Andrew Johnson's Impeachment

The impeachment of Bill Clinton has associated with it a variety
of ironic and bazaar things. The way the congressional Democrats
fought to keep the Independent Counsel Act alive while the
Republicans fought to kill it when it was up for renewal, etc.

But one of the strangest stems from the revival of interest in
the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.  As you recall,
after the assassination of Lincoln, his Vice President Andrew
Johnson became the new President. He, unlike Lincoln, was not a
Republican but was running with Lincoln on a "Union" ticket 
(see comments by Mike Stone below) and the Republican Party 
had control of both houses of Congress.  Johnson was a Southerner 
from Tennessee, and former Democrat, selected by Lincoln to 
balance the ticket.

But there was a sharp conflict between the new President and the
Congress about the way that the South should be "re-constructed"
in the wake of the just finished Civil War.  This conflict lead
eventually to the impeachment of Johnson by the House and to a
very close vote in the Senate, where his removal from office
failed by a single vote in on May 16, 1868.  The vote to convict
Johnson had the vote of a majority of the Senate, but at 35 to
19, fell one vote short of the 2/3 majority need.  Johnson had
been indicted by the House on 11 Articles of Impeachment, but the
initial vote was on the one with the greatest support. When that
failed, there were ten days of frantic lobbying to get a vote
change, and even an effort to admit one or more Southern states
back into to the Union with senators elected with Negro voters,
but this could not be done in time, and Johnson was acquitted. 

While there were 7 Republican senators who broke party ranks and
voted to permit Johnson to remain in office, the "credit" for the
decisive vote is generally given to freshman Kansas Senator
Edmund Ross.  All of the Senators were under intense pressure to
vote their party line in the impeachment, and so Ross and the
other 6 Republicans took a lot of criticism for their vote, and
none of them were returned to office in their next election. Today
they are viewed as examples of political courage for withstanding
the political pressure of their party and of the voters.  

John K. Kennedy even included the story of Edmond Ross (and the
other 6) in his famous book Profiles in Courage, and recently
singer Barbara Streisand referred favorably to Ross for his vote
at an anti-impeachment rally (Clinton, not Johnson!) in West
Hollywood California.

HISTORY REVISITED

The "standard" interpretation of this period of US history has
been that Johnson was railroaded by "radical" Republicans and did
not deserve to be impeached.  That Johnson wanted a reconciliation
with the former rebel states of the South, and that the "radical"
Republicans were out to humiliate the South and force a "radical"
reconstruction program on them.

Well yes, that was the situation.  So what exactly lead to the
impeachment? And what was it that the "radical" Republicans
wanted to force on to the South?  And what was it that President
Johnson wanted for the South?

WHO WANTED WHAT?

First, who wanted what?  Different goals for the post- Civil War
"reconstruction" of the South were the real cause of the conflict
between the President and the Congress.  

And then there is the question of in a conflict of goals,  who
rules the country, the Congress or the President?

The "radical" Republicans clearly wanted a New South where poor
whites and (especially) former Negro slaves could vote and hold
public office. They passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 over the
veto of Johnson, but were not able to overcome his veto of the
Freedmen's Bureau (an agency that did relief work among former
slaves). 

The bottom line was that the President wanted to give the South
back to the white landowners that had ruled it before the Civil
War, and the Republicans (especially the "radicals") did not.

The issue came to a head with the Tenure of Office Act, and
Secretary of War, Edwin McMasters Stanton. Stanton was in charge
of the military occupation of the South, and was willing to use
the Federal troops to enforce the voting rights of the Negroes.
President Johnson did not want this, and the Congress knew it. So
in early 1867, Congress enacted (over a Presidential veto) the
"Tenure of Office Act" which required that any official that the
Senate must confirm (for example the Secretary of War) cannot be
removed from office without the consent of the Senate.

So on August 5, 1867, President Johnson  asked for the immediate
resignation of Stanton. Stanton replied that he would not resign
before the next meeting of Congress, so they could consider the
situation, as the law required. The next week, Johnson fired
Stanton and replaced him with U. S. Grant.  On January 13, 1868
the Senate (now in session) notified the President and Grant that
they did not concur in the change, and demanded that Stanton be
returned to the office.  He was, but Johnson would not let him
attend Cabinet meetings, and on February 21 he again informed
Stanton that he was removed from office.  

