Preview

Andrew Johnson: The Controversial Tenure Of Office Act

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2426 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Andrew Johnson: The Controversial Tenure Of Office Act
The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
Born in North Carolina in 1808 to impoverished parents, Andrew Johnson had no formal education. He became a tailor’s apprentice at age fourteen. He later moved to Greenville, in eastern Tennessee, where he established a thriving tailor shop and went into local politics. Andrew Johnson was a lifelong Democrat and slave owner who won a place alongside Abraham Lincoln on the 1864 Republican ticket, in order to gain the support of pro-war Democrats.
Their election was closer in the popular than in the electoral columns; in the end they pulled off a victory. Lincoln received fifty-five percent of the popular, and ninety-one percent of the electoral votes. Johnson became vice-president. During the time period between
…show more content…
Without the Senate’s consent, the president no longer had the power to remove from office those whom he has appointed. Convinced that the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional, Johnson removed the secretary of war, Edwin, and replaced him with a general named Lorenzo Thomas. When he did this, he acted under a provision of the Tenure of Office Act; however, he was immediately accused with violation of the law. Congressional leaders claimed that he was guilty of a “high crime and misdemeanor” such as demanded by the Constitution as a qualification for removal. Although Johnson’s arguments were reasonable, and he did a good job defending him self, the Senate was not inclined to take sides with the …show more content…
The Senate met on May 16th to discuss the verdict. They felt that voting seemed to be their best chance for obtaining a conviction. The vote results were thirty-five to nineteen in favor of conviction; these results were one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed for impeachment. The final vote maintained the principle that Congress should not remove the President from office simply because its members disagreed with him over policy, style, and administration of office. But it did not mean that the President retained governing power. For the rest of his term, Johnson was a cipher without influence on public

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Unit 5 Apush study guide

    • 747 Words
    • 3 Pages

    8. When president Andrew Johnson removed secretary of war Edwin M. Stanton without the approval of the senate, the terms of the recently passed tenure of office act, he…

    • 747 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The first Article of Impeachment stated that President Johnson was “unmindful of the high duties of his office, of his oath of office, and of the requirement of the Constitution that he should take care that the laws be faithfully executed, did unlawfully, and in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States, issue and order in writing for the removal of Edwin M. Stanton from the office of Secretary for the Department of War.” In the first article, the letter that Thomas gave to Stanton from the President was included as evidence. Johnson’s removal of Stanton and his violation of the Tenure of Office Act constituted the foundation of nine out of the eleven Articles of Impeachment. Another thing to point out is that several of the articles are identical to each other and differ only by a few words.…

    • 1973 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The main point of excerpt 1, is that Senator James W. Grimes does not wish to destroy the Constitution because of Andrew Johnson. Grimes understands the urgency of impeachment from Congress, however, he does not deem it necessary to go against the Constitution to get rid of him. He believes that despite the obvious conflict between the branches, a Government cannot function without all branches working together. That means legislative, executive, and the judicial branch must…

    • 77 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Andrew Johnson should not have been convicted because you can't throw out a president just because you dislike the president and don't agree with his policies. If you could convict a president because of those reasons, we would be going through presidents left and right.…

    • 577 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Hubert Humphrey was the thirty eighth Vice President of the United States. He was elected along side of Lyndon B. Johnson as the Democratic party in the year 1964. Humphrey also ran for the title of U.S. president in 1968, but was unsuccessful…

    • 307 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Why Was Johnson Impeached

    • 257 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Johnson was impeached because he took a fateful step. He removed from office Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who had administered the War Department in support of the congressional Reconstruction policy. This seemed to violate the Tenure of Office Act, which was passed the year before over Johnson’s veto, which required Senate consent for such removals. The house impeached Johnson on February 24. The official reasoning of his impeachment was that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act.…

    • 257 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sometimes, politically powerful men do unexpected things, LBJ was one of them. Before LBJ’s presidency he was living in an incredibly poor area and was dealing with poverty, this is the place he was born and raised, so coming to the White House was a big stretch of ways for him. LBJ wanted to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because he wanted to do what he thought was right, what he believed, that’s where his principle decision comes into place. If principle decisions are based on strongly-held beliefs, then Cotulla teaching, Ignoring Southern Reaction, and Change of Heart show that President Johnson was motivated to sign by his OWN principle beliefs.…

