The Daily History Chronicle

On February 24, 1868, the House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson but not really for firing his Secretary of War. Radical Republicans like the dying Thaddeus Stevens were fighting a president who declared America "a country for white men" while Black Americans were being murdered across the South. The impeachment was political warfare disguised as constitutional process, a desperate attempt to protect civil rights through questionable legal means, and the establishment of precedents we're still debating today. Both the impeachment and the acquittal were right. Both were wrong. And that's what makes this moment so crucial to understanding American democracy.