This then was the showdown that resulted in the impeachment of
Johnson. And the underlying issue was "does the President MAKE
the policy, or does Congress MAKE policy, and the President's job
is to enforce policy?"  When the Senate failed to remove Johnson,
Stanton was removed from office on May 26, 1868.

And in this case, the failure to convict and remove the President
from office resulted in President Johnson's reconstruction policy
of "black codes", "States Rights", segregation, and White Rule.
The "radical Republican" agenda for the South, was set
back for almost 100 years.  

This makes Edmond Ross a strange hero for John Kennedy and
Barbara Streisand. And for Clinton supporters today. But they say
that politics makes strange partners.

And what ever happened to Edwin Stanton?  He was popular with the
"radical" Republicans and was confirmed to an appointment to the
US Supreme Court on December 20, 1869. But he died four days
later.

                     ,,,,,,,
_______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________
                       (_)
jim blair (jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu) Madison Wisconsin
USA. This message was brought to you using biodegradable
     binary bits, and 100% recycled bandwidth. 


Subject: Re: Andrew Johnson's Impeachment
Date: 20 Jan 1999 17:47:46 GMT
From: mwstone@aol.com (M w stone)
Organization: AOL, http://www.aol.co.uk
 Newsgroups: 
            soc.history
 References: 
            1


>From: jim blair <jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu>

>The bottom line was that the President wanted to give the South
>back to the white landowners that had ruled it before the Civil
>War, 

No.He wanted it to be ruled by the white *small* farmers, most of whom had
owned few if any slaves - in other words, by people like himself. He probably
wasn't much concerned about the blacks one way or the other, though he *may*
have feared  that the big planters might use negro suffrage to hang on to
power, by controlling the votes of their former slaves. There was of course no
secret ballot in those days.

[snip]>the failure to convict and remove the President
>from office resulted in President Johnson's reconstruction policy
>of "black codes", "States Rights", segregation, and White Rule.
>The "radical Republican" agenda for the South, was set
>back for almost 100 years.  

A wild exaggeration. AJs term of office had only nine months left to run, 
and for much of that period Congress was in recess. Even had the 
impeachment succeeded, it is most unlikely that anything much would have 
changed.

 
Mike Stone - Peterborough England

Last words of King Edward II.

"I always said that Roger Mortimer was a pain in the - - -A AARGHH!!!

AND:

From: mwstone@aol.com (M w stone)
Organization: AOL, http://www.aol.co.uk
 Newsgroups: 
            soc.history
 References: 
            1


......According to an article on Johnson in the current issue of American
Heritage magazine.

To be strictly accurate, the ticket on which he and Lincoln were elected 
called itself "Union" not "Republican". Nonetheless he certainly didn't 
act as a Democratic president. All his cabinet appointments were from 
the Republican Party


Mike Stone - Peterborough England

AND:

>From: jim blair 

>Hi,
>Wow, you mean that Lincoln wasn't a "Republican"? 
>
>Or would it be better to say that the Republican Party started out being
>called the "Union Party"? And if so, when was the name changed?
>
>
Mike Stone :

AL was first elected in 1860 as a Republican.

In 1864 the GOP in some states fused with pro-war Dems in opposition to
"peaceniks" of the Vallandigham variety. Hence AL and AJ ran on a "Union"
ticket, implying that they embraced all loyal unionists (debatable of course
but that's politics)

In 1868 Grant ran as the "Union Republican" candidate but by 1872 the party 
had reverted to the Republican name - by then most of the War Democrats had
reverted to their former alleigance


Mike Stone - Peterborough England

AND:

From: wxman10000@my-dejanews.com
Organization: 
            Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
 Newsgroups: 
            soc.history
 References: 
            1 , 2



In article <19990121142624.22152.00000689@ng94.aol.com>,
 
> >He, like Lincoln was a Republican,
>
> Not according to an article on Johnson in the current issue of American
> Heritage magazine.
>
wxman10000@my-dejanews.com:

Read your US history, you dumbass liberal.  Andrew Johnson was put on the
ticket in 1864 by Lincoln because he was a life-long, Southern Democrat who
was pro-Union.  You know, kinda like finding a Northeast, liberal Republican
who supports Clinton to make the point that the Republican supporters for
removal from office are some "fringe" group.

