On May 16, 1868, the U.S. Senate failed by just one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson of "high crimes and misdemeanors," as he was charged under the articles of impeachment. A second vote, taken on May 26, also fell short, by just one vote, of the two-thirds majority required to convict the president. When Johnson, a Southern Democrat, assumed the presidency after Lincoln's assassination, he intended to pursue a plan allowing former Confederate states to return representatives to Congress as soon as their legislatures had approved a constitution recognizing the abolition of slavery. Lacking the personal and political sagacity of President Lincoln, Johnson was unable to bring about the transition smoothly, and what ensued was a cataclysmic encounter between the executive and legislative branches.
In 1865, Johnson took advantage of a long Congressional recess to recognize a reconstruction government in all former Confederate states, except Texas. The states then took advantage of his conciliatory policy to pass "Black Codes" limiting freedmen's rights. Back in session, angry congressmen, led by men like Charles Sumner and Wendell Phillips, passed the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills to empower those the codes repressed. Johnson vetoed both bills, but Congress passed the first override in U.S. history to protect the civil rights legislation.
Clearly at cross purposes, Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment, while Johnson recommended that the states refuse to ratify it. Congress responded with their own militant reconstruction program and passed the Army Appropriations Act to thwart the president's power as commander-in-chief, insisting his orders all be communicated through an intermediary. Congress also repassed the Freedman's Bureau Act and overrode Johnson's veto.
Passage of the Tenure of Civil Office Act only heightened the antagonism between Johnson and the Congress. The Act forbid him to remove office holders, including Cabinet members, without the Senate's approval. The Act, formulated in language akin to that used in the Constitution to describe grounds for impeachment, made the removal of office holders without Senate approval a "misdemeanor in office."
Johnson's Cabinet advised him the Act was likely invalid, and he defied Congress by discharging Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton on February 21, 1868. He appointed Ulysses Grant who served just five months then stepped down and joined the Republicans. Next, Johnson appointed Lorenzo Thomas, but this time Stanton, who had actually been working with radicals in Congress, barricaded himself inside his office.
This deadlock culminated in the first impeachment proceedings in U.S. history. In February 1869, the House voted articles of impeachment and seven House Managers, including former Civil War Majors General Benjamin F. Butler and John A. Logan, prepared Johnson's trial. Lincoln appointee Salmon Chase, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, presided. Ten of eleven articles concerned the Tenure and Army Appropriations Acts; the last article claimed Johnson had attempted to undermine the Congress. Johnson did not attend the trial.
Between May 16 and May 26, when the vote was called a second time, enormous pressure and actual threats were brought to bear on the seven Republicans who joined the Senate's twelve Democrats to vote against conviction. Yet the final count, 35 to 19, remained one vote short of the two-thirds needed for conviction. When he was given the news, Johnson broke into tears.
Learn more about impeachment in American Memory:
- Read a transcript of the 1869 Johnson trial on articles of impeachment. See the Supplement to the Congressional Globe Containing the Proceedings of the Senate Sitting for the Trial of Andrew Johnson, a special presentation within the American Memory collection A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation, 1774-1875.
- A list of resources providing objective, impartial information on the impeachment process is available as just one of a number of frequently asked questions compiled within THOMAS: Legislative Information on the Internet.
- Find personal accounts of the turbulent Reconstruction Era. Search on reconstruction or carpetbagger in American Life Histories, 1936-1940. Of particular interest are the interviews with "Alexander W. Matheson" and "Mr. C.S. Bradley."
- For additional relevant documents, search on reconstruction or freedmen in African American Perspectives, 1818-1907. The latter search will retrieve a document entitled Equality before the Law Protected by National Statute which includes speeches and debates by and involving Charles Sumner as he proposed amending the 1866 Civil Rights Act. In it Sumner discusses race, the separate but equal doctrine, slavery, and citizenship with Southern senators.
- Another site, Finding Precedent: The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson provides excerpts from over 200 articles from Harper's Weekly during the period 1865-69.
