The President Who Was Put on Trial Even After His Political Death — The Real Story Behind Andrew Johnson's Impeachment

'The Luckiest Surviving President' — A Title Earned by One Vote

Many presidents in American history have faced impeachment proceedings, but only one survived by a single vote. Andrew Johnson — the man who suddenly found himself president on the night Lincoln was assassinated. And in May 1868, he became the first president in American history to stand before the Senate in an impeachment trial.

Here's the twist: it was his political enemies who tried to bring him down, but the man who saved him was a Republican senator he thought was on his side — and that senator risked his entire political career to do it.

---

The Uncomfortable Chair Lincoln Left Behind

On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln fell at Ford's Theatre. The following morning, Vice President Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency. The problem was that he was politically a completely different man from Lincoln.

Johnson was a Southern Democrat from Tennessee — someone Lincoln had chosen as his running mate for strategic balance. The war was over, but now the real fight was beginning. "How do we rebuild the South?" — that question split Washington in two.

Radical Republicans argued that the Southern states should be firmly punished and that freed Black Americans should be granted citizenship and voting rights. Johnson was the polar opposite. He wanted to restore the Southern states as quickly and as leniently as possible, leaving matters like Black rights for individual states to sort out on their own.

A clash between Congress and the president was inevitable.

---

A President Who Broke the Law — or a Law That Was Unconstitutional?

To rein in Johnson, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in 1867, which prohibited the president from dismissing cabinet members without Senate approval. Johnson believed the law was unconstitutional. So he unilaterally fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

Congress immediately played its impeachment card. The House passed 11 articles of impeachment, and the first presidential impeachment trial in history was underway.

---

One Vote That Changed History

On May 2 and 16, 1868, the Senate held its votes on the impeachment trial. A two-thirds majority — 36 votes — was required for conviction. The result was 35 to 19: Johnson survived by a single vote.

The man who cast that decisive vote was Edmund Ross, a Republican senator from Kansas. He refused to reveal which way he would vote right up until the moment of the ballot. His colleagues threatened him, his constituents pressured him, and there were even attempts to bribe him. Still, he voted "not guilty."

Ross's political career was over. But years later, John F. Kennedy honored him in Profiles in Courage as a politician who stood by his conscience.

---

🎬 This History on Screen

The PBS documentary 《Reconstruction: America After the Civil War (2019)》, produced by Henry Louis Gates Jr., tackles Johnson's impeachment and the Reconstruction era head-on. It unflinchingly traces how Black civil rights were suppressed and what consequences Johnson's conciliatory policies ultimately produced — a work that stays faithful to the historical record while never losing its contemporary relevance.

Steven Spielberg's 《Lincoln (2012)》 covers a period just before Johnson's impeachment, but it vividly captures the political dynamics of how Congress and the president collided. The film's Radical Republican, Thaddeus Stevens, was in fact the very real historical figure who spearheaded Johnson's impeachment.

---

The Weight of One Vote — Undiminished After 150 Years

Johnson survived, but Reconstruction failed. The South enacted Jim Crow laws that crushed Black Americans' rights, and the repercussions lasted for over a century. Perhaps that single vote didn't save Johnson so much as it prevented America from ever properly healing its deepest wound.

History's irony is always the same — the smallest number produces the largest consequences.