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He hadn’t tried to overturn the election of Grant. He hadn’t impeded the peaceable switch of energy. (However like Mr. Trump, he refused to attend his successor’s inauguration.) He had abused energy, usurping the operate of Congress, which has the proper to find out the {qualifications} of its personal members — all of the extra essential after a civil struggle wherein 11 states had been in rebel.
As for inciting or aiding an rebellion, that was controversial. Although a staunch Unionist, in 1866 Johnson had stood by silently through the bloodbath in New Orleans that prevented a state conference from amending its Structure to provide Black males the vote. The mob included members of the New Orleans police division, which was largely composed of former rebels. They have been supported by the mayor, a Accomplice sympathizer, who had been jailed through the struggle as a traitor and elected even earlier than he was pardoned.
A 1867 congressional investigation into that tragedy reported that greater than 35 folks, the overwhelming majority of them Black, had died, and roughly 145 folks have been wounded. It additionally discovered that the bloodbath would by no means have occurred with out Johnson’s tacit approval. The abolitionist Wendell Phillips predicted that “what New Orleans is at present, Washington shall be” — “dominated by the president and his mob.”
In 1868, when he was lastly impeached, the tenth article of impeachment accused Johnson of ridiculing Congress and setting apart its authority, and the eleventh article concerned his obstructing its legal guidelines. Throughout the impeachment trial, when Consultant John Bingham of Ohio argued for the president’s conviction, he reminded senators that “none are above the legislation; that no man lives for himself alone, ‘however every for all.’” With tears in his eyes, he concluded that “place, nonetheless excessive, patronage, nonetheless highly effective, can’t be permitted to shelter crime to the peril of the Republic.”
However for the reason that Senate didn’t convict Andrew Johnson, there was no approach to disqualify him from holding workplace. He might have abused energy, ridiculed Congress, arrogated to himself a type of Reconstruction that enshrined white supremacy, however the controversial prison cost (violating the Tenure of Workplace Act) didn’t stick — and even when it had, it was an impeachment tribunal, not a courtroom of legislation, that had charged him.
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