HISTORY OF THE IMPEACHMENT OF ANDREW JOHNSON PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND HIS TRIAL BY THE SENATE FOR HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS IN OFFICE
1868
By Edmund G. Ross
Burt Franklin Research & Source Works Series #94
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1. — THE PROBLEM OF RECONSTRUCTION.
CHAPTER II. — THE BALTIMORE CONVENTION.
CHAPTER III. — MR. JOHNSON'S ACCESSION TO THE PRESIDENCY.
CHAPTER IV. — FIRST ATTEMPT TO IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT.
CHAPTER V. — THE TENURE-OF-OFFICE ACT.
CHAPTER VI. — IMPEACHMENT AGREED TO BY THE HOUSE.
CHAPTER VII. — IMPEACHMENT REPORTED TO THE SENATE.
CHAPTER VIII. — ORGANIZATION OF THE COURT ARGUMENT OF COUNSEL
CHAPTER IX. — EXAMINATION OF WITNESSES AND THEIR TESTIMONY.
CHAPTER X. — A CONFERENCE HELD AND THE FIRST VOTE TAKEN.
CHAPTER XI. — THE IMPEACHERS IN A MAZE. A RECESS ORDERED.
CHAPTER XII. — WAS IT A PARTISAN PROSECUTION?
CHAPTER XIII. — THE CONSTITUTIONAL POWER OF IMPEACHMENT.
PREFACE.
Little is now known to the general public of the history of the attempt to remove President Andrew Johnson in 1868, on his impeachment by the House of Representatives and trial by the Senate for alleged high crimes and misdemeanors in office, or of the causes that led to it. Yet it was one of the most important and critical events, involving possibly the gravest consequences, in the entire history of the country.
The constitutional power to impeach and remove the President had lain dormant since the organization of the Government, and apparently had never been thought of as a means for the satisfaction of political enmities or for the punishment of alleged executive misdemeanors, even in the many heated controversies between the President and Congress that had theretofore arisen. Nor would any attempt at impeachment have been made at that time but for the great numerical disparity then existing between the respective representatives in Congress of the two political parties of the country.
One-half the members of that Congress, both House and Senate, are now dead, and with them have also gone substantially the same proportion of the people at large, but many of the actors therein who have passed away,