CHƯA TT MỸ NÀO BỊ CÁCH CHỨC VÌ IMPEACHMENT CẢ - ĐÂY TRƯỜNG HỢP CỦA TT ANDREW JOHNSON 1868./-TCL

Andrew Johnson: Impeached in 1868

The 1868 impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson. 

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Johnson was elected as Abraham Lincoln’s vice president in 1864. The toughest decision facing Lincoln’s second term was how to reestablish ties with the Confederate states now that the Civil War was over. Lincoln’s plan forReconstruction favored leniency while so-called “Radical Republicans” in his party wanted to punish Southern politicians and extend full civil rights to freed slaves.

Lincoln was assassinated only 42 days into his second term, leaving Johnson in charge of Reconstruction. He immediately clashed with the Radical Republicans in Congress, calling for pardons for Confederate leaders and vetoing political rights for freedmen. In 1867, Congress retaliated by passing the Tenure of Office Act, which barred the president from replacing members of his cabinet without Senate approval.

Believing the law to be unconstitutional, Johnson went ahead and fired his Secretary of War, an ally of the Radical Republicans in Congress. Johnson’s political enemies responded by drafting and passing 11 articles of impeachment in the House.

"Sir, the bloody and untilled fields of the ten unreconstructed States, the unsheeted ghosts of the two thousand murdered negroes in Texas, cry [...] for the punishment of Andrew Johnson," wrote the abolitionist Republican Representative William D. Kelley from Pennsylvania.

Johnson was impeached in the House of Representatives by 126 votes to 47, but narrowly avoided a two-thirds guilty verdict in the Senate by a single vote. After his acquittal, he served out the rest of his term and became the first (and only) former U.S. president to be elected to the Senate./-

===============NOTES:

Abraham Lincoln

16th U.S. President

He became a leader in the new Republican Party and gained national attention in the1858 debates against national Democratic leader Stephen Douglas in the U.S Senate campaign in Illinois. He then ran for President in 1860, sweeping the North and winning./-

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