The
Impeachment of
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From: Eric
Foner, Reconstruction America's Unfinished
Revolution, 1863-1877
Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1988
To the many
dramatic innovations Reconstruction brought to American
politics, the spring of 1868 added yet another: the
unprecedented spectacle of the President's trial before
the Senate for "high crimes and misdemeanors.”
The roots of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson lay not
only in the increasingly hostile relations between
himself and Congress, but in a peculiar feature of
Republican Reconstruction policy itself. For Congress had
enjoined the army to carry out a policy its
commander-in-chief resolutely opposed. Even before 1867,
a number of Radicals had called for Johnson’s
removal, fearing that Reconstruction could never be
successful so long as he remained in office. Ohio
Congressman James M. Ashley became obsessed with the
issue, attempting to prove that, like William Henry
Harrison and Zachary Taylor (who, he contended, had been
poisoned), Lincoln had been murdered to place his Vice
President in the White House. Instead of following Ashley
down the road to impeachment, however, Congress preferred
to shield its policy, and the Republican party, against
Presidential interference. In 1867, it required that all
orders to subordinate army commanders pass through
General Grant and, in the Tenure of Office Act,
authorized officials appointed with the Senate's consent
to remain in office until a successor had been approved.
Intended primarily to protect lower level patronage
functionaries, the law also barred the removal, without
Senate approval, of Cabinet members during the term of
the President who had appointed them. It remained
uncertain, however, whether this applied to Secretary of
War Stanton, who had been named to his post by Lincoln.
Some supporters urged the President to remove Stanton and declare the Reconstruction Act null and void. But while determined to obstruct the implementation of Congressional policy, Johnson did not covet the role of sacrificial lamb. Instead, he waited until midsummer to take advantage of a provision of the Tenure of Office Act allowing him to suspend Stanton while Congress was not in session, pending a vote on his permanent removal after the Senate reconvened. So long as Johnson remained within the law, impeachment got nowhere. Early in December, Ashley's motion from the previous winter finally came to the House floor, only to suffer an overwhelming defeat, with every Democrat and a majority of Republicans in opposition. Coming hard on the heels of the fall elections, the House vote convinced the President that the Northern public had at last rallied to his policies. He now set about actively encouraging Southern opponents of Reconstruction and ousted several military commanders in favor of more conservative replacements. And when the Senate refused to concur in Stanton's removal, Johnson, on February 21, 1868, ousted him from his office. Having failed to "play the
part of Moses for the colored people," commented The
Nation, Johnson had succeeded in doing so "for the
impeachers." A combination of motives and
calculations shaped his course -- certainty of popular
support, a desire to reassert the powers of the
Presidency, even the hope of commending himself to the
Democrats as their 1868 nominee. Yet, as so often in the
past, Johnson had miscalculated. General Sherman, who
mostly shared the President's views, found his actions
indefensible: "He attempts to govern after he has
lost the means to govern. He is like a General fighting
without an army." With unanimous Republican support,
the House voted to impeach the President. Although the
decision represented, in part, a cathartic gesture, a
determination to be rid once and for all of this
irritating Chief Executive, Republicans also had
practical reasons for desiring Johnson out of office,
especially the growing conviction that his actions
threatened the success of Reconstruction. Radicals, in
particular, were daily receiving letters from the South
In a
Parliamentary system, Johnson would long since have
departed, for nearly all Republicans by now agreed with
Supreme Court justice David Davis, who described the
President as "obstinate, self-willed,
combative," and totally unfit for his office. But
these, apparently, were not impeachable offenses. Despite
the changes made by Butler and Stevens, the articles as a
whole implicitly accepted what would become the central
premise of Johnson’s defense: that only a clear
violation of the law warranted a President's removal. Other factors enhanced
Johnson’s chances for retaining office. Since the
Vice Presidency remained vacant, his successor would be
Ben Wade, president pro tem of the Senate and a man
disliked by moderates for his radical stance on
Reconstruction, and by many businessmen and laissez-faire
ideologues for his high tariff, soft-money, prolabor
views. "All the great Northern capitalists,&qu "the present situation to the change proposed."
Trumbull, Fessenden, and Grimes, who shared moderate
views on Reconstruction and held free trade convictions,
feared both the damage to the separation of powers that
would result from conviction and the political and
economic policies that might characterize a Wade
Presidency. Moreover, the crisis atmosphere of February
receded. Republicans triumphed in a string of Southern
elections, and the Supreme Court acceded to a law rushed
through Congress stripping it of jurisdiction in habeas
corpus cases, thus rendering moot the appeal of an
imprisoned Mississippi editor that might have raised the
question of the constitutionality of Reconstruction.
Meanwhile, Evarts quietly passed along assurances that
Johnson, if acquitted, would cease his efforts to
obstruct Republicans' Southern policy. By April, Washington bookmakers'
odds had shifted in favor of acquittal, and when the
decision finally came in mid-May, only thirty-five
Senators voted for conviction, one short of the required
two thirds. The votes of seven Republicans supplied
Johnson’s narrow margin of victory, although a
number of others stood ready to support the President if
necessary. Wade failed to disqualify himself, voting for
a verdict that would have placed him in the White House.
(Kansas Republican Sen. Edmund G. Ross, who voted for
acquittal, also invited charges of impropriety, for he
quickly cashed in on the President's gratitude by
securing lucrative patronage posts for several friends.)
Contrary to later myth, Republicans did not read the
"seven martyrs" out of the party, and all
campaigned for Grant that fall. It would be more accurate
to suggest that the impeachment affair formed an
important link in a chain of events that left the seven,
and some who had voted for conviction, increasingly
disillusioned with Reconstruction. All four who survived
to 1872 would join the Liberal Republicans. |
