Last month, the House of Representatives adopted articles of impeachment against President Trump. The first article charges him with abuse of power and the second with obstructing Congress. With the articles’ approval by the House on Dec. 18, Trump became only the third president to be impeached, joining Bill Clinton (1998) and Andrew Johnson (1868).
Clinton, too, was subject to two articles of impeachment, on the grounds of perjury and obstruction of justice. Two other articles filed against him, one for abuse of power and the other, a separate count of perjury, were rejected by the House.
By contrast, the charges against Johnson numbered in the double digits. On Feb. 24, 1868, the House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 to impeach Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors, eventually approving 11 articles against the president.
Articles one through eight dealt with Johnson’s violation of the Tenure of Office Act by his removal of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The act, passed in 1867 over Johnson’s veto, was designed to prevent the president from removing Cabinet officials without Senate approval. During a congressional recess, Johnson dismissed Stanton, a vocal critic of the president’s Reconstruction policies, and replaced him with Ulysses S. Grant. Congress then reinstated Stanton after reconvening in the fall, at which point Grant resigned. In turn, a furious Johnson fired Stanton again and named Maj. Gen. Lorenzo Thomas as interim secretary. It fell to Thomas to deliver the news of his replacement to Stanton. Instead, Stanton, who had barricaded himself in his office in the War Department, rejected the legitimacy of Johnson’s order and had Thomas arrested.
While Johnson’s removal of Stanton precipitated his impeachment, the charges against him didn’t end there. Article nine charged Johnson with disrupting the military chain of command by bypassing Stanton and giving orders directly to a general.
The final two articles were of an altogether different nature. Johnson, an unrepentant racist and drunk, had spent the greater part of his presidency pardoning defeated Confederates, personally attacking his political opponents, and otherwise antagonizing his Republican rivals in Congress. “I don’t care about my dignity,” Johnson reportedly told an aide who’d attempted to appeal to the president’s better nature. On a campaign tour in St. Louis, Johnson even publicly suggested that his congressional foe Thaddeus Stevens and prominent abolitionist Wendell Phillips should be hanged.
As such, the 10th article charged that Johnson, “unmindful of the high duties of his high office … did attempt to bring into disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and reproach, the Congress of the United States.” Because of his public speeches, the article indicted him for declaring “with a loud voice, certain intemperate, inflammatory and scandalous harangues, and therein utter loud threats and bitter menaces” against Congress and its laws. The 11th and final article accused Johnson of acting above the law and Constitution by denying “by public speech … that the legislation [of Congress] was valid or obligatory upon him … except in so far as he saw fit to approve the same.”
Even so, Johnson was not removed from office by the Senate. Nor was Clinton after him. It’s unlikely Trump’s fate will be any different.
