This day in history: Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the US, avoids impeachment by one vote in 1868
In 1865, the presidential responsibilities of the United States of America fell upon the shoulders of an old-fashioned southern Jacksonian chap by default, upon the assassination of the country's 16th President, Abraham Lincoln. Andrew Johnson became the first president in US history to be subjected to an impeachment trial, and over 150 years ago today, on May 26, 1868, Johnson managed to avoid impeachment by just one vote.
Johnson ascended into politics at a very young age, despite being born into poverty and never having pursued formal education. He taught himself to read and write, and even honed his skills as an orator, especially during an era where public speaking was deemed the most powerful political tool. He managed to climb his way up the political ladder by his own devices and hard work, and eventually became the President in 1965. But that doesn't mean he was the best leader that the Free World had been graced with.
As the 17th President of the US, not only was Johnson incredibly racist but also a difficult man who was hard to get along with. He regularly labeled blacks being the inferior race and even owned a few slaves himself. He also made it blatantly clear that they need to remain so, no matter how much progress they made. Furthermore, he openly threw insults during public speeches and called critics disloyal and accused them of treachery. He would conveniently ignore or blindside the questions he didn't like and would routinely assign people into a position that they were uncomfortable scapegoating them into taking the blame if things went wrong.
The first signs of his violent outburst were publically displayed during his initiation as the Vice President of the Lincoln administration. Johnson was drunk out of his mind, having consumed three glasses of whiskey on the rocks possibly as liquid-courage, right before his swearing-in ceremony. What was supposed to be a peaceful and formal affair took a wild turn fuelled by Johnson's antics of shouting, stumbling and slurring over his words, shaking his fists and rowdy gesticulations. However, Lincoln didn't bat an eyelash at Johnson's unruly behavior, going as far as to deny that his new vice president was a drunkard because of "bad slip".
The tradition at the time implied that the President does not consider his Vice President as a part of the inner circle, which also meant that Lincoln and Johnson didn't interact much from the time he was sworn in until Lincoln's assassination April 4, 1865. Johnson was thrust into the role of President without proper knowledge of what exactly Lincoln had planned to ascertain the Confederate forces capitulate in the Civil War, and how they would rebuild the war-stricken nation.
By then the congress had already mapped out some post-war features for the new administration, but Johnson's contrasting notion of post-war reunification clashed with those of the Radical Republicans in Congress. He cast his doubts on the federal government's authority and work, while his vision aimed at reconstructing the South from Washington in order to guarantee the freedom to those who were long enslaved.
Johnson aggravated the legislators and a vast number of Northerners immediately and released many leading members of the Confederate Cabinet who until then had been in government custody. He even appointed governors in southern states and gave their legislatures the right to the symposium. These governments were dominated by secessionists, who imposed "black codes" and allowed slavery to continue in many areas.
He never hid his racist views and remarks, and was once quoted saying "Everyone would, and must admit, that the white race was superior to the black and that while we ought to do our best to bring them. . . up to our present level, that, in doing so, we should, at the same time raise our own intellectual status so that the relative position of the two races would be the same."
The president's lenient Reconstruction policies toward the south angered the Radical Republicans in Congress, which ultimately led to his downfall, although he was acquitted. In 1866, Johnson had toured around the Northern cities to campaign against the Radical Republicans in Congress and garner a support base for his liberal policies towards the vanquished south.
While it was a success at first, it took a turn for the worse when a reticent Johnson was faced with hecklers in Cleveland who were strongly against him. Johnson struggled to pacify the crowd and gain leverage, despite his oratory skills, and when an aide urged him to consider his dignity in the office, Johnson's response was that he simply didn't care about his dignity. The tour gave no signs of improvement and by the time he had finished, Johnson had been so humiliated that his reputation had been plundered.
Essayist Edwin Percy Whipple summarised an opinion on Johnson's tour in The Atlantic Monthly as follows: "Never before did the first office in the gift of the people appear so poor an object of human ambition as when Andrew Johnson made it an eminence on which to exhibit an inability to behave and incapacity to reason. His low cunning conspired with his devouring egoism to make him throw off all the restraints of official decorum, in the expectation that he would find duplicates of himself in the crowds he addressed and that mob diffused would heartily sympathize with mob impersonated. Never was a blustering demagogue led by a distempered sense of self-importance into a more fatal error."
In 1868, the House adopted its 11 articles of impeachment against Johnson — the 10th one of which was about his language and conduct over the course of his presidency. One of the other articles was a reference to his summer tour that said Johnson had debased the office of the presidency with his dangerous and fanatic rhetoric. However, Johnson's opponents in the Senate opted to not test the case, and tried him based on three articles in the impeachment. They cited that the President had rights to his freedom of speech, just as any other citizen, and even if it was offensive, it wasn't impeachable. Senator Edmond Ross of Kansas defected in the last minute, leading to Johnson's impeachment being acquitted by a single vote.