Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

11 Key excerpts on "Impeachment of Andrew Johnson"

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  High Crimes and Misdemeanors

  A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump

  • Frank O. Bowman III(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Although the final failure of Reconstruction in the 1870s was due to many factors, the Senate’s refusal to remove Johnson in 1868 undoubtedly contributed to that failure and to the descent into a century of black repression under Jim Crow. 178 The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson Even strident policy disagreement between a president and the dominant con- gressional party should not ordinarily constitute grounds for impeachment. Both the executive and legislative branches have the power, and responsibility, to interpret the constitution according to their own best lights and to act in accordance with that interpretation. Nonetheless, in case of irreconcilable disagreement on fundamental questions, some choice must be made. Most of the time, the decision falls to the Supreme Court. Sometimes, the points at issue do not fall within the Court’s jurisdiction or it will decide to abstain. In the impeachment clauses, the constitution confers on Congress the power, in the last extremity, to choose its fundamental vision of America over the idiosyncratic view entertained by the individual person occupying the presidency. Johnson’s conduct merited impeachment because he abused his executive power in the service of a vision that was morally wrong (even if he and many of his contemporaries could not yet see it to be so) and, entirely predictably, endangered the long-term tranquility of the constitutional order. Congress could, entirely constitutionally, have removed him and in doing so charted a different course for the Republic. Lessons from the Johnson Impeachment 179

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  Edmund G. Ross

  Soldier, Senator, Abolitionist

  • Richard A. Ruddy(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • UNM Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL OF ANDREW JOHNSON

  [I] weighed the cause as the Constitution and laws and my oath demanded. —Ross, speech to the United States Senate, May 27, 1868

  ALTHOUGH THE 1868 MOVE to impeach Andrew Johnson became tied to Johnson’s defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, the impeachment always was more about politics than it was about a violation of law. It was inextricably linked to the Reconstruction Acts and Johnson’s obstructionist policies.

  The first effort to impeach, in December 1867, had failed when the House was unable to find charges against Johnson substantial enough to warrant his removal. No president had ever been impeached, and so no precedent existed for removal from office. The House, in the 1867 effort, had by implication made “high crimes and misdemeanors” sufficient justification for impeachment. So as the impeachment trial of 1868 began, the question before the House, as prosecutor, and the Senate, as jurists, became to decide whether Andrew Johnson had violated a valid law and, if so, whether that was an impeachable offense.

  The 1867 Tenure of Office Act made it illegal for the president to remove any government officer appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate unless and until the Senate confirmed a replacement. The law covered officeholders from cabinet members right down to postmasters in the smallest towns in the United States. An exception in the law allowed the president to remove an official when the Senate was in adjournment, but the Senate had the right of review upon reconvening. Clearly Johnson was in violation, or attempting to be in violation, of the Tenure of Office Act with the appointment of General Lorenzo Thomas to replace Edwin Stanton in February 1868 while the Senate was in session. In the eyes of the Radical leaders in Congress, this was all that was needed to seek the removal of Johnson. So eager were the Radicals in the House of Representatives that their vote on impeachment was taken even before they had drawn up articles.

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  The Reconstruction Era

  Primary Documents on Events from 1865 to 1877

  • Donna L. Dickerson(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  C H A P T E R 15 Impeachment of President Johnson, 1868 resident Andrew Johnson was not an easy man to get along with— dther socially or politically. He prided himself on his consistent and persistent adherence to a narrow set of political principles and rarely compromised on those beliefs. He also was not an astute politician. He could not "read" the public—either in the North or in the South—well enough to realize that as each day of his administration passed, he was los- ing the support of an increasing number of Republicans and Democrats. Some of the more radical members of Congress wanted to oust Johnson from the first day he stepped into the White House. However, the majority of Republicans believed they could work with the president and convince him of the necessity of a strong Reconstruction policy. But Johnson refused to cooperate and at every turn found ways to disassemble Congress's work. For example, when he disallowed further confiscation of rebel lands, he took away the major source of financial support for the Freedmen's Bureau. By pardoning thousands of rebels, he enabled the old planter class to reas- sume leadership in the South. Johnson also used his presidential power of appointment to replace thousands of federal officeholders with men of his own political sentiments. As one contemporary said, Johnson "set back the work of Reconstruction ... two full years." 1 In 1867, Congress's patience was strained to the breaking point. Unless Republicans found a way to slow down the president's attempts to frustrate Reconstruction, the entire effort would be lost. The chance came with the Tenure of Office Act passed in March 1867, which required Senate approval if the president removed a cabinet member. In August, when Congress was in recess, Johnson decided to challenge the Tenure of Office Act by asking for Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's res- ignation.

