Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

• 1. Tickets to a Trial

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  For every day of the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson in 1868, the United States Senate printed 1,000 color-coded tickets. Each ticket admitted one person for a single day. The Senate had never issued admission passes before, and its galleries were often filled to capacity.

  Johnson himself stayed away from the proceedings on the advice of his lawyers. The accused was a Tennessee Democrat, and his accusers were Radical Republicans in Congress who had once expected him to be their ally. This documentary asks how that relationship collapsed. It asks why eleven charges were built around the dismissal of one cabinet officer. And it asks what the final vote, and the rumors that surrounded it, really settled.

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• 2. A President Against Congress

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  In July 1863, Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg set President Abraham Lincoln thinking about how to bring the South back into the Union. He wanted a lenient plan and put it in place by presidential directive, without consulting Congress. Radical Republicans were incensed. They answered with the Wade-Davis Bill, which passed both houses in July 1864 but was pocket vetoed and never took effect.

  On the 14th of April 1865, Lincoln was assassinated, just days after the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox. The Radicals distrusted the new president, Andrew Johnson, but expected him to accept their hardline proposals. His record seemed to promise it. A Tennessee Democrat, Johnson had nonetheless fiercely criticized secession. When Tennessee joined the states leaving the Union, he stayed in Washington rather than resign his Senate seat. Later, as military governor of occupied Tennessee, he used his powers vigorously and often said that "treason must be made odious and traitors punished".

  Within months of taking office, Johnson issued proclamations of general amnesty for most former Confederates, government and military officers alike. He also oversaw new governments in the rebellious states, and ex-Confederate officials dominated them. In February 1866 he vetoed a bill extending the Freedmen's Bureau and expanding its powers, and Congress could not override him. He then denounced Representative Thaddeus Stevens, Senator Charles Sumner and the abolitionist Wendell Phillips as traitors. His later vetoes of a Civil Rights Act and a second Freedmen's Bureau bill were overridden by two-thirds majorities in both the Senate and the House.

  In the late summer of 1866, Johnson went over Congress's head, offering himself to the public as a "tribune of the people". His national speaking tour, the "Swing Around the Circle", asked voters to elect representatives who backed his policies. It backfired. Reports of his undisciplined, vitriolic speeches and his clashes with hecklers swept the nation, and the 1866 elections gave Republicans veto-proof majorities in both houses. The Radicals then passed a series of Reconstruction Acts over his vetoes. The first divided the Southern states, excluding Tennessee, into five military districts under U.S. military control. It also required new state constitutions, ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and voting rights for Black men.

  Congress had won the policy fight on paper, but the president still commanded the army that would have to carry it out.

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• 3. The Stanton Problem

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  Edwin M. Stanton, the secretary of war Johnson inherited from Lincoln, was a staunch Radical Republican. He had a good relationship with Johnson, though he often sided with the Radicals. He would comply with congressional Reconstruction for as long as he kept his post. To make sure he kept it, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in March 1867, overruling Johnson's veto. The law required the president to seek the Senate's advice and consent before dismissing any cabinet member. It covered any federal official whose appointment had needed that consent. If a president removed such an officer during a recess and the Senate refused to ratify the removal, he had to reinstate the person.

  The act allowed a president to suspend officials while Congress was out of session, and Johnson took that route after he failed to get Stanton's resignation. On the 5th of August 1867, he suspended Stanton and named General Ulysses S. Grant, then commanding general of the Army, as interim secretary of war. In December 1867, the Senate adopted a resolution of non-concurrence. Grant told Johnson he intended to resign, fearing punitive legal action. Johnson believed Grant had agreed to stay. When the Senate reinstated Stanton in January 1868, Grant resigned immediately, before the president could name a replacement.

  Johnson accused Grant of lying during a stormy cabinet meeting. Angry messages between the two men were published in March 1868, and they made the break complete. They also strengthened Grant's standing as the front-runner for the 1868 Republican presidential nomination.

