Johnson's Impeachment  "Saved By The Skin Of His Teeth"  March 13 - May 16, 1868

Andrew Johnson had been selected vice president because as a Democrat who supported Lincoln and as the military governor of Tennessee, he balanced the ticket and brought in some Democratic votes. He got off to a bad start on inauguration day in 1865: having been ill, he fortified himself with liquor and gave an embarrassing speech in the Senate Chamber.

Immediately upon taking office after Lincoln's assassination, Johnson found himself caught between the extreme forces generated  by many years of divisiveness. Congressional opponents, many of them Radical Republicans, found the president's reconstruction programs too lenient. Johnson, indeed, seemed more interested in "normalcy" than in forcing the South to reform.

In the end, the showdown came over a secondary issue: the Tenure of Office Act of 1867, forbidding the president to remove, without the approval of the Senate, certain appointed officials. Johnson did not seek Senate approval when he fired Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a holdover from the Lincoln administration and an ally of the Radical Republicans.

Johnson's congressional enemies used this technical violation of the law to begin impeachment proceedings, for "high crimes and misdemeanors". The trial, with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Salmon P. Chase presiding, began on March 13, 1868, and dragged on for more than two months. Even though the charges were weak, the final tally on May 16 was 19 for acquittal, 35 for conviction- one vote short of the necessary two-thirds majority for conviction.

The deciding vote was cast by a Kansas Republican, Edmund G. Ross, who later wrote that he felt a conviction would degrade the office of the presidency and bring about congressional autocracy. Charles Sumner, a leading Radical Republican, said afterwards, "There is a familiar saying that a man is saved by the skin of his teeth."

Fascinating Fact:  After his presidential term ended in March 1869, Andrew Johnson returned to Tennessee and became active in state politics. He won a U.S. Senate seat and returned to Washington on March 5, 1875. When the Senate adjourned for that year, he went home to Tennessee, where he died of a stroke on July 31.


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