At first the renewed effort, unfolding in the closing months of 1867, seemed likely to end as the first impeachment foray had just a few months earlier. James Ashley was still on the scene, testifying about what Chief Justice Rehnquist characterized as “his theory that every vice-president who had succeeded to the presidency had played a part in bringing about the death of his predecessor. This theory, of course, included such unlikely conspirators as John Tyler, who had succeeded William Henry Harrison in 1841, and Millard Fillmore, who had succeeded Zachary Taylor in 1850.”72 Rehnquist’s dry
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