The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy
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Published May 2009
464 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
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.
With the dramatic expansion of the powers of the presidency, and after two presidential impeachment crises in the last forty years, the lessons of the first presidential impeachment are more urgent than ever.
"Stewart offers little analysis and advances no new ideas about what he relates, but he tells the story as well as it's ever been told." - Publishers Weekly.
"Readers who wish to broaden their understanding of Lincoln in this anniversary year will do well to select this well-researched work even if their collection already includes [other] examinations." - Library Journal.
"Riveting...Likely to become the standard version of this historic clash between a president and Congress. " - Kirkus Reviews.
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
After practicing law for many years, David O. Stewart began to write history. His first book, The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution, was a Washington Post bestseller and won the Washington Writing Award as Best Book of 2007. Two years later, he wrote Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy. The Lincoln Deception, an historical mystery about the John Wilkes Booth Conspiracy, was issued in late August 2013. Bloomberg View called it the best historical novel of the year. The Washington Post applauded the sequel, The Wilson Deception, set at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Madison's Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America, was released in February, 2015. The Washington Post called it a portrait "rich in empathy ...
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