Impeachment-of-Johnson

Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson

There were four major elements surrounding the impeachment of President Johnson. (1) Radicalism vs. Conservatism: The debate regarding the Reconstruction of the Union began well before the Civil War ended and it intensified afterwards. The Radical goal of racial equality was to be accomplished by imposing strict political, legal, and constitutional requirements on the former Confederate states before they would be allowed to rejoin the Union on an equal basis with the other states. Conservatives, such as President Andrew Johnson, opposed such prerequisites on Constitutional and social grounds and advocated a quick and lenient Reconstruction instead. Johnson’s vetoes of major Reconstruction laws passed by the Republican Congress, such as the Freedmen’s Bureau Act and the Civil Rights Act, as well as his intransigence in implementing Congressional Reconstruction in the South, played a major role in provoking Radical Republican attempts to impeach and remove the President from office. Harper’s Weekly, led by editor George William Curtis and cartoonist Thomas Nast, supported the Radical Republican policies for Reconstruction. In his editorial of April 29, 1866, Curtis delineated the Radical and Conservative positions on Reconstruction filtered through his perspective as a leading Radical. He presented arguments for the reasonableness of the Radicals’ case and the limitations of the Conservatives’ case. Curtis discreetly distanced Harper’s Weekly from more acrimonious and extreme Radicals, such as Thaddeus Stevens and Benjamin Butler, who were early advocates of impeachment. The newspaper held forth the same Radical ideals as Stevens and Butler, but Curtis was more temperate in his rhetoric and, at times, policy recommendations. Instead of overtly criticizing Johnson, as other Radicals were already doing, the editor reminded the President of his own words and the vision of racial equality under the law that they evoked. Instead of berating Johnson, Curtis encouraged the President to do that which in his heart he knew to be just and right. As time went on, Curtis became increasingly vocal in his opposition to Johnson’s policies, but the editor refused to advocate the President’s impeachment and removal until he overtly broke the law by violating the Tenure of Office Act in 1868. Stevens and Butler, on the other hand, were early and persistent promoters of Johnson’s impeachment. Harper’s Weekly looked with disdain on the tactless Stevens and the bombastic Butler, and expressed the belief that a more competent prosecutor than Butler might have achieved the conviction of President Johnson.

(2) Future control of Congress: A key difference between the Radicals and Conservatives related to whether or not the Freedmen should be given the right to vote. If they received it, they were expected to vote for Republicans (which they largely did after the passage of Radical Republican state laws and, later, the Fifteenth Amendment). A look at the statistics published in the editorial "The Trial of the Government" on May 26, 1866, shows why the struggle between President Johnson and Congress over the control of Reconstruction was, to some extent, about the future control of Congress.

Thomas Nast illustrated this point well in his cartoon of April 9, 1870, when he showed the newly arrived black Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi (as Othello) sitting in the chair occupied by Jefferson Davis before he became President of the Confederacy. Senator Charles Sumner, an arch-opponent of President Andrew Johnson, welcomed Senator Revels, along with Republican Senators Henry Wilson (MA), Oliver Morton (IN), and Carl Schurz (MO), while Jeff Davis as Iago skulked outside the door.
 * __State__ || __White Citizens__ || __Freedmen__ ||
 * South Carolina || 291,000 || 411,000 ||
 * Mississippi || 353,000 || 436,000 ||
 * Louisiana || 357,000 || 350,000 ||
 * Georgia || 591,000 || 465,000 ||
 * Alabama || 596,000 || 437,000 ||
 * Virginia || 719,000 || 533,000 ||
 * North Carolina || 631,000 || 331,000 ||

(3) Tenure of Office Act (1867): The Republican controlled Congress passed several measures for Reconstruction over Johnson's veto. Eventually, the **Tenure of Office Act**, March 3, 1867, enacted over the veto of President Andrew Johnson, denied the President of the United States the power to remove anyone who had been appointed by a past President without the advice and consent of the United States Senate, unless the Senate approved the removal during the next full session of Congress. Johnson and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton opposed each other (Johnson, a Democrat and conservative vs. Stanton, a Radical Republican). Stanton was a Lincoln appointee. Johnson wanted to remove him and did. When the Senate refused to accept this, Johnson ignored the Senate and still looked to replace Stanton. At this point the Congress decided to impeach President Johnson.

(4) Personal considerations regarding the vote to impeach: //Harper’s Weekly// discussed Republican party loyalty at length as the Impeachment trial was coming to a close, and afterwards when several key Senators had voted for acquittal. George William Curtis agreed that every man had both the right and the obligation to vote his conscience. He counter-attacked Horace Greeley whose influential //New York Tribune// took a strongly opposite point of view that said Republicans who voted for acquittal should be considered traitors to the party. What //Harper’s Weekly// did not discuss in depth was the antipathy that several of the Senators had for Benjamin Wade, who was elected President //pro tempore// of the Senate on March 4, 1868. In the event of Andrew Johnson’s suspension, resignation or removal from office, Wade would have become President until the next national election in November. Several Senators did not want Wade to become president.

Johnson was impeached by the House of Representatives but escaped removal by the Senate by 1 vote. The Senators who voted against removal did so mostly because they felt the future of the presidency would be unsafe if they removed a president for disagreeing with the majority of the House of Representatives and 2/3 of the Senate.

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