American Decades
Trials of a President
Impeachment.
Since the founding of the Republic, only two presidents have been impeached by the House of Representatives: President Andrew Johnson in 1868 and President Bill Clinton in 1999. Neither man was convicted. Johnson was impeached because he refused to succumb to the dictates of the Radical Republicans in Congress when he fired Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in opposition to the Tenure in Office Act (1867). The issue for Johnson revolved around how to govern and what treatment was to be given the former confederates after the Civil War. Though Johnson was not a strong president, he has been viewed sympathetically by historians, much more so than by the Congress that impeached him. The impeachment of Clinton was simply a tawdry affair. The issue was whether the president had lied to a grand jury in the sexual harassment trial instigated by Paula Corbin Jones, used his influence to cover up the perjury, lied about his...
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1990's Government and Politics
