HELP...Plz!!!?

Question

1 - Why was president Andrew Johnson impeached? Was it a right action to take?

2 - What was the LBJ Administration's policy on civil rights? Use an example.

Thank you so MUCH!

Answer 1

because?

Answer 2

1. It was not right to impeach Andrew Johnson, since he had not committed a crime. The Radicals, and ultimately a majority in the House decided to impeach him, using a technical matter. In reality, the problem was Johnson, a former Democrat, has been elected as vice-president, on the Union ticket with actual Republican President Abraham Lincoln. Johnson turned from having made tough statements against Southern secessionists, to letting them back in the Union on very easy terms. He tried to keep the Congress out of Reconstrcution. Johnson was an extremely poor politician, and had badly dealt with the Republicans. But he committed NO CRIME. Therefore, impeachment was wrong. One of Congress' main charges was that he violated the Tenure of Office Act in firing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The law was unconstitutional in stating that the president could not fire cabinet officials--but this charge was even more absurd in that Lincoln, not Johnson, had made the appointment. Political disagreement over Reconstruction policy provided ABSOLUTELY NO JUSTIFICATION FOR IMPEACHMENT.

2. Lyndon B. Johnson had basically been a racial moderate for a Southerner in 1950s and 1960s America. He was not a reformer. However, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was no reformer at all, and while President John F. Kennedy supported civil rights more than Ike, he was limited.

President Johnson decided to pick up the mantle of JFK's limited reform and turn it into a massive "Great Society" civil rights agenda. One important difference between Johnson and Kennedy was that the former was a master of the Senate, and he could get done things JFK lacked the legislative skill do. The Johnson Administration was massively and wholly committed to civil rights (Vietnam should not overshadow that). I will just mention key programs and laws: Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicade, Head Start, Housing Act of 1968, and much more.

Answer 3

Although there was an impeachment trial, Andrew Johnson narrowly escaped impeachment by 1 vote. Congress found the legal grounds for the impeachment trial when Johnson violated the Tenure of Office Act. That is, he fired his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, without the approval of the Senate. Whether or not it was the right action to take is highly debatable and complex. One has to view it withiin the context of the issues of Reconstruction.

LBJ made civil rights a priority in his administration. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 was passed which, among other things, fully protected the right to vote for Blacks in the south.

Answer 4

1 --
In February 1868, Johnson notified Congress that he had removed Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War and was replacing him in the interim with Adjutant-General Lorenzo Thomas. Johnson had wanted to replace Stanton with former General Ulysses S. Grant, who refused to accept the position. This violated the Tenure of Office Act, a law enacted by Congress in March, 1867 over Johnson's veto, specifically designed to protect Stanton. Johnson had vetoed the act, claiming it was unconstitutional. The act said, "...every person holding any civil office, to which he has been appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate ... shall be entitled to hold such office until a successor shall have been in like manner appointed and duly qualified," thus removing the President's previous unlimited power to remove any of his Cabinet members at will. Years later in the case Myers v. United States in 1926, the Supreme Court ruled that such laws were indeed unconstitutional.

2 --
In response to the civil rights movement, Johnson overcame southern resistance and achieved passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which effectively outlawed most forms of racial segregation. As he put down his pen, Johnson is alleged to have told an aide: "We have lost the South for a generation.".[18] In 1965, he achieved passage of a second civil rights bill, the Voting Rights Act, that outlawed discrimination in voting, thus allowing millions of southern blacks to vote for the first time.

In other actions on the civil rights front, Johnson nominated civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall to the positions of Solicitor General and later Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, making him the first African American to serve in either capacity. After the murder of civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo, Johnson went on television to announce the arrest of four Ku Klux Klansmen implicated in her death. He angrily denounced the Klan as a "hooded society of bigots", and warned them to "return to a decent society before it's too late." He turned the themes of Christian redemption to push for civil rights, thereby mobilizing support from churches North and South.[19] On June 4, 1965 at the Howard University commencement address, he said that both the government and the nation needed to help achieve goals: ...To shatter forever not only the barriers of law and public practice, but the walls which bound the condition of many by the color of his skin. To dissolve, as best we can, the antique enmities of the heart which diminish the holder, divide the great democracy, and do wrong — great wrong — to the children of God...

Answer 5

1 - Political Differences. Or, for a series of complaints from undermining laws passed by congress. And, for what it's worth, Johnson was acquitted.

2 - He worked on outlawing segregation.

Answer 6

I'm the skepticle type, are you just trying to get us to do your homework?