White House gossip : $b from Andrew Johnson to Calvin Coolidge — John Shaqi
White House gossip : $b from Andrew Johnson to Calvin CoolidgeColman, Edna M. (Edna Mary)
History
White House gossip : $b from Andrew Johnson to Calvin Coolidge
Colman, Edna M. (Edna Mary)
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Washington (D.C.) -- Social life and customs; White House (Washington, D.C.)
The managers for the House were Thaddeus Stevens, Pennsylvania; George
S. Boutwell, Massachusetts; James F. Wilson, Ohio; Benjamin F. Butler,
Massachusetts; George F. Miller, Pennsylvania; John A. Bingham,
Pennsylvania; William Lawrence, Ohio; William Williams, Pennsylvania;
and John A. Logan, Illinois. They filed into the Senate Chamber and
formally read their charges against the President, who, when his
presence was called for, responded by proxy.
The impeachment court organized March 5th; the trial began on March
13th. The eleven articles of offense were boiled down to five:
1. That the President had violated the Tenure of Office Act by
dismissing Stanton.
2. That he had violated the Anti-conspiracy Act.
3. That he had declared laws unconstitutional.
4. That he had criticized and ridiculed Congress.
5. That he had attempted to prevent the execution of various acts of
Congress.
The papers were served on President Johnson. He appeared with Henry
Stanbury, his Attorney General, who had resigned from that office to
act as his counsel. Through his counsel he asked that he be given
thirty days to prepare a reply to the charges. His request was curtly
refused, and the demand was made that the case proceed at once, ten
days being finally permitted him in which to prepare his defense. The
trial lasted over the month, ninety witnesses being heard. When this
sensational jury voted, thirty-five declared the President guilty and
nineteen voted not guilty. Immediately after the announcement by Chief
Justice that two thirds of the Senators had not voted him guilty,
President Johnson was acquitted.
Analyzed and stripped of all superfluous matter, the difficulty
revealed itself strictly as a contest between the executive and the
legislative branches of the government. Naturally, during the war,
the executive branch had eclipsed the other two. After the death of
President Lincoln, powerful leaders in the two houses clamoured for the
subordination of the executive branch to the legislative. Mr. Johnson’s
firm fight for the independence of the Executive was in reality
the cause of his unpopularity. Had he been impeached, undoubtedly
succeeding presidents would have found their position stripped of many
of its prerogatives and reduced to that of being mere figureheads.
This bare escape, though by a single vote, was, nevertheless, a
victory. It kept the nation from having still another cataclysm over
the selection of a successor to the President. But, for the balance of
his term, President Johnson was entirely ignored by Congress, or at
least the part that had opposed him so vigorously. It passed bills over
his veto with apparent delight, and he went out of office despised and
ignored by such of its members as had fought him all through his term.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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