Impeachment of the President

It was 150 years ago tomorrow, on February 24, 1868, that Andrew Johnson became the first President of the United States to be impeached. The last President to be impeached was Bill Clinton, and that was less than 20 years ago, in December 1998. When will the next impeachment be? Perhaps in 2019?

The Rise of Andrew Johnson

As you know, Johnson became the 17^th POTUS following Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865.

Johnson was born in 1808, about six weeks before Lincoln, into an economically deprived home in Tennessee. The “upper crust” of his hometown of Raleigh probably considered the Johnson family “white trash,” especially after Andrew’s father died when he was three.

Although he had no formal schooling, Andrew was a gifted speaker, and through the years he kept rising to higher and higher political offices: from alderman to mayor, to state representative, to the U.S. House of Representatives, to governor, to U.S. Senator, and then to Vice-President (even though he was a Democrat and Lincoln was a Republican).

The Fall of Andrew Johnson

Becoming President shortly after the end of the Civil War, Johnson faced the unparalleled challenge of how to deal with the former Confederate states and how to reconstruct the South. He soon came into direct conflict with the Radical Republican faction in Congress, led by Rep. Thaddeus Stephens.

The ensuing struggle for power between the executive and legislative branches of the government resulted in Johnson’s fall. Congress wanted the freed slaves to be full citizens of the nation and thought freedmen should have the right to vote.

Johnson wanted the whites to remain dominant and the blacks to remain subservient.

The showdown came over the somewhat unrelated Tenure of Office Act legislated in March 1867. As a result of Johnson’s violation of that act, he was impeached by the House—but remained in office as the Senate fell one vote short of removing him.  

February 24, 1868

The Rise and Fall (?) of DJT

There are both stark differences and strong similarities between the 17^th and 45^th POTUS. Whereas Johnson was born into an economically poor home in Tennessee (the westernmost state at the time), DJT was the son of a rather affluent businessman in New York City.

And whereas DJT never held a political office before becoming President, Johnson served in various political offices for most of his adult life.

There seems, however, to be considerable similarity between the two presidents in their racist attitudes. In her book Andrew Johnson (2011), Annette Gordon-Reed avers that “to say that Andrew Johnson was a racist and sought to maintain and extend white supremacy in America is a statement of incontrovertible fact, not merely a judgment” (p. 11).

DJT’s racist and xenophobic attitudes may not be incontrovertible at this point, but his statements (and tweets) over the past couple of years give good grounds for labeling him as a racist.

And it goes without saying that DJT’s rise to his election as the 45^th POTUS was completely unexpected to most people in the U.S.—and probably even by Trump himself.

Given the likelihood of DJT’s people colluding with Russia and his attempting to obstruct that investigation as well as the likelihood of his having violated the “Emoluments Clause,” there is probably far more reason for DJT to be impeached than there was for Johnson.

What will happen depends on two things: the final findings of Mueller’s Special Counsel Investigation and the congressional election this November.

If the Republicans maintain control of the House, impeachment of DJT is unlikely—and removal from office by the Senate, regardless of the election (since a 2/3 vote would be necessary), seems quite unlikely even if the House does impeach him.

The Elections of 1868 and 2016

It is, thankfully, just nine days until Election Day. Earlier in the year this was touted as one of the most important elections in U.S. history. Much of the tension in the presidential election, though, has been erased by HRC’s huge lead in the polls.

However, which Party controls the Senate, and even the House, rides upon the outcome of the Nov. 8 election, so it remains an extremely important election.

As the first presidential election after the Civil War, though, the election of 1868 was perhaps even more important than the one this year. 

Background: Pres. Andrew Johnson

As you know, Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, was the Vice-President who was sworn into office on April 15, 1865, three hours after President Lincoln died from the assassin’s bullets. 

Johnson (1808-75) was born in North Carolina but lived in Tennessee from his teenager years. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1857 and became the Vice-President on March 4, 1865.

Even though he was not opposed to slavery, Johnson did not support secession and thus opposed Tennessee joining the Confederate States of America in June 1861. He was the only senator from a Confederate state not to resign his senate seat.

Johnson, however, was a southerner, and after the war he wanted to protect the interests of the whites in the South and to welcome them back into the Union quickly and easily. 

In 1866 Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill to protect the rights of the slaves who had been freed, but Johnson vetoed that bill.

Even though Congress overrode Johnson’s veto, he still did much to benefit the white southerners and to repress the equality of the freed slaves. As Hans L. Trefousse writes in Andrew Johnson: A Biography (1989), Johnson “preserved the South as ‘a white man’s country’” (p. 334).

1868: racist Democrats

Johnson’s main political opponents were not just the Republicans but those who were generally called Radical Republicans—men such as Rep. Thaddeus Stephens and Sen. Charles Sumner. They were the leaders in the impeachment of Pres. Johnson in February 1868.

Johnson was so unpopular that he was not chosen to be the Democratic candidate for President in the 1868 election. Horatio Seymour, a former New York governor, was nominated for the office, and Francis P. Blair, Jr., a former U.S. Representative from Missouri, became the nominee for Vice-President.

In his campaign Seymour advocated a policy of conservative, limited government. He also opposed the Reconstruction policies of the Republicans in Congress. His campaign was marked by pronounced appeals to racism with repeated attempts to brand General Ulysses S. Grant as the “Nigger” candidate and Seymour as the “White Man’s” candidate.

Likewise, V-P candidate Blair used “blatantly racist language” in his campaign speeches, setting the tone for what Eric Foner called (in 1990) “the last Presidential contest to center on white supremacy” (A Short History of Reconstruction, p. 145). 

Thankfully, Grant was elected President.

2016: racist Republicans

It is quite obvious that the position of the two Parties have completely reversed since 1868. This year Donald Trump’s main support, by far, is by white voters—and he has the overwhelming support of white supremacists. (See my June 5 article “Can Trump Make America White Again?”.)

While candidate Trump is not as blatantly racist as Seymour and Blair were in 1868, it seems clear that he and many of his supporters are racists. 

Like 1868, the election this year is partly about the equality of all Americans, and I am glad the result will most likely turn out the same way, against racism, as it did then.