Brenda Wineapple, whose new book The Impeachers about the Andrew Johnson impeachment, has become one of the busiest people in the historical profession. She has an article in The Atlantic describing how the Senate conducts an impeachment trial, or at least the historical precedent of Johnson’s 1868 trial.
To remove a president, the Senate must vote by a two-thirds majority for conviction on at least one article of impeachment. The Constitution offers little guidance as to how the trial preceeding the vote to convict should be conducted. According to Wineapple:
The Senate thus faced tricky problems, and because there was no blueprint for the trial of a sitting president, there was something improvised about its solutions. After long debate, the Senate did concede a great deal of its authority, concluding that the chief justice could decide on the admissibility of evidence; however, it also stipulated that an individual senator could call for a vote on any of his rulings. And the chief justice was in fact allowed to cast a tie-breaking vote on two procedural questions; a motion to prevent him from casting such a vote was defeated.
Still, there were other issues to consider: For instance, would the president be compelled to appear? Johnson was not. In fact, his lawyers made sure of that, so fearful were they of what the pugnacious, scrappy chief executive might say, because he was already known for calling his enemies traitors and in some cases suggesting they be hanged. Instead, the president’s far more dignified lawyers replied to the summons.
Many of those involved in the trial had conflicts of interest. Presiding over the trial was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Salmon Chase. The justice hoped to run for president later that year on the Democratic ticket. Disposing of Johnson might alientate Democratic Party leaders. There were other conflicts as well, writes Wineapple:
Consider this too: Lincoln’s assassination had put his vice president, Andrew Johnson, in the White House; the country thus had no sitting vice president. Should Johnson be convicted and removed from office, then, the president pro tempore of the Senate was next in line for the job, per the Presidential Succession Act of 1796. (Today, the Speaker of the House would be next in line—and just imagine how senators might vote if they thought Speaker Pelosi would sit in the Oval Office.) Senators wanted to know whether Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, the president pro tempore, should be allowed to vote for Johnson’s conviction, because Wade’s future would be directly affected. But Johnson’s son-in-law was Senator David Patterson of Tennessee; wasn’t this a conflict of interest too? Yet if the Senate during the trial was still understood to be a legislative body, not a court, then each state was certainly entitled to the vote of its two senators, which is what was eventually decided.
The article is worth reading in its entirety.
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