  Johnson searched desperately for a replacement the Senate would accept. General William Tecumseh Sherman, an enemy of Stanton, turned the offer down. Sherman later suggested Jacob Dolson Cox as a choice Radical and moderate Republicans might both accept, but he found the president no longer interested in appeasement. On the 21st of February 1868, Johnson appointed Lorenzo Thomas, a brevet major general, as secretary of war ad interim and informed the Senate. Thomas delivered the dismissal notice in person. Stanton rejected it, barricaded himself inside his office and ordered Thomas arrested. Thomas remained under arrest for several days. The charge was then dropped, after Stanton realized the case would give the courts a chance to review the Tenure of Office Act.

  On the 22nd of February 1868, Representative William D. Kelley spoke for many House Republicans. He pointed to the ten unreconstructed states and to two thousand people murdered in Texas, and he demanded punishment for Andrew Johnson.

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• 4. Three Tries at Impeachment

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  Long before Lorenzo Thomas reached Stanton's door, the House had already tried to begin impeachment. On the 7th of January 1867, it voted to open an inquiry run by its Committee on the Judiciary. The resolution created only an inquiry and did not impeach, as many Radicals wanted. Republicans could register their displeasure without committing to anything, and many felt safe assuming the matter would die quietly in committee.

  On the 3rd of June 1867, the Judiciary Committee voted 4-5 against sending articles of impeachment to the full House. On the 25th of November 1867, it reversed itself and voted 5-4 to recommend impeachment, because one member had changed his mind. On the 7th of December 1867, the full House rejected impeachment 108-57. More Republicans voted against it than for it.

  Rufus P. Spalding opened a second attempt on the 27th of January 1868. He moved a resolution authorizing the House Select Committee on Reconstruction to investigate what combinations had been made to obstruct the due execution of the laws. The House approved it 99-31. No Democrat voted for it, and the only Republicans against it were Elihu B. Washburne and William Windom. On the 10th of February 1868, the House moved all further responsibility for impeachment to that committee.

  Thaddeus Stevens chaired the Reconstruction committee, yet its members were not at first favorable. Four Republicans had voted for impeachment in December 1867, while five members, three Republicans and two Democrats, had voted against it. A vote on the 13th of February 1868 on tabling a Stevens resolution showed the same five still opposed. For a moment, impeachment looked dead.

  The 21st of February 1868, the day Johnson tried to replace Stanton, changed that. Stevens submitted a resolution sending the evidence from the 1867 inquiry to his committee, and the House approved it. Soon after, John Covode presented a one-sentence resolution. It read, "Resolved, That Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, be impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors." It specified no charges. News reports said Democrats in the House met it with audible laughter. George S. Boutwell moved to refer it to the Reconstruction committee, and the House adjourned without a vote. On the morning of the 22nd of February, the committee approved a slightly amended version, adding the words "in office", by a party-line vote of 7-2.

  At 3pm that day, Stevens presented the committee's majority report. The House debated the resolution on the 22nd and the 24th. Republicans argued that dismissing Stanton and appointing Thomas was a specific violation of the Tenure of Office Act. That charge persuaded Republicans who had voted no in December, because it described an offense indictable under federal law. James F. Wilson had presented the Judiciary Committee dissenters' case against impeachment in December. Now he said Johnson had "mistook our judgment for cowardice" and had gone on to commit a high misdemeanor defined by statute.

  Stevens, considered the leader of the push for impeachment, called it a purely political process. He wanted the case against Johnson to be broader than one statute. His final speech held the chamber in what is described as "rapt attention". He warned that the outcome would endure until the continent was filled either with a free people or with "a nest of shrinking, cowardly slaves".

  On the 24th of February 1868, three days after Johnson moved against Stanton, the House voted 126-47 to impeach, with 17 members not voting. It was the first time a president of the United States had been impeached. The record is inconsistent. The Congressional Globe shows 126-47, while the House Journal shows 128-47, and the Office of the House Historian uses the Globe tally. All 126 yes votes came from the Republican caucus. Of the 47 no votes, 44 came from Democrats, and the rest from Conservative Charles E. Phelps, Conservative Republican Thomas E. Stewart and independent Republican Samuel Fenton Cary. Speaker Schuyler Colfax did not vote, since House rules did not require it. He would soon name the men who were to write the charges.

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• 5. Eleven Articles

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  Right after the vote to impeach, Thaddeus Stevens submitted two resolutions, and the House passed them together 124-42. One created a two-person committee to tell the Senate of the impeachment and to promise specific articles "in due time". The other created a seven-person committee to write those articles, with power to subpoena people, papers and records and to record sworn testimony. No Republican voted against the pair, and no Democrat voted for it. That evening Speaker Colfax named John Bingham and Stevens to the first committee. He named Bingham, Boutwell, Stevens, George Washington Julian, James F. Wilson, John A. Logan and Hamilton Ward to the second.

  Voting to impeach first and adopting articles afterward differs from recent federal impeachments, which proceed directly through articles. In 1868 it was standard nineteenth-century procedure. Each of the five earlier impeachments of federal officials that had led to Senate trials followed the same order.

  Stevens felt the Radicals on the committee were giving too much ground to moderates on the scope of the charges. He wrote to Benjamin F. Butler with a plan. Stevens would work to add two articles to the seven the committee had already written, and Butler would draft a separate article from outside the committee. Butler accepted. On the 29th of February 1868, the committee delivered ten proposed articles. They were revised and reduced to nine before the House voted on the 2nd of March.

  The House debated on the 1st and the 2nd of March, and then adopted the nine committee articles one by one. Described as strictly legalistic, they were modeled on a criminal indictment. Eight concerned the Tenure of Office Act. The ninth accused Johnson of violating the Command of Army Act by pressuring General William H. Emory to take orders directly from him. The first article passed 127-42.

  Stevens closed the debate by scolding his own committee. "Never was so great a malefactor so gently treated as Andrew Johnson." He argued that the articles failed to show how gravely Johnson had endangered the structure of government. Butler then offered his own lengthy article. It named no clear violation of law. It accused Johnson of trying "to bring into disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt, and reproach the Congress of the United States", a charge drawn from his Swing Around the Circle speeches. Butler spoke at great length, which frustrated many members, Stevens among them. The House rejected the article 74-48.

  On the 3rd of March 1868, the House appointed its impeachment managers, who would serve as prosecutors. They asked for more charges to strengthen their case. Butler's rejected article returned as the tenth article. It listed Johnson's harangues delivered "amid the cries, jeers and laughter of the multitudes then assembled". It passed 88-45 and drew twelve Republican votes against it, the only article to lose votes from within the Republican Party. An eleventh article, drafted by Stevens and Wilson, then passed 109-32. It said Johnson had violated his oath to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" by declaring the 39th Congress unconstitutional because it represented only some of the states.

  Articles 2 and 3 targeted the appointment of Thomas. Articles 4 through 7 alleged conspiracy against Stanton, and the sixth and seventh added a plot to seize War Department property by force. The eighth accused Johnson of seeking to control military funds. The eleventh largely restated the earlier charges, and it would be the first one the Senate put to a vote.

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• 6. The Senate Trial

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  John Bingham presented the articles of impeachment to the Senate on the 4th of March 1868. As the Constitution prescribes, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presided. How far he could rule alone was a frequent point of contention. Chase held that certain procedural questions were his to decide, and the Senate challenged several of his rulings.

  The seven House managers were John Bingham, George S. Boutwell, Benjamin Butler, John A. Logan, Thaddeus Stevens, Thomas Williams and James F. Wilson. Johnson's defense team was Benjamin Robbins Curtis, William M. Evarts, William S. Groesbeck, Thomas Amos Rogers Nelson and Henry Stanbery. The trial was conducted mostly in open session.

  The managers argued that Johnson had plainly broken the Tenure of Office Act by dismissing Stanton without Senate consent. Presidents, they said, were obliged to carry out the laws Congress passed, whatever their own view of constitutionality. If they could ignore the law, they could regularly defy a Congress that spoke for the American people through elected representatives.

