The impeachment of Abraham Lincoln was a failed effort by the Democrat-controlled United States Congress to remove President Abraham Lincoln from office in 1868.
Abraham Lincoln
The Charges[]
The House of Representatives, dominated by a heavy Democratic majority, drafted ten articles of impeachment against Lincoln. The first and main charge accused Lincoln of abusing his powers by unilaterally suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War. Another charge accused him of abusing his powers by unilaterally freeing slaves in the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln speaking during the war
The other charges against Lincoln accused him of unnecessarily stoking violence by starting the war and killing thousands of citizens who Democrats claimed were peacefully expressing their rights under the Constitution. By doing so, they argued, Lincoln had deprived the slain of their right to life, liberty, and happiness that was guaranteed to them under the Fifth Amendment.
Progression of the Trial[]
The House of Representatives first began an impeachment inquiry in August 1867, after the Democratic congress had taken care of other matters they considered urgent now that they were in the majority. It was recognized that any impeachment effort was unlikely to result in the removal of Lincoln from office due to the remaining Republicans in the senate. Democrats had only a 26 to 24 seat majority in the upper house, with a two-thirds majority required to convict.
An impeachment effort, then, was more of a public repudiation of Lincoln's presidency, an open forum where Democrats could air their grievances against the way he had conducted the war. If Lincoln was removed, of course, then the Democratic vice president Andrew Johnson would become president. Due to the long odds of anything coming of it, the process was not considered urgent and moved slowly, only resulting in formal articles of impeachment in December. The formal vote was delayed until the start of the new year. Finally, on January 1st, the articles of impeachment were delivered to the senate and the trial began. Reports said that Democrats in the senate openly cheered when they received the articles.
Lincoln received the news without much outward reaction. He didn't consider the process to have much legitimacy and knew that he would certainly not be removed from office anyway. He left the management of the trial up to his defense team and otherwise did not comment until after the trial was over. Republicans as a whole attacked the trial as a pointless charade that would do nothing but prevent Congress from addressing actually important matters.
Salmon P. Chase
Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, a Lincoln appointee, presided. The Democratic impeachment managers from the House began by arguing their case against Lincoln, which they felt was strong. They portrayed him as a warmongering tyrant who had no respect for the established laws of the land, trampling on them whenever he saw fit. They said that the impeachment was an attempt to reign in a president who had no legal restraint.
The defense team argued that Lincoln's actions were necessary to protect the Union and the citizenry as he was constitutionally sworn to do. If the impeachment was successful, they asserted, it would set a precedent that no president should ever act strongly in a crisis to protect the Union, for fear of congressional retaliation. They also focused their arguments on the time frame of the charges, pointing out that some of the alleged abuses of power had taken place nearly seven years before the trial. They argued that Congress should not be able to stockpile charges against the president for indeterminate amounts of time- if the misdemeanors committed were truly so high, then Lincoln would have been impeached by the Congress that was assembled at the time. Democrats countered that they had the constitutional right to keep the president in check and that this right did not have a time limit, especially considering the Republican majorities at the time of the incidents. Lastly, the defense team pointed out the conflicting Democratic positions of recognizing that the Confederate states had the right to peacefully secede, yet accusing Lincoln of violating their rights as United States citizens. If they had truly seceded at the moment they declared so, then they were no longer US citizens at that point and no longer had the protections that entailed.
Andrew Johnson
News coverage of the trial was intense. Public anger at Lincoln's failure to win the war led many to root for his removal, regardless of the underlying legal arguments. Republicans, on the other hand, expressed anger that someone they saw as a pure and just man was now on trial in front of the entire nation, his reputation smeared. Andrew Johnson himself was against Lincoln's impeachment and publicly stated as much, not wanting to be seen as a usurper in the case that he did become president. He was frustrated with his party and felt that the impeachment hurt his chances at being the presidential nominee in the upcoming election.
Voting and Results[]
The Senate voted on each article of impeachment separately. The first article was widely believed to be the most compelling, and every Democrat voted for conviction on this article. Every Republican voted against, resulting in a 26-24 vote for conviction, short of the two-thirds majority needed.
Opinions on the other articles were more split. War Democrats believed that pursuing war against the South had been just and were weary of voting to convict the president on that charge alone. Thus, none of the remaining articles of impeachment secured even a majority of votes, and Lincoln was not convicted.
Aftermath[]
After the trial was over, the Democratic congress returned to their other agendas without much disappointment. Lincoln released his first statement on the matter, expressing his happiness that justice had been done and defending his actions during the war as necessary to preserve the Union, which had always been his primary goal as president. Democrats focused on preventing Lincoln's successor from being a fellow Republican. They succeeded in this task with the election of George H. Pendleton as president. The impeachment is remembered as an interesting, if ultimately insignificant, chapter in United States history. Lincoln was the only US president to ever be impeached.
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