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  A Companion to the Reconstruction Presidents, 1865 - 1881

  • Edward O. Frantz(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  To the Radical Republicans in Congress, however, the election of 1867 confirmed the need to remove President Johnson from office. Their Reconstruction agenda was in trouble. The House Judiciary Committee resumed hearings on the impeachment question on November 15. Unsurprisingly, the committee did not uncover any new evidence connecting President Johnson to an indictable offense. And yet, on November 25, Congressman John C. Churchill of New York changed his mind and recommended impeachment. The committee was now 5–4 in favor of impeachment. The committee issued three reports. A majority report recommended impeachment on grounds of “usurpation of power.” A Republican minority report fell short of recommending impeachment and instead recommended censuring the President. A third minority report fully supported the President. On December 7, the House defeated the committee’s recommendation by a vote of 57 to 108. Notably, 68 Republicans cast negative votes.

  In the end, President Johnson proved to be his own worst enemy. His continued defiance led to a second impeachment resolution on February 14, 1868, which the moderates managed to table in committee. Up to this point, the president had been careful to offer the Radicals nothing that could be construed as an impeachable offense under the constitutional standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But Johnson pressed his advantage too far and, ten days later, the Radicals would finally get their man. At the heart of the impeachment lay the Tenure of Office Act and President Johnson’s removal of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

  By the summer of 1867, the Radicals’ intentions to take the lead in reconstructing the South were clear, and so was Johnson’s defiance. While a special House committee led by Ben Butler met to investigate Lincoln’s murder – and any role that Johnson might have played in it – the president countered by removing political appointees who were zealously carrying the Reconstruction agenda in the South. These included four of the five district commanders in the South under the Military Reconstruction Act, heads of the Freedmen’s Bureaus and, most importantly, Secretary Stanton. As a Lincoln appointee, it was an open question whether Stanton was protected by the Tenure of Office Act. On August 5, Johnson requested Stanton’s resignation, but the Secretary refused to give it. Johnson then promptly suspended him pending Senate approval and appointed General Grant as interim Secretary. This was a crucial mistake. In his message to Congress on December 12, stating his reasons for suspending Stanton, Johnson failed to argue that the secretary was not covered by the Act; instead, he argued the merits. The very next day, the Senate refused to acquiesce to Stanton’s removal as required by law. Eight days later, acting without the advice of his cabinet and against the express wishes of his Attorney General, Johnson removed Stanton in direct violation of the law (Trefousse, 1975). On February 24, Johnson was impeached by a strict party vote, 128 to 47, with 15 members not voting. The House appointed Thaddeus Stevens and John Bingham to notify the Senate of the impeachment vote.

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  The Politics of Presidential Impeachment

  • Daniel P. Franklin, Stanley M. Caress, Robert M. Sanders, Cole D. Taratoot(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • SUNY Press

    (Publisher)

  34

  7. ACCUSED OF CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR —ACTUAL

  Chapter 1 outlined the constitutional provisions that refer to actual criminal behavior as “high crimes and misdemeanors.” While the definition of what actions constitute a high crime and what actions constitute a misdemeanor is not clear, these actions can be said to have general, though not exclusive, application to actions by a president that are criminal in nature. In other words, this involves some criminal wrongdoing by the president and something that is clearly legal in nature.

