Impeachment: An American History

by Jeffrey A. Engel

The president did not necessarily have to personally commit a high crime in order to be impeached, but could merely have made way for its commission, or have failed to halt it once he learned of it.

Neither does the Constitution specifically require an impeached president be removed from office, though that remains the most likely result of conviction. He could be impeached and found guilty, and then be given a lesser punishment by the Senate if they chose.

This is also why the absence of virtue—evidenced by a president’s concern for his own welfare above and beyond the public’s, whose fate he is entrusted to preserve—is the best sign we have that the founders would have wanted him impeached.69

While there is no question that as a free person Andrew was legally better off than an enslaved boy, and would have thought of himself as superior to any black person, the question of actual racial superiority was more problematic….What beyond their white skin did poor whites have to show for being better than blacks? The closer they came to blacks, in terms of the way they lived, their lack of social standing, independence, and putative lack of virtue, the more anxious they grew. Having nothing themselves, they claimed superiority by asserting that a common skin color linked them to the talents, actions, and accomplishments of others who looked like them.

Taken all in all, the Johnson case suggested that impeachment could be undertaken for reasons of political conflict but would be pursued only along more technical grounds. It was as though the House had permission to act emotionally while the Senate would be expected to act rationally, giving future generations of presidents and lawmakers an impeachment precedent that was more daunting than inviting.