    • 543 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    They didn’t represent the country and Southerners were being kept out of Congress until they submitted to rule by former slaves. This action could be seen as a stain on Congress and the country itself if he was convicted and presidents would be at the mercy of Congress forever and have no power in the executive branch at all. However, if Johnson was convicted and impeached (which he was), the case would be that when he broke the law and needs to be punished for he actions. This is based on two reasons: to help traitors who led the country into Civil War and to hurt the Freedmen. Johnson was notable for pardoning rebel leaders and opposed all attempts to give freedmen their rights and took their land to give back to the rebels.…

    • 925 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Andrew Johnson, the 17th U.S president, born on December 29, 1808, at Raleigh, North Carolina elected to be president on April 15, 1865 and his term was up March 4, 1869. Andrew Johnson was the first president to be impeached. He began office after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He grew up in a poor family with a lousy education. Andrew Johnson was a democrat and he was the governor of Tennessee. His father passed when he was 3, his dad worked at a local…

    • 86 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Tet and the countless peace movements marked the beginning of the end of Johnson’s presidency. With building distrust and controversial decisions being made his approval rating dropped below 40 percent, with only 26 percent approving of his handling of the war. (Anderson) On March 31st, President Johnson addressed the nation and confirmed that he would not seek or accept a nomination for a second…

    • 816 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    During this time Clinton was under investigation for suspicious real estate dealing, but the investigation was soon discarded when it failed to provide actual evidence. However, Kenneth Starr, an Independent Counsel, managed to disentangle a series of alleged secual advances and affairs in Clinton’s past. The trial eventually led to Monica S. Lewinsky, a former White House intern. Clinton denied any association with the intern only to later on reveal on August of 1998 that he had had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky during her internship. On September 9, 1998 the Starr Report, which outlined the findings of Counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation, was delivered to the House of Representatives and eventually was released to the public. Many believed the report to be a political attack against the President opposed to an explanation for his impeachment. Out of the eleven grounds for impeachment that were cited within the report, only four were approved by the House Judiciary Committee: abuse of power, grand jury perjury, civil suit perjury, and obstruction of justice. On December 19 the House of Representatives held its vote, Clinton was impeached on founds of grand jury perjury and obstruction of justice. Meanwhile the Senate Republicans were incapable of of obtaining the two-thirds majority vote that was required for his conviction. On February 12, 1999, the Senate cleared Clinton of…

    • 922 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Throughout the course of the United States, politicians from both sides neglect or twist the law of the land to bolster their own agendas. This problem became prevalent during the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Despite Johnson’s flaws in his policies, he had done nothing to qualify for impeachment according to the Constitution, which include “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors (Article II, Section 4).”…

    • 133 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Supreme Court Major Cases

    • 4278 Words
    • 18 Pages

    The commissions were signed by President Adams and sealed by acting Secretary of State John Marshall (who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and author of this opinion), but they were not delivered before the termination of Adams’s presidency. Thomas Jefferson refused to honor the commissions, claiming that they were invalid because they had not been delivered by the end of Adams’s term.…

    • 4278 Words
    • 18 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The White House polls predicted that McCarthy would win by only 6%, compared to 76% for President Johnson. On Election Day the senator beat Johnson by winning 42%, which was 20 of the state’s 24 delegates. Once Johnson decided to withdraw from the race, Robert F. Kennedy announced his candidacy for the nomination. The race was tight between Kennedy and McCarthy, but early June the people voted. 46 percent for Kennedy and 42 percent for McCarthy.…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Kids complain about school. It’s a fact of life, a fact of adolescence, it’s accepted. Others join in, whining about class difficulty (they’re always too hard even when they’re not), that standardized tests are pointless, how there’s always too much homework and no time to do it in. Teenagers always find something. Now adolescents aren’t the only ones to complain, adults do also. One of the things that is criticized often is insurance and its effectiveness: everything is too expensive, there’s never as much coverage as wanted, but that once they’re older things will be better (or worse, it doesn’t matter). These petty issues seem like they’re only relevant today, however, a milder form of these issues was…

    • 1579 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays