Edmund G. Ross - 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

Little is now known to the general public of the history of the attemptto remove President Andrew Johnson in 1868, on his impeachment by theHouse of Representatives and trial by the Senate for alleged high crimesand misdemeanors in office, or of the causes that led to it. Yet it wasone of the most important and critical events, involving possibly thegravest consequences, in the entire history of the country.

The constitutional power to impeach and remove the President had laindormant since the organization of the Government, and apparently hadnever been thought of as a means for the satisfaction of politicalenmities or for the punishment of alleged executive misdemeanors, evenin the many heated controversies between the President and Congress thathad theretofore arisen. Nor would any attempt at impeachment have beenmade at that time but for the great numerical disparity then existingbetween the respective representatives in Congress of the two politicalparties of the country.

One-half the members of that Congress, both House and Senate, are nowdead, and with them have also gone substantially the same proportionof the people at large, but many of the actors therein who have passedaway, lived long enough to see, and were candid enough to admit, thatthe failure of the impeachment had brought no harm to the country, whilethe general judgment practically of all has come to be that a grave andthreatening danger was thereby averted.

A new generation is now in control of public affairs and the destiniesof the Nation have fallen to new hands. New issues have developed andwill continue to develop from time to time; and new dangers will arise,with increasing numbers and changing conditions, demanding in their turnthe same careful scrutiny, wisdom and patriotism in adjustment. Butthe principles that underlie and constitute the basis of our politicalorganism, are and will remain the same; and will never cease to demandconstant vigilance for their perpetuation as the rock of safety uponwhich our federative system is founded.

To those who in the study of the country's past seek a broader andhigher conception of the duties of American citizenship, the factspertaining to the controversy between the Executive and Congress as tothe restoration and preservation of the Union, set out in the followingpages, will be interesting and instructive. No one is better fitted thanthe author of this volume to discuss the period of reconstructionin which, as a member of the Federal senate, he played so potent andpatriotic a part, and it is a pleasure to find that he has dischargedhis task with so much ability and care. But it is profoundly hoped thatno coming generation will be called upon to utilize the experiencesof the past in facing in their day, in field or forum, the dangers ofdisruption and anarchy, mortal strife and desolation, between those ofone race, and blood, and nationality, that marked the history of Americathirty years ago.

DAVID B. HILL.

The close of the War of the Rebellion, in 1865, found the countryconfronted by a civil problem quite as grave as the contest of arms thathad been composed. It was that of reconstruction, or the restoration ofthe States lately in revolt, to their constitutional relations to theUnion.

The country had just emerged from a gigantic struggle of physical forceof four years duration between the two great Northern and Southernsections. That struggle had been from its inception to its close, acontinuing exhibition, on both sides, of stubborn devotion to a cause,and its annals had been crowned with illustrations of the grandestrace and personal courage the history of the world records. Out of apopulation of thirty million people, four million men were under arms,from first to last, and sums of money quite beyond the limit of ordinarycomprehension, were expended in its prosecution. There was bloodshedwithout stint. Both sides to the conflict fought for an ideaon the oneside for so-called State Rights and local self-governmenton the otherfor national autonomy as the surest guaranty of all rightspersonal,local, and general.

The institution of negro slavery, the basis of the productive industriesof the States of the South, which had from the organization of theGovernment been a source of friction between the slave-holding andnonslave-holding sections, and was in fact the underlying and potentcause of the war, went under in the strife and was by national edictforever prohibited.

The struggle being ended by the exhaustion of the insurgents, twoconspicuous problems demanding immediate solution were developed: Thestatus of the now ex-slaves, or freedmenand the methods to be adoptedfor the rehabilitation of the revolted States, including the status ofthe revolted States themselves. The sword had declared that they hadno constitutional power to withdraw from the Union, and the resultdemonstrated that they had not the physical powerand therefore thatthey were in the anomalous condition of States of though not Statestechnically in the Unionand hence properly subject to the jurisdictionof the General Government, and bound by its judgment in any measuresto be instituted by it for their future restoration to their formercondition of co-equal States.

The now ex-slaves had been liberated, not with the consent of theirformer owners, but by the power of the conqueror as a war measure, whonot unnaturally insisted upon the right to declare absolutely the futurestatus of these persons without consultation with or in any way by theintervention of their late owners. The majority of the gentlemen inCongress representing the Northern States demanded the instant andcomplete enfranchisement of these persons, as the natural and logicalsequence of their enfreedment. The people of the late slave States, aswas to have been foreseen, and not without reason, objectedespeciallywhere, as was the case in many localities, the late slaves largelyout-numbered the people of the white race: and it is apparent fromsubsequent developments that they had the sympathy of President Lincoln,at least so far as to refuse his sanction to the earlier action ofCongress relative to restoration.

To add to the gravity of the situation and of the problem ofreconstruction, the people of the States lately in rebellion weredisfranchised in a mass, regardless of the fact that many of themrefused to sanction the rebellion only so far as was necessary to theirpersonal safety.