AND:


Aba Selama (abaselama@aol.com) wrote:
 
> It was more of a Constitutional issue than that.  The constitutional problems
> were resolved by ratifying the 14th Amendment protecting citizenship right for
> all persons in 1868.  (in great detail, check it out!)

Hi,
Yes the 14th Amendment protected the rights of all citizens including
the former slaves. In theory.

But there was the practical problem of implementing it. This is why the
Secetary of War was important. Stanton was willing to use federal
troops. Thus the conflict between Congress and the President.



Subject: Re: Andrew Johnson's Impeachment
       Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 17:30:36 -0500 (EST)
       From: brokeback@webtv.net (jim jividen)

 Newsgroups: 
            soc.history
 References: 
            1


I don't necessarily disagree that the impeachment of Johnson had a
rarely discussed dimension that might be considered positive, despite
the overarching political element; however, the "radical" Republicans
plan of reconstruction is, in fact, the plan that eventually is put in
place in 1867 and had a decent degree of success, as far as it went (2
Black US Senators, the building of a public school system in the South,
public health facilities, the building of Birimingham into an industrial
center).

The radical Republican plan isn't thwarted by an inability to remove
Johnson, but instead lasts, depite continual white Southern backlash,
until 1877 when the Republicans turn away from their committment to
Civil Rights and toward an alliance with Big Business (see the election
of Rutherford Hayes).

Johnson's veto of the Freedman's Bureau was overriden upon resubmission.
That's, you know, how we got a Freedmen's Bureau.

Johnson was a Democrat.  And, he was not appointed to the Supreme Court
but instead elected to the US Senate prior to his death.

The next 80+ years of Southern history shouldn't be laid at the feet of
the radicals, nor was the inability to remove Johnson the cause for the
eventual demise of reconstruction.

Jim Jividen

AND:

From:jlapidus@my-dejanews.com
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
 Newsgroups: 
            soc.culture.african.american
 References: 
            1 , 2 , 3


I just want to call readers' attention to an article last month in The New
Republic which suggested that Congress in 1868 was fully justified in
impeaching and attempting to remove Pres. Johnson.  Johnson tried to subvert
the rights (such as they were) to the freed slaves by not enforcing Federal
laws.

The view - which remains dominant today - that Johnson had been unfairly
impeached in a purely partisan process by "Radical Republicans" became popular
around the turn of the century.

I don't have the article in front of me and I'm not prepared to enter into a
discussion.  Rather, I just am suggesting additional reading if you can get
hold of the magazine.

Subject: Re: Andrew Johnson's Impeachment
       Date: 1 Feb 1999 20:34:26 GMT
       From: vissla@aud.alcatel.com (Lance A Visser)
Organization: Alcatel Network Systems
 Newsgroups:  soc.history
 References: 
            1 , 2


mwstone@aol.com (M w stone) writes:


>>From: forward <dhm@best.com>
>>Date: 01/02/99  07:20  GMT

>>On Wed, 20 Jan 1999, jim blair wrote:

+>>> The bottom line was that the President wanted to give the South
+>>> back to the white landowners that had ruled it before the Civil
+>>> War, 

+>No he didn't - he wanted (so far as he took a position) to give power ti the
+>small white farmer who had owned few or no slaves - to men, in fact, much like
+>himself.>> And in this case, the failure to convict and remove the President

        He did not take an official position to restore power to the large
landowners, but the policy he pushed for favored their interests by 
default at the expense of everyone else in the south.  Doing nothing
(the johnson policy) would have quickly restored the status quo in the
south as it did after 1877.

        And from a political point of view, the most important thing
to Johnson and his party was to get the southern states and their voters
(democrats in large measure) back in the union voting.


+>>> from office resulted in President Johnson's reconstruction policy
+>>> of "black codes", "States Rights", segregation, and White Rule.
+>>> The "radical Republican" agenda for the South, was set
+>>> back for almost 100 years.  

