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CHAPTER VIII

IMPEACHMENT AND TRIAL OF ANDREW

JOHNSON

HISTORY furnishes many examples of a people rising against their sovereign and putting him to death or dethroning him; but it is rare indeed that we find the official head of a nation placed on trial for his official life in time of peace, and in a legal manner by those who have a constitutional right to do so. The most conspicuous example of this in history was the trial of President Johnson by the United States senate in the spring of 1868. He had been impeached by the House of Representatives for high crimes and misdemeanors, and, after a trial by the highest legislative body in America according to the forms of law, was acquitted. The proceedings attracted worldwide attention.

The latter years of the preceding century had witnessed the impeachment and trial of

Warren Hastings by the British House of Commons. The trial of Hastings, conducted with such pomp and ceremony, extending over several years, and enlivened by the matchless eloquence of Edmund Burke, was a most imposing and momentous event, and attracted the attention of the world. But the trial of Andrew Johnson was an event of vaster significance. The eloquence of a Burke was wanting, but the intensity of feeling far exceeded that of the English trial; and the outcome, in case of conviction, would have surpassed the latter in its results, as the position of the chief Executive of a great people is higher than that of an ordinary governor of a colonial dependency.

Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson was the third of our accidental presidents, the third also of the presidents who were born in North Carolina and elected from Tennessee. Among our chief magistrates who rose from the lower strata of society, he is the most striking example. Other presidents we have had who rose from the commonest walks of life—there were Jackson

and Polk, Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield. But Jackson had taught a country school and was a law student at an age when Johnson had not learned to read; Lincoln was a careful reader of books while yet a boy; Grant was graduated at West Point, and Garfield took a college degree in his early manhood.

Andrew Johnson was not only penniless and wholly without social standing, he was also illiterate. He belonged to the class of "poor whites" of the South, who were regarded by the ruling classes as scarcely above the slave. A tailor by trade, industrious, of a rugged personality, honest, ambitious, and aspiring, he grasped for the little knowledge within his reach. Barely able to read when married, his wife became his first and only teacher. He studied faithfully under her directions and soon acquired a good working education. Becoming interested in politics, he was sent to the legislature of his adopted State, from which, after several years' service, he was promoted to the Congress of the United States. Entering the House in 1843 at the age of thirty-five, he served ten years and became governor of

Tennessee. After serving four years in this capacity he was elected by the legislature to the United States Senate, where we find him at the outbreak of the Civil War.

Of the twenty-two senators from the seceding States Andrew Johnson alone remained faithful to the Union. Thus he attracted the attention of the country; his object, however, was not to attract attention, but to put down the rebellious slaveholder, to save the Union. His patriotism was without a flaw. His courage rose to the heroic. On one occasion he kept at bay a mob thirsting for his blood by the defiant glare of his eyes. But his courage was of the bulldog character. To the better part of valor, discretion, he was a stranger. He was pugnacious by nature, seemed to enjoy combat, and continued to fight after he was beaten, without knowing he was beaten.

He had always been a Democrat, but he won the good will of all Republicans by his heroic stand for the Union in 1861 especially the good will of Lincoln, who made him military governor of Tennessee the following year. In 1864 he was chosen as Lincoln's

running mate on the National ticket, and elected. His brief inaugural address when sworn in as Vice-President made a bad impression. It was plainly the rambling, incoherent harangue of a drunken man. Many, who did not know him well, trembled when they thought of the possibility of his becoming President. But there was no cause for alarm on that score. Johnson was not a drunkard. He had accidentally taken too much brandy that morning, in a medicinal way, but ordinarily Johnson was a temperate and sober man. Lincoln, hearing of the episode, exclaimed, "Andy made a bad slip the other day, but don't be scared; Andy isn't a drunkard."

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In less than six weeks after the inauguration Lincoln had fallen a victim of the assassin and Johnson was President. In ordinary times he might have made a good President. But the times were inauspicious. The war was over, but the blood of the combatants still boiled; the state of the country was the worst it had ever been in time of peace. Moreover, the whole machinery of government had been tem

1 McCulloch's "Men and Measures of Half a Century," p. 373.

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