Historian and Constitution expert David O. Stewart recaps the landmark
impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. "The fullest recounting
we have of the high politics of that immediate post-Civil War
period...Stewart's graceful style and storytelling ability make for a
good read." --The Washington Post
In 1868 Congress impeached President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, the
man who had succeeded the murdered Lincoln, bringing the nation to the
brink of a second civil war. Enraged to see the freed slaves abandoned
to brutal violence at the hands of their former owners, distraught that
former rebels threatened to regain control of Southern state
governments, and disgusted by Johnson's brawling political style,
congressional Republicans seized on a legal technicality as the basis
for impeachment -- whether Johnson had the legal right to fire his own
secretary of war, Edwin Stanton.
The fiery but mortally ill Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania
led the impeachment drive, abetted behind the scenes by the military
hero and president-in-waiting, General Ulysses S. Grant.
The Senate trial featured the most brilliant lawyers of the day, along
with some of the least scrupulous, while leading political fixers
maneuvered in dark corners to save Johnson's presidency with political
deals, promises of patronage jobs, and even cash bribes. Johnson escaped
conviction by a single vote.
David Stewart, the author of the highly acclaimed The Summer of 1787,
the bestselling account of the writing of the Constitution, challenges
the traditional version of this pivotal moment in American history.
Rather than seeing Johnson as Abraham Lincoln's political heir, Stewart
explains how the Tennessean squandered Lincoln's political legacy of
equality and fairness and helped force the freed slaves into a brutal
form of agricultural peonage across the South.
When the clash between Congress and president threatened to tear the
nation apart, the impeachment process substituted legal combat for
violent confrontation. Both sides struggled to inject meaning into the
baffling requirement that a president be removed only for "high crimes
and misdemeanors," while employing devious courtroom gambits, backstairs
spies, and soaring rhetoric. When the dust finally settled, the
impeachment process had allowed passions to cool sufficiently for the
nation to survive the bitter crisis.