+>This is getting rather wild. AJs term had barely nine months left to run, for
+>much of which time congress would have been in recess. Any resulting changes
+>would have been too trivial to notice

        The Impeachment happened late, but it happened because AJ's policies
were against any real reconstruction.  A president can damage or stop a 
policy in its implementation and thats what Johnson did to reconstruction.
By the time he was defeated, the initial momentum for substantial change
in the south was gone.



+>>> This makes Edmond Ross a strange hero for John Kennedy and
+>>> Barbara Streisand.

        In the case of John Kennedy, the political consensus in his
lifetime was that reconstruction was a mistake and that the politics
that followed in the south were the result of those reconstruction
policies.  The idea promoted by certain people was that Lincoln and
his "heir" Johnson wanted to treat the south "kindly" and that radical
reconstruction did not do that.   So Johnson was unfairly punished
for doing the "right thing".

        I was taught this version in high school (American).  Reading
and looking back now, I recognize it as total fiction.  The program
of radical reconstruction was the correct one and if not for radical
reconstruction, the southern US would have become an even more feudalistic
backwater (hard to accept but true) without even basic things like 
public education (for any color).
        The Kennedy era considered the civil rights struggles in the 
south both to be the unfinished legacy of reconstruction and the fault
of "radical reconstruction".  Looking back, this makes no sense but
that seems to have been the belief at the time.

        Barbara Streisand is a pseudo-intellectual and has appropriated
Ross as a hero for political reasons without stepping back and considering
the policy that Andrew Johnson was supporting or what their outcome
(in the unlikely event they were adapted) would have been.

From: mwstone@aol.com (M w stone)
Organization: AOL, http://www.aol.co.uk
 Newsgroups: 
            soc.history
 References: 
            1


>From: forward <dhm@best.com>

>> From: Everdellx@aol.com

>>   Not many folks out there seem to understand that
>> "democracy" historically means that poor men get to vote -- and hold
>office.

+>>It reports that Johnson, in August, 1865, advised the
+>>> new Mississippi state convention and then the Louisiana convention to
+>>> institute the vote for both blacks and whites, but only if they had $250 in
+>>> property.

[m w stone wrote]

>> <<[the $250.00 property qualification] might have been better from a race-
>> relations point of view.

>> Might have been, Mr. Stone; but it wouldn't have been democratic.

Possibly not, but the south wasn't ever *going* to be democratic in the mid 19c
- certainly not if you define democracy aas including *both* races.

Basically there were two possible outcomes - either "herrenvolk democracy" ie
equal rights for all *whites* , but with other races just not counting as part
of the "people", or else a theoretically "colour-blind" system, which in
practice would have been rigged to exclude most blacks - and quite a few whites
as well . In 1877, the second option prevailed

BTW, I have been reading up McPherson's "Ordeal By Fire", which mentions (in Ch
25) Andrew Johnson's suggestion to the Mississippi convention. Apparently what
he actually proposed was the enfranchisemwnt of all *literate* blacks and
*also* thiose who owned $250 in property. The literacy qualification would in
theory have been at least potentiallly open to all - though not immediately of
course. This would have made the south about as democratic as several northern
states at that time


Mike Stone - Peterborough England


FINALLY:

Dear Jim,

I forwarded your posting to William Everdell, author of the book "The End
of Kings - A History of Republics and Republicanism".  He sent me the
reply below which may be of interest to you.  I'll also post it to the
newsgroups.

regards,

dhm


To: dhm@best.com
From: Bill Everdell <Everdell@aol.com>
Subject: Re:  Andrew Johnson's Impeachment (fwd)


Of course the answer to <<And what was it that the "radical" Republicans
wanted to force on to the South?>> is "democracy."  Johnson, who, like so many
Americans, pulled himself out of "poor white" status and then decided to pull
the ladder up with him, wanted to restore the southern states' property
qualification for voters and officeholders.  Sounds quite familiar in the age
of Gingrich and De Lay.  The word "democracy" as used by Tocqueville and
Jacksonians in the 1830s (and by the Jacobins in the 1790s) meant giving the
vote for the first time since ancient Athens to propertyless men.

We got democracy with so little bloodshed in this country that we have
forgotten what it is.  And we no longer realize that blood was shed for
democracy in the Civil War.

- Bill Everdell

AND  This from David Doggett:

I read your article "Andrew Johnson's Impeachment" 

http://www.bigissueground.com/history/blair-andrewjohnson.shtml 

with interest and I have a few minor comments.

