Andrew Johnson

Impeached: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy by David O. Stewart

Tier 3

We’ve spent a lot of time in recent weeks talking about the worst presidents. The Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan run is a proverbial murderer’s row of bad presidents. They were, at times, actively harmful, but much of their well-earned dishonorable place in history stems from inaction. Andrew Johnson’s place in the pantheon of bad presidents was thoroughly earned through his actions.

Johnson was not Lincoln’s preferred running mate. It’s hard to envision two people sharing a ticket with such disparate views and temperaments. Lincoln chose him because he was a War Democrat (a southern Democrat who supported the war and had refused to secede) and wanted to demonstrate that he was committed to reconciliation. Remember, he made this choice while the Civil War was still raging, and he was already looking forward to the difficult work of restitching a severed nation together at the seams. Johnson seemed a logical choice.

And, of course, Lincoln didn’t anticipate getting assassinated. Presidents never do.

And when John Wilkes Booth fired that fateful shot and robbed us of our greatest president during a time that was, in many ways, just as perilous as the war he’d just led us through, we were left with Andrew Johnson. Arguably our worst president and likely the most despicable man to ever hold the office.

I don’t say this lightly. I understand all the horrible people who have held this office. And I believe Johnson to have been the worst, most despicable human being ever to call himself President of the United States.

Johnson started out well enough. He was actually quite vindictive toward the defeated Southern States in the early days of his presidency. But this was likely more out of petty spite than anything else, and his later actions would demonstrate where his heart truly lay.

He was an unapologetic and vocal white supremacist and a virulent racist. He wanted nothing more than to undo the gains won during the Civil War at the cost of hundreds of thousands of American lives. He felt that all Southern States needed to do to rejoin the Union was to accept the 13th Amendment (outlawing slavery). Many Northern politicians disagreed and felt that ensuring voting rights for Blacks was essential to Reconstruction. This would be a battle fought for a century wherein Blacks were disenfranchised, abused, murdered, demeaned, and, as Douglas A. Blackmon argues in his seminal work Slavery by Another Name, re-enslaved. This was what Johnson wanted. He wanted to undo everything Lincoln had fought for. He wanted to roll the nation back to its pre-Civil War status quo. For the most part, tragically, he succeeded.

This book is not so much about Johnson. We don’t learn about his childhood in Raleigh, North Carolina, or his time as Governor of Tennessee. We don’t read as he contemplates whether to go with the seceding Confederate States or stay with the Union. David O. Stewart instead focuses on his impeachment.

Johnson was impeached because he attempted to remove his Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, from office. Stanton believed a military occupation of the South was necessary to enforce Reconstruction. He had been very close with Lincoln and attempted to follow through on Lincoln’s plans for Reconstruction. Johnson, someone who had no interest in protecting the newly emancipated, disagreed with this policy. Congress, overwhelmingly Republican following the war and Lincoln’s assassination, saw where this was headed and passed the Tenure of Office Act. This act essentially denied the president the power to remove members of his Cabinet unless the Senate approved the removal and subsequent appointment.

Political history can be tricky. I hate Andrew Johnson. I hate everything he stood for and believed in. I hate the American South he represented and shaped. I hate the century of oppression and murder he helped to make possible. But I don’t think the Tenure of Office Act was appropriate. It violates the separation of powers that was laid out in The Constitution. No matter how abhorrent an individual he or she may be, the President of the United States should have the right, within reason, to pick their Cabinet.

As with every impeachment in this nation’s history, this wasn’t about violating the Tenure of Office Act. It was about Johnson. The Republican-led Congress despised him and what he stood for, and they hoped to remove him from office. They passed this act and then overrode Johnson’s veto with the express intent of him violating it and then impeaching him.

As I said, history is a tricky thing. If I’d been alive then, I’d have wanted nothing more than Johnson removed from office. The nation would be a far better place if Lincoln, or even Grant, had been president in the years following the Civil War. But I don’t know that they had a valid case for impeachment.

Technically though, that does not matter. You don’t need to have a strong case. You simply need the votes. And initially, it appeared the Republicans had them. Here the history is a little murky. Stewart is convinced that Johnson bought off key Republican Senators to win the vote. I will trust Stewart here as I have no reason to doubt it.

The book itself is quite readable. It’s exciting and well-paced, and recently, it found itself back on best-seller lists due to recent political turmoil. It’s worth noting that this book was not written in response to any subsequent impeachment. It was published in 2009 and avoided parallels to Nixon (notably not impeached) or Clinton.

I highly recommend the book. It’s very well written and researched. However, I did find it lacking as a political biography. It only covers the impeachment and does not take the reader through Johnson’s life or the other aspects of his presidency. Again, as in the past, this is my fault. I picked this book because it seemed interesting, and I wanted to know more about Johnson’s impeachment. Stewart does not claim it to be an exhaustive biography of Andrew Johnson. I will have to seek out another to learn more about this man I hate so much.