LETTERS

The First Impeachment

The SCHOLAR is to be commended for calling timely attention to the first use of presidential impeachment. But Brenda Wineapple’s article (“The First President to Be Impeached,”

Spring 2019) could have been improved by closer constitutional analysis. Central to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson was the charge that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act, whose origins lay in a typical but unusually exacerbated power struggle between the president and Congress—a congressional attempt to reduce the appointive power to a near nullity. The act provided that any executive official whose appointment required Senate confirmation could be removed only with Senate consent. Had the act altered the balance of executive and legislative powers, it may be imagined what would have become of the presidential duty to “see that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Johnson’s alleged violation of the act (in his effort to remove the disloyal Edwin Stanton from his cabinet) was the only impeachment charge that the Senate took seriously, as measured by a close vote. Had the novel act been vindicated by Johnson’s ouster, a president’s power