The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation

by Brenda Wineapple

Johnson was a proud, vain, and insecure man who distrusted almost everyone, and his talent for pitting himself against almost everyone, his friend Welles went on to say, would pillory him and warp the course of the entire country for years and years to come.

Frightening familiar...

“This is not a ‘white man’s Government.’ To say so is political blasphemy.” —THADDEUS STEVENS

I love this Thaddeus Stevens fella!

“Peace is not to be secured by degrading one race and exalting another,” Douglass said, “but by maintaining a state of equal justice between all classes.”

As true now as ever!

“There is never a lack of legal texts any more than of religious texts, when men seek to stifle their consciences,” Georges Clemenceau commented with more than a touch of acerbity.