ANDREW JOHNSON’S IMPEACHMENT: A MODEL AND A WARNING FOR TRUMP

Much has been made of President Donald Trump’s apparent historical gaffe regarding Andrew Jackson and the American Civil War. Jackson, Trump said, was ‘really angry’ about the Civil War, apparently unaware that Jackson was dead 16 years before the beginning of the civil war. But was it just a silly mistake? Did Trump mistakenly name Jackson when he meant Andrew Johnson, the ‘war Democrat’ and former Governor of Tennessee who Lincoln named as his running mate and who succeeded Lincoln following his untimely assassination in April, 1865?

Of course, Jackson or Johnson, both comparisons don’t carry much water but in personality and politics as well as manner, it is the latter, Andrew Johnson, with whom strong comparisons with Trump can be drawn.

In his book, The Case for Impeachment, Allan J. Lichtman, Distinguished Professor of History at American University in Washington, DC, tells how Johnson’s outrageous acts in the aftermath of the civil war almost led to his impeachment and draws a comparison between him and the present incumbent.

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