The Impeachment Trial of President Andrew Johnson

In 1868, Congress impeached President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, who had taken over after the assassination of Lincoln. This event nearly plunged the nation into a second civil conflict. Congressional Republicans were incensed by the mistreatment of freed slaves, the threat of former rebels regaining control in the South, and Johnson's tumultuous political approach. They latched onto a legal technicality for impeachment: whether Johnson rightfully dismissed his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton.

Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, despite his failing health, played a pivotal role in leading the impeachment efforts against President Johnson. Assisted covertly by the military legend and potential future president, General Ulysses S. Grant, Stevens worked behind the scenes to push forward the political agenda authorized by the nation's leader, President Lincoln.

During the Senate trial, the most brilliant legal minds of the time clashed with some of the most unscrupulous. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, influential political players orchestrated maneuvers to safeguard President Johnson's position through political agreements, job promises, and even cash bribes. By a narrow margin of a single vote, Johnson narrowly evaded conviction. This pivotal moment in history showcased the intense political battles surrounding the impeachment of a president in a divided nation still reeling from the aftermath of Lincoln's presidency.

David Stewart, the writer of the extremely acclaimed
The Summer season of 1787 , the bestselling account of the writing of the Structure, challenges the standard model of this pivotal second in American historical past. Quite than seeing Johnson as Abraham Lincoln’s political inheritor, Stewart explains how the Tennessean squandered Lincoln’s political legacy of equality and equity and helped power the freed slaves right into a brutal type of agricultural peonage throughout the South.

When the conflict between Congress and president threatened to tear the nation aside, the impeachment course of substituted authorized fight for violent confrontation. Each side struggled to inject which means into the baffling requirement {that a} president be eliminated just for “excessive crimes and misdemeanors,” whereas using devious courtroom gambits, backstairs spies, and hovering rhetoric. When the mud lastly settled, the impeachment course of had allowed passions to chill sufficiently for the nation to outlive the bitter disaster.