As detailed in JFK's "Profiles in Courage," that impeachment was saved by the vote of a single man, Kansas Senator Edmund Ross, who defied his party's radical majority by voting to acquit. So... will there be any profiles in courage among the House Dems this time around?
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Forget current events; Johnson was in the bottom three of presidents.
The issue of whether he should have been impeached is different, of course, but Johnson was no political victim.
It had nothing to do with whether he was a highly rated President.
Johnson was a racist tool. Also, he did violate the law at the time.
But Ross was right.
And hurling racist insults at anyone who lived in that era is a meaningless gesture. Hell, poor Joe Biden is getting labeled with that for what he said in the 1970's.
redemptionist southerners trying to re enslave them while killing them in droves.
You do know that’s why we have the 14th and 15th Amendments and the post war civil rights statutes?
But, yeah the carpetbagger exploiters were the problem.
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I love history, and particularly American political history.
and to have his wife teach him how to read.
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And Congress didn't like his restraint?
in those states.
This did eventually happen as part of the corrupt bargain of 1876.
Sounds like the unprecedented override was the beginning of the end for him.
He was impeached for firing Secretary of War Stanton in violation of the Tenure of Office Act which Congress had enacted to keep President Johnson from firing Lincoln's cabinet...a law that was likely very unconstitutional.
Those were insane times. You had military generals deposing elected state governors and replacing them with their own appointees...Congress admitting Nebraska as a state over the president's veto so that Republicans could get two more votes and another state ratifying the 14th Amendment...Congress passing unconstitutional laws restricting the powers of the president, and then impeaching him for violating those statutes. Then again, we had just had the Civil War...things were bound to be crazy, as every act of government was unprecedented.
Johnson was the only president to be elected to the Senate after being president.
Johnson spoke out against the "despotism" of Grant, who used the military to support Louisiana's Reconstruction Government.
It was close to a continuation of the civil war. The Congressional hearing transcripts were published and are a fascinating read in and of themselves even today.
Grant took about as much shit from the southerns as he did in the war. He enforced Reconstruction at the point of a bayonet. The klan night riders were terrorizing the ex slaves as well. Johnson was sympathetic to, and supported the southern whites. Stanton who was removed, was the Secretary of War, and the cabinet official responsible for military enforcement of reconstruction. He reacted just like U S Grant. Both, of course were towering civil war figures who had helped save the country.
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least.
You do know that both Jackie Robinson and MLK were originally R’s?