  The defense attacked the charges from several sides. Its lawyers said the Tenure of Office Act was vague about whether it covered Stanton at all, and that it was unconstitutional in any case. They argued that Johnson fired Stanton to test the law before the Supreme Court, which he was entitled to do. Even if the law was valid, they said, a president should not be removed for misreading his constitutional rights. Appointing Lorenzo Thomas, they added, kept the Department of War functioning and harmed no one. They also charged that the Republican Party was using impeachment as a political tool, and that elections, not trials, were the way to punish political misdeeds.

  The senators weighing these arguments numbered only 54, representing 27 states. Ten former Confederate states had not yet been readmitted to representation in the Senate.

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• 7. One Vote Short

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  On the 16th of May 1868, the Senate voted on the eleventh article, and 35 senators voted guilty while 19 voted not guilty. Conviction required a two-thirds majority, which meant 36 votes. All nine Senate Democrats voted against conviction, and ten Republicans broke with their party. Johnson served out his term, which ended on the 4th of March 1869, but he had no influence on public policy.

  Before that first vote, Samuel C. Pomeroy told Senator Ross that an acquittal vote would make Ross the subject of a bribery investigation. Hoping to win over at least one senator, the Senate adjourned for 10 days. During the recess, the House resolved to investigate "improper or corrupt means used to influence the determination of the Senate". On the 26th of May, the senators voted on the second and third articles, and the results matched the first. The Senate then adjourned the trial sine die. Eight articles were never voted on.

  After the trial, Butler held hearings on widespread reports that Republican senators had been bribed to vote for acquittal. Those hearings and later inquiries found increasing evidence that some acquittal votes had been won with promises of patronage jobs and cash. Political deals were struck too. Grimes received assurances that acquittal would bring no presidential reprisals. Johnson agreed to enforce the Reconstruction Acts and to appoint General John Schofield to succeed Stanton. The investigations never produced a charge, much less a conviction.

  The pressure ran in both directions. Senator Fessenden was offered the ministership to Great Britain. Butler said of Ross, "Tell Senator Ross that if he wants money there is a bushel of it here to be had." Butler's investigation also boomeranged. It uncovered a letter from Senator Pomeroy, who had voted for conviction, to Johnson's postmaster general. In it he sought a $40,000 bribe tied to acquittal votes, including his own and those of three or four others in his caucus. Wade, meanwhile, told Butler he would make him secretary of state once Wade became president after a conviction.

  Ross became a symbol. In Profiles in Courage, President John F. Kennedy devoted a chapter to the view that Ross was mercilessly persecuted for his vote to protect the independence of the presidency. The 1964-65 NBC series Profiles in Courage dramatized the story in episode 19, titled Edmund G. Ross, starring Bradford Dillman. Scholars divided. Ralph Roske rejected that view, and Avery Craven endorsed it.

  None of the Republican senators who voted for acquittal ever again held elected office. Even so, public opinion soon moved toward their position. Some senators who had voted for conviction, including John Sherman and even Charles Sumner, later changed their minds.

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• 8. Lasting Consequences

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  In 1887, Congress repealed the Tenure of Office Act, and later Supreme Court rulings seemed to back Johnson's claim that he could fire Stanton without congressional approval. In Myers v. United States, decided in 1926, the Court affirmed that a president could remove a postmaster without congressional approval. The majority's dictum went further and called the Tenure of Office Act of 1867 invalid.

  Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, one of the Republican senators whose votes saved Johnson, explained his decision with a warning. A conviction, he said, would have destroyed the main source of the presidency's political power: the freedom to disagree with Congress without consequences. It would have destroyed the Constitution's system of checks and balances as well.

  The trial's effects on the separation of powers proved long-lasting. It established the principle that Congress should not remove a president over a conflict about how his administration is run. It also left presidential influence on public policy diminished. The resulting system of governance is what Woodrow Wilson described in the 1880s as "Congressional Government". Wilson, who gave it that name, would himself later become president.

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