On This Day in History: May 26

Andrew Johnson Impeachment

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Jesus flag-shitting Christ how did America go from Abraham Lincoln to this fucking guy? Oh, right. Someone shot Abe in the head and Andrew Johnson became president and he sucked so hard they impeached the motherfucker. But America doesn’t like to hold its presidents accountable for shit, and they didn’t vote to convict.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: May 26, 1868--

You know how Lincoln was a Republican back when the Republicans didn’t totally suck? Johnson was his VP, and hewas a Democrat, back before Democrats were the party of social equali—wait. Fuck. 

Anyway, in the 1864 election, during the Civil War, the pair ran on a “National Union” ticket, except not the part of the union that said fuck you we like slavery we’re gonna war the shit out of you. That war mostly came to an end on April 9, 1865, with the Confederate side adopting a tattered white bed sheet with poop stains on it as their forever flag. Five days later Abe was watching some actors and got a bullet in the back of the head shot by some other fucking actor, and America was in the shit. 

Lincoln died the next day and Johnson was sworn in as prez #17. Johnson had grown up poor and never attended school. He eventually became a financial success and used that money to buy slaves because that’s the kind of shitburger he was. And when he became president the policies he enacted for how to “reconstruct” the United States were dumb as fuck. Basically, he said yeah let’s just get this over with and do a quickie restoration and welcome the south back, and to hell with any protections for those former slaves I mean they’re not even white so who cares? States’ rights! Amnesty for Confederates! Just because we won the war doesn’t mean they don’t get to keep doing things the way they want. Did I mention Johnson was from the south?

Of course, left to their own devices the governments in southern states enacted all sorts of anti-Black laws to repress the shit out of the recently emancipated. Johnson vetoed bills intended to protect Blacks and told southern states not to ratify the 14th Amendment which granted citizenship to Black people (it was ratified despite his efforts). 

For these and many other reasons, his government really didn’t like him and in February 1868 said that’s it we’re gonna impeach this motherfucker. With 11 articles levied, it was the first time the U.S. had ever impeached a president. The trial lasted 11 weeks, and involved some sleazy deal-making and possibly even bribery to get the senate to fail to convict him by a margin of a single vote on May 26, 1868. Another thing that helped him avoid conviction was that his designated replacement was a total Mike Pence of a lame-duck motherfucker who no one wanted either.

Johnson didn’t run for re-election later that year, but on his way out he went on a pre-emptive pardon-o-rama of Confederates. Because he was an asshole. 

Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.

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