The verdict in Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial was acquittal. On May 16, 1868, the Senate voted 35 to 19 to convict him on Article XI, the broadest of the eleven impeachment charges, falling one vote short of the two-thirds majority the Constitution requires to remove a president.1U.S. Senate. Impeachment Trial of President Andrew Johnson, 1868 Ten days later, votes on two more articles produced the same 35-to-19 split, and the Senate adjourned without voting on the eight remaining charges.2U.S. Senate. Impeachment Trial of Andrew Johnson Johnson served out the rest of his term.
What Johnson Was Charged With
The House of Representatives impeached Johnson on February 24, 1868, by a party-line vote of 128 to 47.3National Park Service. Impeachment Time Line Of the eleven articles the House produced, nine centered on Johnson’s firing of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton earlier that month, which the House said violated the Tenure of Office Act. That 1867 law barred the president from removing Senate-confirmed officials without Senate approval. Article X accused Johnson of degrading Congress through inflammatory speeches. Article XI, known as the “omnibus article,” bundled the Tenure of Office Act violations together with charges that Johnson had obstructed Reconstruction, and the House managers considered it their strongest shot at conviction because it offered senators multiple grounds to vote guilty.4National Archives. Impeachment
Johnson’s defense argued that the Tenure of Office Act did not even cover Stanton, since the statute protected Cabinet officers only during the term of the president who had appointed them, and Stanton had been appointed by Lincoln.5Constitution Annotated. ArtII.S4.4.4 President Andrew Johnson and Impeachable Offenses They also argued the act was unconstitutional and that a president was entitled to test a law he believed violated the separation of powers.
How the Senate Voted
Fifty-four senators sat in the chamber during the trial: 42 Republicans and 12 Democrats. Conviction required 36 votes. Every Democrat was expected to acquit, so the outcome depended entirely on whether Republicans would hold together.
The impeachment managers deliberately called Article XI first, on May 16, 1868, judging it the article most likely to reach the threshold. The roll produced 35 guilty and 19 not guilty. Seven Republicans had voted with the Democrats to acquit, and the prosecution was a single vote short.1U.S. Senate. Impeachment Trial of President Andrew Johnson, 1868 The Senate adjourned for ten days. When it returned on May 26 and voted on Articles II and III, the tally was identical: 35 to 19 on each. Recognizing that no remaining article would fare any better, the Senate acquitted Johnson and adjourned the Court of Impeachment without taking up the other eight articles.5Constitution Annotated. ArtII.S4.4.4 President Andrew Johnson and Impeachable Offenses
The Seven Republicans Who Crossed Over
The seven Republican senators who voted for acquittal became known as the “Republican Recusants”: William Pitt Fessenden of Maine, Joseph Fowler of Tennessee, James Grimes of Iowa, John Henderson of Missouri, Edmund G. Ross of Kansas, Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, and Peter Van Winkle of West Virginia.1U.S. Senate. Impeachment Trial of President Andrew Johnson, 1868 None were Johnson allies. Most had supported the Reconstruction bills he had vetoed. Their objection was to the legal case for removal, not to the Republican policy agenda.
Trumbull, one of the strongest lawyers in the Senate, said the disagreements between Johnson and Congress did not amount to an impeachable offense. Grimes, so ill he had to be carried into the chamber, said convicting Johnson would leave “the stain of a partisan and unsustained impeachment” on the country. Ross later said he had sworn to judge the case on the evidence, and the evidence did not support the charges.
Politics were tangled up in those votes as well. Had Johnson been removed, the presidency would have passed to Benjamin Wade of Ohio, the Senate’s president pro tempore and a Radical Republican whose views on suffrage, labor, and economics alarmed moderates in his own party. Ross reportedly feared that Wade as president would cut off his patronage in Kansas. Historians have debated ever since whether the acquittal votes reflected constitutional conviction, calculation about Wade, or some mix of both.
What the Acquittal Meant
The statute at the heart of the trial did not last. Congress weakened the Tenure of Office Act in 1869 and repealed it in 1887. In 1926, the Supreme Court in Myers v. United States ruled that Congress could not require Senate consent for a president to remove executive branch officers, calling the Tenure of Office Act an unconstitutional attempt to “redistribute the powers and minimize those of the President.”6Library of Congress. Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926) The law Johnson was impeached for violating was later held to be unconstitutional.
The larger consequence of the verdict was constitutional. The acquittal established the understanding that impeachment is meant for genuine abuses of power or betrayals of public trust, not for policy fights between a president and Congress.7Legal Information Institute. Impeachable Offenses: Impeachment of Andrew Johnson A Senate with more than enough votes to remove a deeply unpopular president chose, by the margin of a single vote, not to. That outcome has shaped every presidential impeachment debate since.