You say: "Ross and the other 6 Republicans took a lot of criticism for their
vote," which is like saying that Hiroshima had a "lot" of damage from the
atomic bomb.  I believe the country was rabidly opposed to Johnson.  If you
do the math, taking into account the population of the US during the civil
war, the 620,000 civil war deaths, as a percentage of the US population,
would be equal to about five million US citizens today. To have a southern
senator as president who wanted to carry forward Lincoln's policies was
intolerable.  I would use the words "withering criticism"

Additionally, you say: "and none of them were returned to office in their
next election."  I thought that none of the seven ever held public office
again.  Please correct me if I am wrong.  Further, I thought that all were
financially ruined.  Do you know if that is true?  I know one senator
escaped elective retribution.  James Grimes of Iowa died

As a point of interest, the enforcement provision of the Tenure of Office
Act stated that violation of this act shall be deemed a "High Misdemeanor"
which was designed to remove any value judgment as to whether violation was
an impeachable offence

SEC. 6. And be it further enacted, That every removal, appointment, or
employment, made, had, or exercised, contrary to the provisions of this act,
and the making, signing, sealing, countersigning, or issuing of any
commission or letter of authority for or in respect to any such appointment
or employment, shall be deemed, and are hereby declared to be, high
misdemeanors
and, upon trial and conviction thereof, every person guilty thereof shall be
punished by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars, or by imprisonment
not exceeding five years, or both said punishments, in the discretion of the
court....

Some other items of interest:
In March 1866, Congress passed the "Civil Rights Bill", intended to nullify
the Black Codes by banning discriminatory state laws. Johnson vetoed it; the
veto was overridden by one vote.

There was outrage in the North over the Black Codes. The outrage was vented
on Johnson, who seemed to be in collusion with Southern reactionaries when
he vetoed an extension of the life of the Freedman's Bureau on the basis
that the Constitution did not sanction such organizations. Congress pushed
through the extension anyway.

With the congress over 2/3 republican I can't see how Johnson could do
anything.  The segregated south was created

There was the irony that as Congress was imposing black suffrage on the
South, black people weren't guaranteed rights in many states of the North.
This was too blatant a contradiction to be ignored, and so the Radicals
pushed through the 15th Amendment of the Constitution, whose central clause
read: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race,
color or previous condition of servitude."

In fact, Congress and the Radicals were at the height of their power, and
sought to intimidate the other branches of government. When the Supreme
Court attempted to limit the powers of military courts in the military
districts, Radicals in Congress passed measures to limit the Supreme Court's
authority in return, and the Court meekly backed off.

Judge Chase dismissed the proceedings and the Radicals gave up on their
crusade to throw Johnson out of office. It really didn't matter one way or
another. The Radical agenda was the rule of the land, Johnson had no power,
and was to leave office in less than a year.

The Grant years were a time when men were on the make instead of full of
ideals, and under such circumstances the South was able to rebuild its
society largely without interference. Segregation and white supremacy became
the law, and so it would remain for almost a century.

To aggravate matters, even many black leaders did not see any great need for
an integrated society, feeling that there was no reason why blacks should
not have their own schools and facilities. Only South Carolina and Louisiana
specifically forbade segregation in school facilities. It was not obvious at
the time that the importance of integration was not of some fuzzy concept of
brotherhood, but of equal access to resources and power. Separate would not
and could not ever really be equal.

In addition, the Supreme Court turned its back on racial equality. In The
Civil Rights Cases (1883), the court declared that Congress had no power to
prevent private acts of discrimination.  The Supreme Court in Plessy v.
Ferguson (1896) upheld the constitutionality of separate railroad cars for
blacks and whites. Speaking for the court, Justice Henry Billings Brown
argued that as long as the separate facilities for each race were "equal",
they were permitted under the Constitution.  In Williams v. Mississippi
(1898), the Supreme Court approved a Mississippi scheme that prevented
almost all blacks in the state from either voting or serving on juries.
Before 1890 about 190,000 blacks voted in Mississippi, but in the 1890s
Mississippi established a system of poll taxes and literacy tests.

All long after the exit of Johnson.

Regards,
David Doggett