Andrew Johnson impeached

On February 24, 1868, the United States House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 in Washington, D.C., to impeach President Andrew Johnson. The impeachment followed Johnson's attempt to remove Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, a Reconstruction statute passed over Johnson's veto in 1867. House managers then drafted eleven articles of impeachment on March 2 and 3, 1868, charging Johnson with violating federal law and obstructing Congressional Reconstruction.

Johnson's impeachment turned the central Reconstruction question into a constitutional struggle over whether the president could block the will of a Republican Congress. Radical Republicans such as Thaddeus Stevens and Benjamin Butler treated Stanton's removal as proof that Johnson intended to destroy the Reconstruction Acts and restore white Democratic control in the former Confederacy. Johnson and his defenders argued that the Tenure of Office Act unconstitutionally limited executive power, making the Senate trial a test of separation of powers as well as Reconstruction policy.

The Senate trial that opened in March 1868 ended on May 16 and May 26, 1868, when Johnson escaped removal by a single vote. The acquittal preserved the presidency for the remainder of Johnson's term, but the impeachment fight strengthened Congressional Reconstruction and set the stage for Ulysses S. Grant's election in November 1868.