During this week, we frequently heard from Republicans that the impeachment of Donald Trump was historical because it was partisan and all about politics.  Whether the Republicans knew that this was not true or are living in an alternate reality is impossible to tell (but I assume that at least some of them have some familiarity with history).  But if you want to discuss an impeachment that was all about politics, you need to turn back to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868.

The events that culminated in the impeachment of Andrew Johnson began in the spring of 1864.  While today, the Union victory over the rebel governments in the South during the Civil War is seen by many as inevitable.  But in 1864, that was not the case.  And the uncertain state of the war bled over into the politics.  Facing potential challenges from the left (with the Radical Republicans considering running their own candidate) and the right (from Anti-war Democrats), Lincoln joined the moderate Republicans and Pro-war Democrats into a National Union Party with Andrew Johnson as the Vice-Presidential candidate.  Of course, by November, the fortunes in the war had changed and the National Union Party won easily.  But after the assassination of Lincoln, Johnson became President and was faced with a Republican majority that had a different vision of reconstruction than Lincoln and Johnson had run on.  If Lincoln had lived, perhaps he would have been able to keep everybody together on the same page or would have supported a more vigorous program of Reconstruction when the former Confederate states tried to get by with the least change possible.  Johnson, however, wasn’t Lincoln, and his refusal to budge led to a bitter 1866 mid-term election in which the terms of Reconstruction was the main issue in the campaign.

After the Radical Republicans won the election of 1866, they decided to force their ideas through (and they had the votes in Congress to do so).  However, Johnson as commander-in-chief was technically the boss of the military that would have the duty of carrying out the Congressional agenda.  So to keep Johnson from interfering, Congress made certain the chain of command went through the Secretary of War and also passed the Tenure in Office Act.  The key provision of the Tenure of Office Act required the Senate to ratify the removal of any cabinet officer before the removal became permanent.  (If the Senate was not in session, the officer was temporarily “suspended” until the Senate made its decision on whether to approve the removal.)

Now the Tenure in Office Act was of dubious constitutionality.  (The Supreme Court ultimately decided in a case involving a different but similar act that Congress could not restrict the President’s control over executive branch officials in this way.)  And, when Johnson proceeded to disregard the Act and attempted to remove and replace the Secretary of War with somebody who would not block the President’s order, the House responded by impeaching the President.  Of the eleven articles of impeachment, ten related to the violation of the Tenure of Office Act and the eleventh concerned campaign speeches.  And since the Radical Republicans had a two-thirds majority in the Senate, the expectation was that the Senate would vote to remove the President.

And under the rules in effecting in 1868, the removal of Johnson would have actually been a coup — a legal and democratic coup but still a coup.  Until the passage of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, if a President died and the Vice-President became President, there was no replacement Vice-President appointed.  Instead, the position stayed vacant until the next election.  Thus, if Andrew Johnson had been removed, the Presidency would fall to the President pro tempore of the Senate — Benjamin Wade, a leader of the Radical Republicans.

With the hindsight of history, it’s possible to note that the Republicans were right on the policy and wrong on the separation of powers.  But the impeachment of Andrew Johnson was really about a political fight — one that had significant constitutional overtones — but not one that truly rose to the level of high crimes and misdemeanor.    For Trump and the Republicans to pretend that the current impeachment situation is even close to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson is ludicrous.  The claim that the current impeachment is the most political ever can only be explained by wondering what substances the Republicans have been consuming.