if Johnson’s motives were patriotic but his actions wicked, shouldn’t he be held accountable for those actions? And who could really know his motives anyway? Or, even if you could, did his motives offer comfort or compensation, never mind freedom, to the people who’d been injured by those actions? But with his argument, Wilson had held out to Republicans, particularly moderates, a thin reed of good intentions, should they choose to seize it to justify their refusal to impeach.
