The
impeachment rhyme
by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune
Sunday, January 19th
2020
“History does not repeat itself —
but it rhymes.”
Mark Twain may or may not have said
that; however, he usually gets the credit.
Now, I’m not sure if past events rhyme
with the present, or vice versa, but let’s take a trip back to the spring of
1868 and see if any of this echoes with anyone.
Let’s imagine a U.S. president under siege
— with a difference. Andrew Johnson was never supposed to be president. The
Tennessee senator, a Democrat, was chosen as President Abraham Lincoln’s second
vice president because he had supported the Union after Tennessee had seceded
from the
United States. In what was believed would be a close election in 1864,
it made sense to Republican experts that a Democrat on the Republican ticket
might win Lincoln many more votes.
 |
| President Andrew Johnson |
Lincoln and Johnson began serving in
March 1865, just over a month before Lincoln’s assassination. For the next
three years, President Johnson was in constant conflict with the
Republican-controlled Congress over many things, especially reconstruction and
how soon the secessionist Southern states would be allowed back into the Union.
By 1867, the Republican-owned
Jacksonville newspaper published its strong opposition to Johnson and to local
Democrats who were talking of a second Civil War over impeachment.
“It is yet to be ascertained whether a
public servant is to be a public master. Whether the American people are to be
governed by the fundamental law of the land, or compelled to bow their necks at
the dictum of a narrow-minded, selfish, passionate, and revengeful President,
possessing all the elements of a tyrant, but devoid of the dignity that often
makes tyranny passably comfortable. His impeachment, without war, is the slim,
but only hope for the future peace and security of our country.”
On Nov. 21, 1867, the House Judiciary
Committee did vote on a bill of impeachment against Johnson. It failed on the
House floor, with 57 members voting impeachment and 108 voting no.
On Feb. 21, 1868, Johnson replaced
Republican Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, defiantly opposing a law passed by
Congress the previous year that said he did not have that authority.
Three days later, on Feb. 24, in
19th-century “Breaking News,” the Jacksonville telegraph began
On a 126-47 vote, the impeachment
resolution was forwarded to the Senate for trial. Oregon’s only representative,
Rufus Mallory, had voted in favor.
After the Senate trial in May, with 36
votes needed for conviction, Johnson was acquitted and saved by a single vote,
35-19. Both of Oregon’s senators voted to convict; however, surprisingly, 10
Republicans voted no. Those 10 never served in Congress again.
Jacksonville’s Democratic newspaper
celebrated.
“The battle is over, the victory is
ours.— Into the sepulcher has been pitched the corpse of the most fanatical,
corrupt, and merciless sect that ever disturbed the peace, blighted the
prospects, and endangered the life of any nation.”
Shocked and surprised at the outcome,
the Republican newspaper’s response was relatively quiet.
“The only hope now is that Andrew
Johnson will take warning and conduct himself in a manner becoming of the Chief
Magistrate of a great people.”
In the election that fall, Johnson
tried to get the Democratic nomination for president, but failed. During his
campaign, he accused his chief rival, Ulysses S. Grant, of being a drunk, a
charge long lodged against Johnson.
“If it be true that Grant was drunk all
the time,” said the Jacksonville Republican newspaper, “what, in the name of
God, will Democrats expect if ever he gets sober?”
On Nov. 3, 1868, Grant overwhelmingly
won the White House.
Writer Bill Miller is the author of
five books, including“History Snoopin’,”a collection of his previous history
columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.
