The 17th president of the United States, Andrew Johnson was the first president to ever be impeached by Congress. Being the Vice President to Abraham Lincoln, after the assassination of Lincoln he assumed the presidency. Although during Lincoln’s first term as president it was Hannibal Hamlin who served as vice president, by 1864 and on a national level the Republican party had temporarily changed their name to the National Union Party in a bid to attract Democrats who had supported the Union during the Civil War. These Democrats were known as “War Democrats” and Andrew Johnson was one of them.
For this reason Johnson was added to Abraham Lincoln’s ticket and once elected to serve at the presidents pleasure. Unlike Hamlin, who had urged policies such as the Emancipation Proclamation and arming Black American’s, Johnson had little regard for the freed slaves while urging a speedy restoration of the Southern states. As president, Johnson had his own ideas about how the Restoration should move forward. He urged the states to hold conventions and elect officials.
The states wound up returning many antebellum officials to their offices. The Republican led Congress passed legislative acts to halt these efforts but Johnson would veto them. In turn, Congress would override the vetoes. Indeed, Johnson had 15 vetoes (more than any president) overridden by Congress. This, along with Johnson’s opposition of the 14th Amendment led Congress in this growing conflict between the two branches to pass the Tenure of Office Act.
This conflict of “presidential reconstruction” versus “congressional reconstruction” seemed to be at the heart of the Tenure of Office Act. Restricting the president from suspending an officer while the Senate is not in Session, this left Johnson politically helpless and overpowered by Congress, and given his struggles with his own Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (a Lincoln appointee) he couldn’t even use the military effectively in attempting to go through with his own reconstruction plans. Johnson wanted Stanton out as Secretary of War and Congress wanted him to stay.
In August of 1867, Johnson went ahead and removed Stanton while the Senate was not in session. When the Senate returned on January of 1868, they refused to ratify the removal from office. Despite this, Johnson appointed Ulysses S. Grant to the office. Within days Congress moved to impeach the president. Producing 11 articles of impeachment, the United States House of Representatives initiated the impeachment process on February 24th, 1868, formerly adopting their articles of impeachment on March 2nd and 3rd.
The primary charge against President Johnson was that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act. It was never clear if he had violated the act. Stanton was not appointed by Johnson but instead by Lincoln. It seems as if Johnson admired Stanton but his Secretary of War’s conflict with Johnson’s reconstruction vision was a problem. The Supreme Court would later, in Myers v United States (1926), posit in dicta that the act was invalid, but at the time Johnson’s impeachment, this was the most serious charge.
Of the eleven articles, only one was not in some way regarding the Tenure of Office Act. They actually wrote up an article of impeachment for his speaking campaign known as “Swing Around the Circle.” Between late August and mid-September of 1866, President Johnson “swung” from Washington D.C., to New York then down and west to Chicago, the South to St. Louis and east through the Ohio River valley back up to the nations capital. He was attempting to gain support for his reconstruction policies as well as campaign for preferred congressional candidates.
While that kind of behavior is standard operating procedure for presidents, at the time it was unprecedented. In striving towards a fair and accurate reporting of the events surrounding the first presidential impeachment, it has been difficult to find evidence that might vindicate Johnson’s approach to reconstruction. While Abraham Lincoln is oftentimes listed as one of the best presidents of American history, Andrew Johnson is often listed as the worst. Some have suggested that Lincoln would be held in even more esteem if it weren’t for his choosing Andrew Johnson for vice-president in his second term.
Johnson had, of course, assumed office as president only six weeks into Lincolns second term. But it was not just that Johnson had a different vision than Lincoln. One of the major reasons Lincoln chose Johnson as VP to begin with was because he was facing opposition from members in his own newly formed Republican. They were the “radical Republican’s” who felt Lincoln had not gone for enough in ending slavery and fighting the Civil War. There were the “War Democrats” and the “Copperheads” (peace advocates) as well.
While Lincoln had faced three other candidates in his 1860 election, he wasn’t amid a civil war at the time and there was genuine concern about getting reelected. This weighed heavily on the decision to replace Hannibal with Johnson. It is not clear whether Johnson has been maligned by history or whether he’s earned the revile, but history has not been kind to him.
“As a Union party I will follow you to the ends of the earth, and to the gates of death. But as an Abolition party, as a Republican party, as a Whig party, as a Democrat party…I will not follow you one foot.”
~Robert Jefferson Breckenridge~