  Andrew Johnson was never accused of committing a real crime at any time during his presidency, with the dubious exception of the Tenure of Office Act. Additionally, during his long public career he was never tarnished by any legal scandal and there was never a hint of criminal activity in his public or private life. His personal life was exemplary. He had a reputation for being trustworthy and honest. His loyalty to the United States was beyond reproach. His steadfast refusal to support the secessionist movement in Tennessee and his firm commitment to preserving the Union demonstrated his unwavering allegiance to his country.35 In fact, during the trial, his defense attorneys went to great lengths to extoll Johnson’s patriotism and to recount how he put his own life in danger during the early days of the war by staying loyal to the Union.

  Ironically, there was an unscrupulous conspiracy by a couple of congressmen early in his presidency to falsely implicate Johnson in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was also the victim of false accusations during the first attempt to impeach him when it was rumored that he blocked the confiscation of a Southern railroad for personal gain. In fact, Johnson took steps to prevent the railroad from being seized from its rightful owner who Johnson personally knew was pro-Union. Johnson acted because taking the railroad owner’s property after the war was completely unjustified.

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  Checking Executive Power

  Presidential Impeachment in Comparative Perspective

  • Jody C. Baumgartner, Naoko Kada, Jody C. Baumgartner, Naoko Kada(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Attempts to convince Wade to recuse himself (he had a personal stake in the matter, and was already in the process of selecting his prospective cabinet) failed, adding still more political over- tones to the already highly politicized proceedings. 34 When the trial began on March 5,1868, the House managers pursued a legal argument, holding that Johnson had violated the Tenure of Office 28 Checking Executive Power Act, as well as a contradictory argument that "impeachment was a political and not a judicial process and therefore the Senate did not have to decide whether the President had committed an indictable offense but only whether he was fit to continue in office." 35 We are "bound by no law," stated one House manager. 36 The first vote, on the comprehensive Article XI, was taken by the Senate on May 16. Ten of the 45 Republicans joined nine Democrats in voting for acquittal—enough to sustain the pres- ident by one vote. 37 Ten days later the Republican caucus decided to bring up Articles II and III, but the result was the same and the Republicans decided to give up, bringing the trial to an end. "The Senate's trial of Johnson," according to presidential scholar Michael Nelson, "was marred by serious violations of due process and inappropriate political pas- sion." 38 Andrew Johnson would remain in office. In 1932, during the December lame-duck session of Congress, Lewis McFadden (R-PA) introduced a resolution to impeach President Herbert Hoover for "usurping legislative powers and violating constitutional and statutory law" in connection with Hoover's declaration of a moratorium on European payment of World War I debts. 39 The House voted on the motion twice and it was tabled both times—361-8 in December 1932 and 343-11 in January 1933. Notably, McFadden's resolution for impeachment was brought by a member of the president's own party, although the opposition Democrats controlled the House.

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  Eyewitness to Watergate

  • David Hosansky(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • CQ Press

    (Publisher)

  Many historians view Clinton’s transgres-sions as far less serious than those of Nixon. Clin-ton lied about his personal activities, whereas Nixon sought to cover up crimes that involved the abuse of power and even threatened the country’s democratic system. Nevertheless, Clin-ton’s actions were more troubling than those of President Johnson. Congress impeached John-134 PART II: The White House Tapes son for trying to remove a cabinet member from office, which is generally considered within a president’s authority. Andrew Johnson The impeachment and trial of President Andrew Johnson in 1868 . . . was based on the charge of his violation of a federal statute, the Tenure of Office Act. But in addi-tion, the procedure was a profoundly political struggle between irreconcilable forces. Questions such as control of the Repub-lican Party, how to deal with the South, in a state of chaos following the Civil War, and monetary and economic policy all had an effect on the process. Johnson as President was an anomaly. Lincoln’s running mate in 1864, he was a southerner at a time when the South was out of the union; a Jacksonian Democrat who believed in states’ rights, hard money, and minimal federal government activity running with an administration pursuing a policy of expansion both in the money supply and the role of government; a man who had little regard for the Negro in the midst of a party many of whose members were actively seek-ing to guarantee the rights of the newly freed slaves. In these contradictions lay the basis for an inevitable conflict. The interplay of per-sonalities and policies decreed that the con-flict would result in an impeachment process. Johnson had been the only member of the U.S. Senate from a seceding southern state (Tennessee) to remain loyal to the Union in 1861. Lincoln later made him mili-tary governor of Tennessee and chose him as his running mate in 1864 as a southerner and Democrat who was also a loyalist and in favor of prosecuting the war.

