IMPEACHMENT!
The trouble began in the summer of 1865. President Andrew Johnson had begun to implement his own version of Reconstruction while Congress was in recess. He quickly invited former Confederate states back into the Union and pardoned scores of their former leaders. He also refused to impose Black suffrage on the Southern states.
The Radical Republicans in Congress were horrified. Thaddeus Stevens, the most influential Radical, fumed in his home state of Pennsylvania. How dare the president begin Reconstruction without Congress? Stevens would become one of Johnson’s most powerful enemies.
When Congress
