JOHNSON, RECONSTRUCTION POLICY AND IMPEACHMENT
This research paper explores the degree to which President Andrew Johnson's conduct shaped Congressional reconstruction policy toward the defeated Southern states and whether that conduct made him deserving of impeachment. Both by his substantive approach to reconstruction and the defiant manner in which he challenged the prerogatives of Congress, Johnson frustrated and impeded the will of the majority in Congress and embittered a hard core of Radical Republicans. The impeachment of Johnson reflected not only a partisan political clash, but also fundamentally different approaches by Johnson and his Congressional opponents to federal-state relations in the North-South context and to the enfranchisement of newly freed slaves. Johnson's conviction in the Senate was defeated by one vote which suggests that grounds for impeachment existed, but his opponents failed to make a convincing case that he had committed the necessary offenses required under the Constitution for conviction. The long-term interests of the nation were better served by his acquittal.
The primary reason for the attempt of the Radical Republicans in Congress to impeach Johnson in the spring of 1868 was to impose their version of reconstruction policy on the South over which they and the President were increasingly at loggerheads for most of his term in office (1865-1868).
President Abraham Lincoln and the Republican majority in Congress were on a collision course regarding the terms of peace even before Johnson took office after Lincoln's assassination. Sefton says that "ever since early 1862 indications of leniency or softness on Lincoln's part had aroused the ire of Republicans who insisted on Congressional supremacy." The long Civil War and its enormous casualties, roughly 35 percent and 60 percent, respectively, of Northern and Southern combatants, had further inflamed the sectional passions which had led to...