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  A Dangerous Stir

  Fear, Paranoia, and the Making of Reconstruction

  • Mark Wahlgren Summers(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • The University of North Carolina Press

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 9Impeachment Fevers, 1867

  The President will doubtless be pressed by extreme men to do some imprudent things, but I have now no reason to suppose that he will yield to the pressure. —Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch

  As revolution unfolded across the South, all lay quiet on the Potomac—at least comparatively speaking. The president made himself a nuisance to Republicans, congressmen passed new laws to limit his powers for mischief, and most of the majority probably felt like the preacher who remarked that, although he wished Andrew Johnson no harm, he would not mind if the Lord took a sudden fancy to him. Yet at year’s end, Johnson was alive and kicking, in full possession of his faculties, unashamed and untamed. For all the predictions of alarmed conservatives the autumn before, Congress had failed to impeach Andrew Johnson. At first glance, impeachment might seem the great nonstory of the year.

  But it was much more momentous than that. What failed to happen set other forces in motion, and it did nothing to ease the tensions between radicals and moderates, Congress and the president. If anything, it heightened them. The fear of impeachment, and of the conspiracies behind it on both sides, poisoned politics markedly and contributed to the Republican Party’s shift away from radicalism. But quite possibly it also explains the one thing that historians think needs no explaining, because it did not exist: the comparative moderation of Andrew Johnson.

  Moderate? Cautious? Andrew Johnson? Connecting those words with so reckless—or dauntless—a president flies in the face of all scholarly wisdom, not to mention common sense. Every time Congress adjourned, he would do something provocative.1 Le Monde ’s American correspondent, Georges Clemenceau, described the wearisome pattern. Republicans limited themselves “to binding Andrew Johnson firmly with good brand-new laws. At each session they add a shackle to his bonds, tighten the bit in a different place, file a claw or draw a tooth, and then when he is well bound up, fastened, and caught in an inextricable net of laws and decrees, more or less contradicting each other, they tie him to the stake of the Constitution and take a good look at him, feeling quite sure he cannot move this time. But then . . . Samson summons all his strength, and bursts his cords and bonds with a mighty effort, and the Philistines (I mean the radicals) flee in disorder to the Capitol to set to work making new laws stronger than the old, which will break in their turn at the first test.”2

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  Presidents in the Movies

  American History and Politics on Screen

  • I. Morgan(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 7 The President Impeached: Tennessee Johnson and Nixon Iwan W. Morgan Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon held the presidency a century apart but are linked by the common experience of being charged with “high crimes and misdemeanors” in the impeachment process. 1 The only president other than Bill Clinton to have undergone impeach- ment trial, Johnson escaped conviction when the Senate came up one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for a guilty verdict in May 1868. The only president to resign office, Nixon quit in August 1974 to avoid almost certain pronouncement of guilt had the Senate considered articles of impeachment that had been approved by the House of Representatives. Another connection between the seventeenth and thirty-seventh presidents is that both are the subject of cinematic biopics. A com- parison of Tennessee Johnson (1942) and Nixon (1995) provides opportunity to examine the relationship between America’s movie history and its political history. This essay considers two key elements of this intersection. First, both films offer insights into the changing attitudes of Hollywood in particular and American society more gen- erally about presidential power, politics, and personality in the fifty years that separated their making. Tennessee Johnson presents its main character as a true patriot, one unjustly subjected to impeach- ment charges because of his staunch belief in the need for national reconciliation and unity after the Civil War. Nixon uses its protago- nist to highlight the moral decline of America’s political leadership class in the era of the Vietnam War. Second, both raise fundamental and perennial questions about the utility of Hollywood film as his- tory by engaging in substantial inaccuracies to develop their message regarding Johnson and Nixon. Iwan W. Morgan 152 Tennessee Johnson and Nixon: Production and Main-Character Casting Tennessee Johnson and Nixon are very much movies of their times in terms of their making.

