The Impeachers

Starred review from April 15, 2019
As scholar Wineapple (White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson) persuasively argues in this detailed and lucidly written history, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, who ascended to the presidency after a mere six weeks as Lincoln’s v-p, was motivated by the impeachers’ view of Johnson’s actions as undermining the sacrifices Americans had made throughout four years of war. Many of Johnson’s fellow Republicans believed that his policies were antithetical to their aims of reconstructing the nation and helping millions of former slaves build new lives as free people. In February 1868, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Johnson, but this decision was based less on his alleged offense—violation of the Tenure of Office Act—than on his refusal to support his party’s aims. While previous scholars have viewed the impeachment, which failed to remove Johnson from office and allowed him to serve out his term, as an embarrassing political grudge fight, Wineapple argues convincingly that it clearly upheld the limits of presidential authority and the power of the constitutional system of checks and balances. Her arguments are novel and her prose lively (she describes the 14th Amendment as “a farrago of political jockeying, political compromise, and nagging anxiety about the future of a country where all people are created equal”). This book has much to offer enthusiasts of both historical and contemporary American politics. Illus.

April 15, 2019
The impeachment of a president is a court of last resort--even one who willfully breaks laws while in office. Thus this lucid, timely study of the sole impeachment trial convened until 1998. Andrew Johnson was an accidental president, brought into office with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He immediately began to alienate allies: He was not keen on the prospect of African-American equality, pretty much ignored Congress, and quietly undid some of the work of Reconstruction. Writes Wineapple (Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877, 2013, etc.), ultimately, "he sought to restore the South as the province of white men and to return to power a planter class that perpetuated racial distrust and violence." Moreover, he considered Lincoln-variety and more radical Republicans to be his enemies, not the former traitors who had seceded from the Union. For all that, as the author lays out in her carefully constructed narrative, Johnson made powerful enemies indeed. These included Lincoln's secretary of war, the indispensable politician Edwin Stanton, whom Ulysses S. Grant called "one of the great men of the Republic"; and the expansionist senator Charles Sumner, famed for having been caned on the floor of the Senate after denouncing slavery, who definitively turned on Johnson--whom he called "ignorant, pig-headed, and perverse"--when Johnson allowed the Southern states to bypass the question of whether blacks would be allowed to vote. The last straw was when Johnson refused to sign a civil rights bill with characteristic scorn. As Wineapple writes, "if the winning combination had been demagoguery and orneriness, with a touch of malice, that...no longer worked so well." Johnson was hauled before a court of impeachment but was acquitted after a series of legal arguments that the author renders with verve and skill, no easy feat given the technical nature of some of them--though, as she notes, the central question is one fit for the present moment: "What constituted an impeachable offense?" A superb contribution to presidential history.

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Starred review from April 1, 2019
For even a great leader, having to succeed Abraham Lincoln would present formidable challenge. Like most vice presidents, Andrew Johnson had been nominated as a balance to the party's ticket. A Southerner from Tennessee, yet adamantly pro-Union, he was nevertheless an unreconstructed white supremacist. A self-made success as a tailor, he lacked education and, it would seem, intellectual curiosity. Wineapple (Ecstatic Nation, 2013) follows the story of Johnson's impeachment by radical Republicans who found the new president's approach to Reconstruction insufficiently punitive of recent rebels. Her focus is on the congressmen and senators whose animus toward Johnson drove forward the impeachment process. Fans of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals (2006) will appreciate how Wineapple's narrative carries forward the saga of the men Lincoln so relied on during the Civil War, as, newly leaderless, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Secretary of State William Seward drifted back into conflict and competition. Appomattox scarcely resolved the Civil War's intractable issues, and Stanton and Seward's contradictions continued unresolved. And the impetus to restore the Union ran counter to the fight for rights of freed slaves. Photo portraits included.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

April 1, 2019

Wineapple (Ecstatic Nation) presents a timely, well-written and -documented history on the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson (1808-75), incorporating elements of drama involving colorful and powerful characters, an impressive set at the U.S. Capitol, and critical political issues of post-Civil War American history. Wineapple adroitly interweaves background on the political dynamics of Reconstruction while focusing on impeachment and the trial taking place in 1868. The work reflects recent historical interpretations of these events as a struggle between a president determined to undermine a congressional majority trying to protect and solidify the results of the Civil War as well as the political and social gains of black Southerners. While presenting major political figures as well as observers such as Mark Twain, Georges Clemenceau, Horace Greeley, and others, the author addresses participants' many motivations, from idealism to crass materialism, that led to Johnson's ultimate acquittal, if not his vindication. While prior knowledge of mid-19th-century events might prove useful, Wineapple's writing provides sufficient context for those seeking an accessible introduction to the impeachment. VERDICT Complementing but not replacing David Stewart's Impeached, this volume offers a skillfully crafted and useful history. [See Prepub Alert, 11/19/18.]--Charles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2018

With Americans unsure how to reunite after the bloody Civil War, President Andrew Johnson took the low road, ignoring Congress, pardoning rebel leaders, and blotting out civil rights while plumping for white supremacy. Wineapple, author of the New York Times best-booked Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877, among other award grabbers, chronicles the impeachment that followed.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.