As Clinton Frets His Fate, He Might Look to Andrew Johnson

As President Clinton’s taped grand jury testimony seemed to blare from every TV in America, Donald Bergmann sought an unlikely refuge: the birthplace of Andrew Johnson.

“Anything to keep from watching the tapes,” Bergmann, a retired hospital administrator from Pasadena, Calif., said as he toured the tiny two-room house in which the only U.S. president to be impeached was born in 1808.

“I don’t know that much about the first one--and I don’t care to know much about the second,” Bergmann said.

But scholars suggest Clinton himself might seek refuge in the history of his fellow Democrat’s impeachment and trial 130 years ago.

The son of a cook and a statehouse janitor, Johnson rose from humble beginnings as a tailor’s apprentice in Raleigh to become a congressman, governor and U.S. senator from his adopted state of Tennessee. A “war” Democrat opposed to secession, Johnson had the distinction of being the only senator in a Confederate state to retain his seat after the break (he gave it up in 1862 to become Tennessee’s military governor, at President Lincoln’s request).

In 1864, Johnson was tapped by Lincoln as his running mate on the Union ticket. He became the 17th president after Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, just days after the Civil War ended.

Looking for Reasons for Impeachment

During Reconstruction, when the federal government set and enforced terms under which the Southern states were re-integrated into the Union, Johnson sought to implement Lincoln’s plan for reconciliation “with malice toward none.” But he ran headlong into a Radical Republican majority in Congress bent on chastening the former rebels.

Johnson called the Joint Committee on Reconstruction an “irresponsible central directory” and fought Congress at every turn. He wielded his veto power, however unsuccessfully, against such laws as the Civil Rights Act of 1866--which granted citizenship and other rights to blacks.

House leaders began looking for reasons to impeach Johnson as early as January 1867, even hearing theories that he might have been involved in Lincoln’s death. Then Johnson gave them a reason.

In February 1868, he fired their darling, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who was overseeing the military’s Reconstruction efforts. As commander in chief, Johnson saw himself as the one who should give these orders, according to Michael Les Benedict, historian and author of “The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson.”

Just a year earlier, Congress had passed the Tenure of Office Act, which prohibited a president from dismissing any officer confirmed by the Senate without first getting that chamber’s approval. The House called Stanton’s firing a violation.

The real reason for the move toward impeachment was pure politics, said Hans Louis Trefousse, author of “Andrew Johnson: A Biography.”

“Namely, Johnson was opposed to congressional Reconstruction,” Trefousse said. “So Johnson blocked that and, because he did, they [Republicans] eventually decided they should throw him out.”

Benedict does not blame Republicans entirely.

“To say that they seized the opportunity was too strong,” said Benedict, a professor at Ohio State University. “The president was in obvious defiance. He was daring them, it seemed, to impeach him. And if they didn’t, it would have given him a green light to basically dismantle the Reconstruction program that Congress had passed.”

On Feb. 24, 1868, the House passed a resolution accusing Johnson of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The party-line vote was 126 to 47.

When Johnson went on trial in the Senate on March 30, he faced 11 counts: from violation of the tenure law by removing Stanton to questioning the constitutionality of laws and making public speeches against members of Congress.

“A more technical inquiry can hardly be imagined, and as a separate basis for removing a president from office it bordered on the absurd,” wrote current U.S. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist in his 1992 book, “Grand Inquests: The Historic Impeachments of Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson.”

Rehnquist, who would preside at a Senate trial if the House passed articles of impeachment against Clinton, questioned whether the tenure act even applied in Johnson’s case. Indeed, the law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1926.

On May 16, 1868, a vote was taken on the 11th article of impeachment, a catchall of several charges. The vote was 35 to 19 to convict--one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed. Enough Republicans broke ranks to make the difference.

The result was the same when votes were taken later on the second and third articles. The chamber adjourned without voting on the remaining charges.

Johnson served the remainder of Lincoln’s term but failed to win his party’s nomination for president. However, in 1874, Tennessee sent him back to the very Senate that had tried to convict him.

He died in 1875 and was buried near his home in Greeneville, Tenn.--wrapped in the flag, his head cushioned by a copy of the Constitution.

Now, more than a century later, another Democratic president is under fire from a Republican Congress. Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr has accused Clinton of committing impeachable offenses, including perjury and abuse of power. The House voted 258-176 Thursday to launch an impeachment inquiry, with all 227 Republicans and 31 Democrats in the majority. Clinton’s allies have accused Starr of being part of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” against the president.

But whereas impeachment is an inherently political process, Trefousse said, Johnson’s case established that a president could not be impeached for purely political reasons.

“Any number of those who voted to acquit thought that by convicting him, they would really nullify the tripartite form of government,” he said.

Rehnquist termed Johnson’s acquittal a victory for the independence of the executive branch, and it set an important precedent. Impeachment would be, he wrote, “a judicial type of inquiry into specific acts he had performed as president, rather than the sort of ‘vote of confidence’ that takes place in a parliamentary system.”

Benedict saw curious parallels between Johnson and Clinton--including their poor Southern backgrounds--against them--but he noted significant differences too.

“The stakes involved in the Johnson impeachment went to the very heart of the nature of our country and . . . the role of the president in our government,” he said. With Clinton, “we have instead somebody whose conduct may have forfeited the trust of the American people to such an extent that it justifies his impeachment and removal.”

Congress Urged to Think of Presidency, Precedent

Historian James Sefton finds high stakes in Clinton’s dilemma too.

Congress should weigh its actions carefully before setting a precedent over something like a president’s sex life, said Sefton, author of “Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power.” If lawmakers decide to impeach Clinton--or even censure or reprimand him--the action will not apply to him alone, but also to successors, he said.

“I would advise them to think not only in the short run, but in the very long run,” Sefton said. “We cannot afford to have a presidency, as opposed to a president, that is crippled at this stage of our national development and history. . . .

“The office is always greater than the man.”