk of the material in the 16 volumes of the Andrew Johnson papers is correspondence. Although Johnson was not a prolific writer, he was a man of the people and always elicited responses from his constituents. A unique picture of the times and how it was to live in them was achieved by using incoming correspondence—not just the letters of Johnson himself. The project produced a social as well as a political history.