Remembering the first impeachment

You shouldn't think of him as a victim because he wasn't. The truth of the matter is, as President of these United States, he took reprehensible positions in the long, dark shadow of the greatest horror in American history, the Civil War. 

Andrew Johnson was--as VPs often are--a fine political choice. He became Vice President of these United States because Lincoln hoped that Johnson would be the healer Lincoln believed was needed on the ticket. Johnson was, after all, a southerner by birth (from Tennessee), but a patriot, one of the "Union Democrats" who had stood up before the country and pledged allegiance to the Union, not the Confederacy. That difficult choice of his was not his problem; it got him the job. He became VP in March of 1865, just a month or so before Lincoln's fateful visit to the Ford Theater. 

Johnson's commitment to the Union didn't mean he shared Lincoln's beliefs about slavery and race. On that score, he was every bit a southerner, so he got in trouble almost immediately when he refused to sign bills that guaranteed voting rights for former slaves and favored leniency on members of the ex-rebel military. 

He was an out-and-out racist. On that score, he certainly and defiantly wasn't alone. He told Congress that it was unthinkable to force southern states to enforce voting rights for blacks because "wherever they have been left to their own devises they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism." Ron Chernow, in Grant, his huge biography of President Ulysses S. Grant, says that message "claimed the dubious distinction of being the most racist such message ever penned by an American president." 

While it wasn't a single act that destroyed relations between President Andrew Johnson and, especially, the "Radical Republicans" from the north, Johnson's dismissal of Edwin M. Stanton (a true leftie when it came to voting rights) from his position as "Secretary of War." Stanton was a Lincoln man, a Lincoln appointee. When Stanton got the boot, Republicans (who were the lefties, remember) went ballistic. 

Technically, they charged Johnson with disregarding something called "The Tenure Office Act," which established legislative power over the executive branch by making both the appointments and dismissals of some cabinet-level positions subject to approval by the legislature. When President Johnson fired Stanton without approval, whatever bridge still stood between the aisles were no more. 

When the resolution for Johnson's impeachment finally came to a vote, it was supported by only three major arguments, instead of the nine with which it started or the 23 into which it grew. What happened in both houses of Congress was more of a dog-and-pony show than what we're watching today, since the proceedings were composed only of senators offering rousing displays of their rhetorical skills before a packed house. 

Johnson himself never had opportunity to speak, but he was not silent, meeting the public in a series of press conferences. There's no record of his tweeting, but no one was in the dark about his positions. 

When push came to shove, the vote for his impeachment on those three articles gathered a significant majority but fell one vote short of the two-thirds vote required to remove him from office. Johnson remained President.

Amazingly, of the 19 senators who voted against impeachment, seven were "Radical Republicans," the lefties who had virulently opposed Johnson's politics; but those seven couldn't vote for what impeachment (this was the very first) would do to the union. Among them was an Iowan named James Grimes, who said, “I cannot agree to destroy the harmonious working of the Constitution for the sake of getting rid of an Unacceptable President.”

So, Johnson's Presidency was saved. 

Sort of. In 1868, Andrew Johnson failed to win the nomination of his own Democratic party. Even though he'd not been thrown from office, he never won back favor, even from his own. 

There are those who say they believe--even hope--that that's what will happen today: to wit, that Donald J. Trump doesn't get tossed, but is removed eventually--by those who chose him. 

We shall see.