Impeachment Of President Andrew Johnson example essay topic

Sasha Capelli As one goes through the timeline of United States Presidents, their choices, and their actions, one can notice how each leader of our country has evolved and differed. One also notices how similar as well as dissimilar policies and rules that apply to the president are. One example is the impeachment of a president on the United States. Two of our presidents have encountered such an experience, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. When speculated, both these impeachments turned out similar results, but the grounds of impeachment were quite diverse. After the assassination of Lincoln in 1865, Andrew Johnson was elected into office.

According to Pauline Maier's Inventing America, the Republican nominated for the vice-presidency the Tennessee native to "broaden their appeal in the border states" (Maier 539). Johnson seemed on the exterior a man that would lead the country into a diverse and pleasant era. He scorned aristocrats and felt he represented the working class farmer. However, once scrutinized, one can see that Andrew Johnson did not have the political personality that was required for a affable presidency. According to Maier, Johnson was very insecure and stubborn about his opinions. He was unstable in his decisions, always "craving approval from the very aristocrats he claimed to despise" (539).

It seemed that Johnson was going to carry out his presidency more in a way that he considered personally right for him, rather than morally right for the nation. Two weighty questions faced the nation and Johnson: First, under what conditions should the Southern rebel states be readmitted into the Union? Second, what rights should the freedmen, or ex-slaves, have? A little over a month after becoming president, Johnson began executing his plan for The Reconstruction of the South. Johnson pardoned all rebels except Confederate leaders. He also restored all rebel property except for slaves.

Finally, he authorized each rebel state to call a convention of white delegates to draw up a new constitution. Once the conventions were completed, a new state government could then be formed, and the state could apply for readmission to the Union. The Southern states quickly acceded, and by the end of 1865, Johnson believed that the process of reconstruction essentially was complete. However, in his rapid re-admittance of the South into the union, Johnson made enemies of an influential group in the Republican Party, the Radicals. The Radicals believed that Johnson had thrown away a golden opportunity to impose fundamental reforms on Southern society. In particular, the Radicals wanted African Americans to be accorded full citizenship and black men given the right to vote.

When Johnson vetoed the Freedmen Bureaus Bill which called for "direct funding of the bureau, empowered it to build and support schools and authorized bureau agents to assume legal jurisdiction over crimes involving blacks and civil rights" and then later the Civil Rights Bill which provided for the citizenship of African Americans the Radicals began to advocate openly his impeachment (543). They believed that unless the President could be removed from office, he would be in a position to frustrate their ambitions for interracial government in the South. Of special concern to Congress was Johnson's Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. Stanton was a holdover from the Lincoln administration, and had over time shifted politically toward the Radical wing of the Republican Party.

Understandably, the decision of Congress in early 1867 to take over Reconstruction policy made the Secretary of War vulnerable. Johnson knew that he could not expect Stanton's support in hamstringing the implementation of congressional reconstruction. For those same reasons, congressional Republicans, especially the Radicals wanted to keep Stanton as Secretary of War. He would be an excellent agent of Congress in bypassing the President. To keep Stanton in office and protect other congressional supporters still in the executive branch, Congress passed, in March 1867, the Tenure of Office Act. The Tenure of Office Act gave the Senate the right to accept or to reject the dismissal of presidential appointees.

Under this law, the president could not remove officials in the executive branch while the Senate was in session without a majority vote in favor of the action (543). During the summer of 1867, while Congress was in recess, Johnson suspended Edwin M. Stanton under the provisions of the Tenure of Office Act, replacing him with the commanding general of the U.S. army, Ulysses S. Grant. As Johnson attempted to remove Stanton from his office he provoked the House of Representatives to vote on impeachment. Grounds for impeachment were, according to Maier: "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors" (543). Apparently, the violation of the Tenure of Office Act fell into that category. However, Johnson prevailed, escaping impeachment by one vote.

Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 and then again in 1996. Clinton brought to the table, as Maier would call it, a prosperous nineties up until his slight flirtation with the idea of leaving office. Under the latter Clinton administration, "the economic boom that had begun early in the nineties grew more exuberant... In 1998, wages and benefits rose at twice the rate of infaltionship, was was only 1.7 percent" (1063). However, these successes were diluted by the scandals that surrounded Clinton starting from early 1998. Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor looking over the Whitewater affair shone light on the Clinton scandals, forcing the public to speculate his credits as a respectable president and worthy leader of the nation.

Starr had received reports from an employee named Linda Tripp that a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky was having an ongoing affair with the President. Prior to this discovery, Paula Jones had been trying to get a sexual suit against the president. Jones' lawyers received word of the affair of Lewinsky and the President and "obtained a ruling from the Supreme Court requiring Clinton to answer their questions, establishing the precedent that a sitting president could be compelled to testify in a civil suit concerning actions that took place before his presidency" (1073). Clinton responded under oath that he "did not have sexual relationship with that woman [Lewinsky]" (1073). According to Maier, the Clinton administration blamed the allegations of the affair on a conspiracy led by the right-wing to get a democrat out of office.

However, under the threat of prosecution by Starr, Lewinsky told a jury an explicit description of the affair and handed over a dress supposedly stained with Clinton's semen. After the testing of the semen confirmed it was his, he told the American public that his acts with Lewinsky were wrong, but asserted that he in no way acted illegally, i. e., lied under oath. This meaning, his definition of "sexual relationship meaning sexual intercourse, which he did not engage in with Lewinsky. However, after Starr handed over his 445 page report detailing grounds for impeachment, the House voted to launch an impeachment investigation. Like Johnson, Clinton was not voted out of office. So what exactly does the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson have to do with the Clinton impeachment?

First, it must be noted that there are considerable differences in both cases. The Johnson impeachment, the Clinton scandal, and Watergate for that matter, took place in significantly different historical contexts. The Johnson case occurred in the aftermath of the bloodiest war in American history, during a painful period of social, economic, and political recovery and reorganization. Watergate played out in the midst of significant domestic discord created by Vietnam, a weak economy, and weariness with the Cold War. The Clinton scandal is took place during a period of domestic prosperity, tinged with worry over foreign economic crisis and lurking dangers in various locations around the world in the wake of the Cold War. The event underlying each impeachment is also quite dissimilar.

Congress impeached Johnson over his violation of a constitutionally questionable law. Clinton was in trouble for having an extramarital relationship with a low-ranking subordinate, lying about it to the entire nation, and possibly committing criminal acts in concealing the affair. However, despite these dissimilarities there are arguable parallels in both cases. Johnson and Clinton also became archenemies of the ideologues of their time because of their background and reputation. Both men elicited a deep hatred among their enemies almost defying conception.

Clinton became a lightening rod for the anger of conservative Republicans upset about having lost the White House in 1992. To these hard-liners, Bill Clinton was a draft-dodging, pot-smoking, wife-cheating hypocrite, who utterly lacked the requisite character necessary for the oval office. The Radicals of the late 1860's felt that Andrew Johnson, as a Southerner, Democrat, and former slaveholder, was of unfit character to be president in the wake of the Civil War. The above-mentioned are the issues and speculations that surrounded the presidencies of both Johsnon and Clinton. Both were unduly scrutinized during their presidencies.

However, both were scrutinized for purely different reasons. Perhaps these reasons differ so severely because of the difference of historical contexts during each impeachment trial. Nonetheless, both these trials will remain the most widely known and remembered trials in the history of the United States Presidents.