Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (1868): First Presidential Trial

The impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868 was the first time the US House of Representatives impeached a president. The House charged Johnson with violating the Tenure of Office Act by dismissing his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, but the deeper cause was his fierce struggle with the Republican Congress over how to rebuild the defeated South. In May 1868 the Senate acquitted him by a single vote, a result that shaped the balance between president and Congress for generations.

Background: a president at war with Congress

Andrew Johnson, a Democrat from Tennessee who had stayed loyal to the Union, became president after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865. He favoured a rapid, lenient return of the Southern states and opposed federal protection for the newly freed people, whose freedom had been secured by the Thirteenth Amendment.

Johnson vetoed the bill extending the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, opposed the 14th Amendment and attacked his opponents in a bitter speaking tour in 1866. The Republicans won large majorities in that year’s elections and overrode his vetoes to impose their own programme of Reconstruction, placing the South under military districts in 1867.

The Tenure of Office Act and Stanton

To protect officials who supported their policies, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act over Johnson’s veto on 2 March 1867. It barred the president from removing officials whose appointment required Senate approval without the Senate’s consent. The status of cabinet members was ambiguous, since the act covered them only during the term of the president who appointed them, and Stanton had been appointed by Lincoln.

Stanton, the secretary of war, worked closely with the Radical Republicans and the army commanders enforcing Reconstruction. In August 1867 Johnson suspended him and made General Ulysses S. Grant interim secretary. When the Senate refused to approve the suspension in January 1868, Grant handed the office back to Stanton, to Johnson’s fury.

An earlier attempt to impeach Johnson on broader charges had failed in the House in December 1867. But on 21 February 1868 Johnson dismissed Stanton outright and named General Lorenzo Thomas in his place. Stanton refused to leave and barricaded himself in his office at the War Department.

Impeachment and trial

On 24 February 1868 the House voted to impeach Johnson by 126 votes to 47. It adopted eleven articles of impeachment, most concerning the removal of Stanton, and one accusing Johnson of bringing Congress into disrepute through his speeches. Seven House members, including Thaddeus Stevens, Benjamin Butler and John Bingham, served as managers, or prosecutors.

The Senate trial opened in March with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding. Johnson never appeared in person. His able defence team, including former Supreme Court justice Benjamin Curtis and William Evarts, argued that the act did not protect Stanton, that the president had a right to test the law in court, and that no crime had been committed.

Behind the scenes, Johnson’s allies let wavering senators know that he would stop obstructing Reconstruction and would appoint the respected General John Schofield as secretary of war. Some senators were also uneasy that conviction would make Benjamin Wade, the Radical president pro tempore of the Senate, the next president.

The vote

On 16 May 1868 the Senate voted on Article XI, a summary charge. Thirty-five senators voted guilty and 19 not guilty, one short of the two-thirds majority needed. Seven Republicans voted to acquit: William Pitt Fessenden, Joseph Fowler, James Grimes, John Henderson, Edmund Ross, Lyman Trumbull and Peter Van Winkle. On 26 May votes on two more articles produced the same result, and the Senate abandoned the trial. Stanton resigned the same day.

Allegations soon followed that some votes had been bought, and a House committee investigated, but nothing was proven. Several of the seven saw their political careers end, though not all did.

Consequences

Johnson served out the rest of his term until March 1869, largely powerless, and the Republicans nominated Grant, who won the presidency that year. In 1875 Tennessee returned Johnson to the US Senate, the only former president to serve there, but he died a few months later.

The acquittal set a precedent that impeachment should be reserved for serious offences rather than political disagreements. The Tenure of Office Act was repealed in 1887, and in Myers v. United States (1926) the Supreme Court indicated that such limits on the president’s power to remove executive officials were unconstitutional.

Timeline

• 1867, 2 March: Congress passes the Tenure of Office Act over Johnson’s veto.
• 1867, August: Johnson suspends Stanton and appoints Grant as interim secretary of war.
• 1868, 21 February: Johnson dismisses Stanton.
• 1868, 24 February: The House impeaches Johnson by 126 votes to 47.
• 1868, 5 March: The Senate trial is formally organised under Chief Justice Chase.
• 1868, 16 May: The Senate fails to convict on Article XI by 35 votes to 19.
• 1868, 26 May: Two further articles fail by the same margin and the trial ends.

Why it matters

The impeachment of Andrew Johnson was the first test of the Constitution’s ultimate check on a president. Its narrow failure kept Johnson in office but ended his power to block Reconstruction, and it has been studied ever since as the key precedent for later presidential impeachments.