The impeachment process of President Clinton was similar to the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson as both ended in acquittal. And like President Clinton, Johnson was a Democratic president who faced a Republican controlled Congress. While many were hostile to Johnson for his political agenda, it would be something other than his policies that would nearly bring him down. Before it would end, a drama would play out in the Senate filled with partisanship, legal hairsplitting, and the swing votes of a handful of Republicans.
President Andrew Johnson assumed office following Lincoln's assassination and he had his own ideas of Reconstruction. He took his own course of action, putting the Union back together following the Civil War. This angered the radical Republican majority who sought to punish the former rebels of the Confederacy. A series of bitter quarrels between President Johnson and radical Republicans in Congress over the Reconstruction Policy in the South eventually led to his impeachment.
Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1808, Johnson grew up in poverty. He was apprenticed to a tailor as a young kid, but then ran away. He opened a tailor shop in Greeneville, Tennessee, married Eliza McCardle, and participated in debates at the local academy. When entering politics, he became an adept stump speaker, championing the common man and vilifying the plantation aristocracy. .
As a member of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 1840's and '50's, the homestead bill was advocated and had provided a free farm for the poor man. Radical Republicans wanted to enact a far-reaching transformation of Southern social and economic life, permanently ending the old planter class system, and favored granting freed slaves' citizenship and voting rights. After the war, they came to believe whites in the South were seeking to somehow preserve the old slavery system under a new appearance.
