With enduring partisan animosity came constitutional hardball. In 1866, the Republican Congress reduced the size of the Supreme Court from ten to seven to prevent President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat whom Republicans viewed as subverting Reconstruction, from making any appointments, and a year later, it passed the Tenure of Office Act, which prohibited Johnson from removing Lincoln’s cabinet members without Senate approval. Viewing the law as a violation of his constitutional authority, Johnson ignored it—a “high misdemeanor” for which he was impeached in 1868. Gradually, though, as the Civil
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