In 1868, the United States of America was still a young country.
The battle of Appomattox was over and the Confederacy had
surrendered, finishing the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln had just been
assassinated. The conflict over the future course of the nation had
moved from the battlefields to the Capitol in Washington. While
slavery had been abolished, the government was still undecided as to
what should be done with the emancipated slaves. Andrew Johnson, then
president of the United States, stood in the middle of the political
battle without many friends.
The Abolitionist Republican Abraham Lincoln chose Andrew Johnson
to run with him for Vice President in an effort to make amends with
the southern Confederate states which still had not been legally
allowed back into the union. Johnson was a moderate Democrat from
Tennessee who took sides with the Unionists during the Civil War.
When John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln, Johnson ascended to the
presidency. Very few people liked Johnson. He was known to be a hard
drinking alcoholic with a violent temper, prone to fits of rage. He
belittled the people who worked with him and got a reputation as a
nasty bully because he verbally abused opponents during the election
cycle. His views on civil rights and enfranchisement led him into a
head-on collision with the Abolitionists in the Republican Party soon
after being sworn in.
The Executive and Legislative branches of the government were on
their way to a showdown when Johnson took office. Lincoln essentially
led the Unionists to victory in the Civil War by strengthening the
powers of the presidential office at the expense of Congress; this
trend of expanding presidential power has continued up to the present
day. Meanwhile, the Republican Party controlled Congress; they had
split into two competing factions: the moderate wing and the Radical
Republican splinter group that advocated strongly in favor of equal
rights for African-Americans in the U.S.A. When the Radical
Republicans passed bills for slavery reparations and the
enfranchisement of freed slaves through the House and Senate, Johnson
vetoed the bills. Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton,
aligned himself with the Radical Republicans. Fearing that the
president would dismiss Stanton, Congress passed the Tenure of Office
Act, thereby preventing the president from firing the Secretary of
War without congressional approval. Johnson did try to fire Stanton
but Congress vetoed his bill. Later in 1867 when Congress was out of
session, Johnson secretly fired Stanton and replaced him with Ulysses
S. Grant. Grant, however, fearing legal repercussions, resigned and
Congress reinstated Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War. Grant and
Johnson are known to have had some fiery shouting sessions over this
incident with Johnson calling Grant a coward and Grant calling
Johnson a criminal among many other names.
Andrew Johnson decided to go over the heads of Congress and
appointed General Lorenzo Thomas to take over Stanton’s position.
Johnson sent Thomas to Stanton’s office with a letter of dismissal
but Stanton barricaded himself in his office and refused to leave.
Lorenzo Thomas was arrested and put in jail for seven days but Edwin
Stanton dropped all charges against him because he feared the Tenure
of Office Act would be overturned for being unconstitutional.
Congress, however, decided they had had enough of Johnson’s
childish behavior and quickly drew up eleven articles of impeachment
against him.
In January of 1868, the House of Representatives passed a
resolution to accept the eleven articles of impeachment against
Andrew Johnson. In March 1868, they passed the articles to the upper
congressional house of the Senate for approval. They accepted the
articles of impeachment and both sides began preparation for the
trial. Congress, who normally operated behind closed doors, opened
the trial to the public. This caused quite a sensation as large
crowds showed up to witness American’s first impeachment
proceedings against a sitting American president. The trial began at
the end of March; for the sake of brevity it can be said that neither
the prosecution nor the defense came up with any compelling
arguments. The potentially explosive trial turned out to be a dud.
According to Constitutional Law, the Senate needs a 2/3 majority
vote to impeach a president. At first, the first three articles of
impeachment were put to the vote. The verdict on all three was 35 in
favor of conviction and 19 in favor of acquittal. 36 votes for
conviction were necessary to remove Johnson from office. The Radical
Republicans had lost. Before continuing on with the vote, Congress
was suspended for ten days. An investigation committee was set up to
find out what happened. When the Senators returned, the last eight
articles were put up for voting. The results were the same with 35-19
in favor of acquittal. Andrew Johnson remained in the presidential
office until the end of his term.
Something was not right, though. Not only all the Democrats in
the Senate but also some of the Republicans voted not guilty in
Johnson’s favor. The investigating committee later produced
evidence that members of the Democratic party had offered quid pro
quo bribes to Republican senators; in exchange for voting in
Johnson’s favor, they would receive large sums of money and be
appointed to prestigious and lucrative governmental offices. But when
this evidence was brought to the public’s attention, the Democrats
produced evidence that the Republicans had offered the same types of
bribes to Democrat Senators. The Republicans tried to bring the
matter to the Supreme Court but the case was thrown out since both
sides nullified each other by committing the same crime. The bribes
really did not matter anyways. The Senators who found Johnson not
guilty admitted that he had broken the law but they were of the
opinion that no harm had actually been done to the country and
breaking that particular law was not serious enough to convict
Johnson of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Eventually the Supreme Court overruled the Tenure of Office Act,
declaring it unconstitutional because it interfered with the
political system’s checks and balances, giving the Executive branch
less power than the Legislative branch. Although sometimes embroiled
in contentious debates, the Congress and the president, as well as
Democrats and Republicans, worked together quite effectively as
America entered into its greatest period of economic, military, and
political power ever. Even the proposed impeachment of Richard Nixon
received bipartisan support with then-Senator and future president
George H.W. Bush leading the Senate’s impeachment committee against
him. This cooperation of powers would last until the 1990s when a new
round of partisan bickering began tearing the nation apart again.
Reference
Kelly, Alfred H. and Harbison, Winfred A. The American
Constitution: Its Origins and Development. W.W. Norton and
Company, 1946.
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