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  Jeremiah Sullivan Black

  A Defender of the Constitution and the Ten Commandments

  • William Norwood Brigance(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection

    (Publisher)

  The movement for impeachment began early and had an undulating career. As early as December 1865, eight months after the death of Lincoln, the New Orleans Tribune launched an impeachment cam-paign. 1 Wendell Phillips, in May of 1866, began his attack against Johnson 2 and soon after was violently calling for impeachment. Ben-jamin F. Butler, at Cincinnati in October of 1866, was crying out Impeach him and remove him now, and threatening to call out the Civil War Boys in Blue to overawe Johnson and the standing army. 3 James M. Ashley of Ohio moved impeachment in the House on January 7, 1867, while Congress was drafting the Reconstruction Acts. 4 The Judiciary Committee began its labors and by November had filled a 1200-page Congressional volume with evidence. No im-peachment proceedings, however, were voted on during the first ses-sion of the Fortieth Congress. Thaddeus Stevens, with his finger on the national pulse, was holding back the Radicals to await the further rise of a public delirium. Meanwhile Congress had passed a Tenure-of-Office Act forbidding the President to remove any official during the term for which he was appointed. This Act was aimed to protect Stanton, now serving the Radicals as watchdog and spy in Johnson's Cabinet. But Johnson, on August 6, 1867, deliberately removed Stanton from office—acting upon the ground, first, that the Tenure-of-Office Act was unconstitu-tional; and second, that Stanton was Lincoln's appointee, not John-son's, and that the term for which he was appointed had ended March Congress now had its long-awaited cause for action. Thaddeus Stevens—old, tottering, slowly dying, with ghastly parchment skin 1 Welles s Diary, Dec. 11 and 18, 1865. ' C. Martyn, Wendell Phillips, p. 353. * Cincinnati Commercial, October 8, 1866. ' Welles s Diary, January 7, 1867. 5 Ibid., August 5, 1867. 4, 1865. 5 180

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  Legacies of Losing in American Politics

  • Jeffrey K. Tulis, Nicole Mellow(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • University of Chicago Press

    (Publisher)

  3

  Reconstruction

  Andrew Johnson’s Politics of Obstruction

  Andrew Johnson is generally regarded as one of the worst presidents in American political history. It would be hard to think of a clearer example of failed leadership. His vision and his specific plans for bringing the South back into the Union were rejected by Congress. He aggressively opposed the major post–Civil War Reconstruction agenda, which was legislated by Northerners in Congress over his vetoes. Amendments to the Constitution that he opposed were passed by Congress and ratified by a northern national majority. The victorious opposition against him included leaders of Johnson’s own governing coalition, and they grew to detest him. Johnson’s extraordinary string of political defeats culminated in his impeachment, the first of a president. He escaped conviction by the narrowest of margins and left office politically defeated and disgraced.

  Yet it was Andrew Johnson’s vision, not that of Reconstruction lawmakers, that reconstituted American politics. Despite the significance of the “second American founding,” policies similar to those Johnson had advanced as president quickly replaced those that constituted the Reconstruction agenda, evidencing such a powerful hold on the polity that they made a mockery of the amended Constitution. Johnson’s vision was woven into the very fabric of American political life for a century, in ways that we still contend with today. Less than a handful of presidents have been as successful as Andrew Johnson in advancing their political project.1

  That Andrew Johnson failed to legislate his vision while in office and that American political development subsequently came to be characterized by policies close to those he preferred are facts that would be difficult to contest. Indeed, while Anti-Federal success in influencing constitutional interpretation is not very well appreciated, the failure to adhere to post–Civil War Reconstruction amendments in any meaningful fashion is well known. It is therefore surprising that major studies of American politics that conjoin Andrew Johnson’s legislative defeats and eventual policy success are so difficult to find. Perhaps this reflects social science’s discomfort with the ironic. Our central argument, however, goes beyond reflection on the ironic conjunction. We claim that these two facts are connected historically, that Andrew Johnson’s political failure as a president was itself the instrument for the later success of his policies.

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