A. Johnson Impeachment Articles

Impeachment Articles

Abraham Lincoln picked Andrew Johnson, former Tennessee governor, U.S. Senator, and a Southern pro-war Democrat, to strengthen the ticket in the 1864 presidential election. Johnson became president upon Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, just as the war was ending. Johnson threatened to harshly punish the "traitors" responsible for secession who led the Confederacy, which at first encouraged the Radical Republicans who controlled Congress, but he soon proved to be sympathetic to the Southern states and an obstacle to Congressional Reconstruction. Johnson vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau Act and Civil Rights Act of 1866. He also encouraged Southern states to reject the 14th Amendment, passed by Congress on June 13, 1866, and sent to the states for ratification. Then on February 21st, 1868, Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a favorite of the Radical Republicans who was overseeing the Reconstruction efforts. A year earlier Congress had passed the Tenure of Office Act, prohibiting the president from removing any executive officer confirmed by the Senate without Senate approval. (Eventually the law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.)
On February 25, 1868, accusing Johnson of violating the Tenure of Office Act, the House voted 126-47 to impeach the president. In addition to the nine Articles of Impeachment approved on February 25, two additional charges listing various other allegations of bad behavior, Articles 10-11, were passed on March 3rd. The impeachment trial in the Senate began on March 30, 1868. The chief prosecutor was Congressman Ben Butler (formerly a Union general appointed by Lincoln, judged by Grant to be worthless as a military commander); the president's defense counsel included attorney general Henry Stanbery, former Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Curtis, and William Evarts, a future secretary of state. Because Senator Benjamin Wade would have become president if the Senate convicted Johnson, conviction would have amounted to a political coup de etat. On May 16, 1868, seven Republicans broke ranks and Johnson was acquitted by a vote of 35-19, one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed for a conviction. A chastened President Johnson served out the rest of Lincoln's term. In 1874 the voters of Tennessee sent him back to the Senate, and he died on July 31, 1875.

Introduction by David Hanson, Professor of History, Virginia Western Community College

5/03