Description
Book SynopsisHistorian and Constitution expert David O. Stewart recaps the landmark impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. “The fullest recounting we have of the high politics of that immediate post-Civil War period...Stewart’s graceful style and storytelling ability make for a good read.” —The Washington PostIn 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 Steve
