Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy

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Simon and Schuster, Jun 15, 2010 - Biography & Autobiography - 464 pages
Historian and Constitution expert David O. Stewart recaps the landmark impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. “The fullest recounting we have of the high politics of that immediate post-Civil War period...Stewart’s graceful style and storytelling ability make for a good read.” —The Washington Post

In 1868 Congress impeached President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, the man who had succeeded the murdered Lincoln, bringing the nation to the brink of a second civil war. Enraged to see the freed slaves abandoned to brutal violence at the hands of their former owners, distraught that former rebels threatened to regain control of Southern state governments, and disgusted by Johnson's brawling political style, congressional Republicans seized on a legal technicality as the basis for impeachment -- whether Johnson had the legal right to fire his own secretary of war, Edwin Stanton.

The fiery but mortally ill Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania led the impeachment drive, abetted behind the scenes by the military hero and president-in-waiting, General Ulysses S. Grant.

The Senate trial featured the most brilliant lawyers of the day, along with some of the least scrupulous, while leading political fixers maneuvered in dark corners to save Johnson's presidency with political deals, promises of patronage jobs, and even cash bribes. Johnson escaped conviction by a single vote.

David Stewart, the author of the highly acclaimed The Summer of 1787, the bestselling account of the writing of the Constitution, challenges the traditional version of this pivotal moment in American history. Rather than seeing Johnson as Abraham Lincoln's political heir, Stewart explains how the Tennessean squandered Lincoln's political legacy of equality and fairness and helped force the freed slaves into a brutal form of agricultural peonage across the South.

When the clash between Congress and president threatened to tear the nation apart, the impeachment process substituted legal combat for violent confrontation. Both sides struggled to inject meaning into the baffling requirement that a president be removed only for "high crimes and misdemeanors," while employing devious courtroom gambits, backstairs spies, and soaring rhetoric. When the dust finally settled, the impeachment process had allowed passions to cool sufficiently for the nation to survive the bitter crisis.
 

Contents

Preface
1
spring 1865
5
April 1865
14
november 1865
27
December 1865
36
JanuaryJune 1866
46
Julynovember 1866
59
December 1866June 1867
74
march 30April 8 1868
193
April 920 1868
206
April 1868
219
April 22may 6 1868
229
may 59 1868
240
may 612 1868
250
may 1215 1868
260
may 1626 1868
275

Augustnovember 1867
87
December 1867
100
December 12 1867
114
February 1521 1868
127
February 2224 1868
138
February 24march 4 1868
151
march 529 1868
167
march 1868
181
may 17July 5 1868
284
January 1 1869
300
the rorschach blot
315
Acknowledgments
325
impeachment Articles
331
the senate votes
343
index
427
Copyright

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About the author (2010)

David O. Stewart is an award-winning author and the president of the Washington Independent Review of Books. He is the author of several acclaimed histories, including Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America; The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution; Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy; and American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America. Stewart’s first novel is The Lincoln Deception.

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