Who was the first President Impeached?
Who was the first President Impeached?
Andrew Johnson the was the first American president to be impeached.
We recently experienced only the third
impeachment in the entire country's
history so it seems like an opportune
time to go back and take a look at the
first time this has happened.
Andrew Johnson the 17th President of the
United States was formally impeached by
the House of Representatives On February
24th 1868 and faced trial over the next
three months the entire event was the
greatest political spectacle of the
early Reconstruction era as the country
struggled to recover from its brutal
civil war and overcome the bitter
divisions that precipitated it the
concept of impeachment in the United
States finds its origin in the British
legal process whereby all public
officials including ministers of the
crown were held accountable for
misconduct the monarch however could not
be impeached since the US didn't exactly
begin its existence by quietly
disagreeing with King George the third
it shouldn't be a surprise to you that
the American impeachment process is a
bit more inclusive there are a lot of
other videos on YouTube that will
explain this process in more detail but
for our purposes today you just have to
know that in order for a president to be
impeached and removed from office
they must formally be accused by a
simple majority in the House of
Representatives then all the way on the
other side of the Capitol building
convicted by a two-thirds majority in
the Senate when the house begins the
formal process it votes on articles
which are specific allegations of
impeachable conduct
so what constitutes an impeachable act
well that's not super clear the phrase
high crimes and misdemeanors is so
uselessly vague that it usually just
means whatever Congress thinks is bad
enough in President Johnson's case his
particular high crime / misdemeanor was
the culmination of years of animosity
with the very party that had put him in
office without a 20-minute digression
into nineteenth-century party politics
here's the short version the Democratic
and Republican parties as they existed.
In the 1860s bore almost no resemblance
to the ones that are active today and if
you're about to jump to a conclusion
based on your modern-day preferences
it's probably wrong the longer version
which will still be way oversimplified.
Is this at the time of the civil war the
Democratic Party broadly supported
slavery and represented land holding
white planters in the south while the
Republican Party represented the
interests of city-dwelling northerners
who tended to be abolitionists Southern
Democrats who were worried that the
election of Abraham Lincoln would lead
to the eventual abolition of slavery
spirited this secession movement that
began in late 1860
not every southern slaveholding state
left the Union to join the Confederacy
in fact five so-called border states
remained part of the Union and retained
their democratic governments to shore up
electoral support in these states
Lincoln selected Democrat Andrew Johnson
from Tennessee the only senator from a
Confederate state to remain loyal to the
Union as his running mate in 1864 even
though he was elected as vice president
on the Republican ticket the more
radical elements of the Republican Party
were suspicious of him from the very
beginning some of these men had been
fighting slavery for decades and doubted
even Abraham Lincoln's commitment to
protecting the rights of newly freedmen
at the end of the civil war were holding
the Confederate leaders accountable for
treason.
When an assassin's bullet elevated the
Tennessee into the presidency they
expected even less even so the Radical
Republicans counted a number of cabinet
secretaries among their political allies
notably Secretary of War Edwin Stanton
he had served Lincoln as the civilian
head of military affairs throughout the
Civil War and supported a much harsher
vision of reconstruction than either
President considering that much of the
South was now divided into military
occupation districts administered by the
War Department Stanton essentially
governed half the country the combative
secretary now perhaps the second most
powerful man in the country was
low-hanging fruit for a new president
trying to consolidate his authority and
protect his fellow southerners from
punitive measures seeing this the
Radical Republicans in Congress executed
a political maneuver that may actually
have been intended to trigger
impeachment proceedings passing the
tenure of office act on March 2nd 1867
it required the president to seek Senate
approval to fire appointed officials and
it passed despite Johnson's veto in a
turn of events that surprised absolutely
nobody Johnson eventually sought to test
the law and wrest control of
reconstruction back from Congress in
August of 1867 without consulting
Congress as the act required he
suspended and replaced Edward Stanton
Brendon wine Apple author of the
impeaches the trial of Andrew Johnson
and the dream of a just nation suggests
that the Defiant president was
self-sabotaging by Nature she writes the
man had a penchant for martyrdom it
allowed him to cling to the belief that
he was cruelly beset deeply
unappreciated wholly persecuted and
denied the respect he rightfully
deserved his temperament allowed no
other choice he thus welcomed a struggle
to the death with the hero himself going
down to defeat in a blaze of
unforgettable glory
it is equally unsurprising that his
enemies immediately reacted to his move
now that Johnson had openly challenged
the tenure of office act the House
reinstated Stanton in January 1868 and
moved forward with impeachment enraged
by the audacity of the house Johnson
fired Stanton once again and replaced
him with Major General Lorenzo Thomas a
longtime foe of Stanton not to be
outdone Stanton had Thomas arrested for
illegally seizing his office on February
24th the House voted 120 for 217 to
impeach Johnson and establish a
committee to draft the articles of
impeachment the 11 Articles mostly
stemmed from the dismissal of Stanton
and the subsequent illegal use of war
department funds and personnel the next
week was spent approving rules of
procedure for the trial which convened
on March 5th with salmon P chase the
chief of Justice of the Supreme Court
presiding the process stretched on for
two months during which the Radical
Republicans work to convince their
colleagues that Andrew Johnson had not
only violated the tenure of office act
but also conspired to keep the planter
aristocracy in power over the new
freedmen of the south.
Johnson's defense team argued that the
law didn't even apply in this case the
US Senate's official history recounts
their argument that since Stanton had
been appointed by Lincoln Johnson was
not obligated to continue his service
even if the senators accepted the Act as
constitutional the defense team insisted
Johnson could not be impeached for a
mistaken interpretation of the law.
Furthermore they claimed that Johnson's
intent was to test the constitutionality
of the act before the Supreme Court
which he had the right to do the
president's defense team was a 19th
century legal dream team featuring
Attorney General Henry Stanbury who had
resigned his position to work on the
case and former Supreme Court justice.
Benjamin Curtis
at the advice of his counsel the
bombastic president did not appear
relying in part on the prestige of his
advocates ironically another asset for
the president was the very man
positioned to replace him since the vice
presidency was still vacant Benjamin
Wade the president pro tempore of the
Senate was next in line of secession one
of the most outspoken radicals he
advocated for such harsh reconstruction
terms that he angered the party's
moderate wing the possibility that Wade
might be president if Johnson was
removed they have been a powerful
incentive for certain Republican
senators to vote for acquittal as we
mentioned earlier impeachment is a
political process not a legal one and
though Johnson may have violated the law
as it was intended removing him was a
difficult proposition
it would have been yet another
destabilizing event for a nation that
had barely managed to cling together
Benjamin Wade would have been the third
president to take office within three
years and the second one for whom nobody
had cast a single ballot Senator James
Grimes a Republican of Iowa perhaps
summed up the opinion of many moderates
when he said I cannot agree to destroy
the harmonious working of the
Constitution for the sake of getting rid
of an unacceptable president on May 16th
1868 after two months of arguments and
weeks of deliberation the Senate voted
35 to 19 to convict Johnson on the first
charge one vote short of the two-thirds
necessary to remove Johnson from office.
On May 26th the Senate voted to impeach
Johnson on articles 2 and 3 but once
again the vote tallies were the same
that same day the trial was officially
adjourned and Johnson remained president
in hindsight it is possible that
removing the president over such a
politically polarized issue would have
set a dangerous precedent in an already
fragile Union it is also difficult to
dispute that Johnson's lenient version
of reconstruction gave rise to new white
dominated southern governments that
enacted Jim Crow laws throughout the
former Confederacy America's first
presidential impeachment is one of many
events in the country's history that
must be examined with nuance to
understand its ramifications today.

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