What if Andrew Johnson had been kicked out of office?

Question

Do you think the country could have survived if Johnson had been thrown out of office? He was impeached because he and Congress could not agree on reconstruction plans. Many northerners opposed him because he was a southern sympathizer. However, the argument for his impeachment was weak, and he was kept in office because the Senate was 1 vote short of conviction. Yet if Johnson had been impeached, what do you think would be the impact on the country that was desperately trying to rebuild? Would Johnson's conviction have been beneficial, or would the country have been thrown into further turmoil?

charlie-yes he was ineffective after the impeachement, but would a change of presidents at that point have been chaotic? also, what would the south's reaction have been?

Answer 1

Johnson basically avoided conviction by surrendering control over Reconstruction to the Radical Republican majority in Congress. If he had been convicted of what was a non-crime, it would not have made one bit of difference to the majority of the South. They were under military government and stayed under military government until (depending on the state) sometime in the Grant Administration. The country was not trying to rebuild at that point. The South was trying to pretend that there never was a war and the North was still trying to impose the terms of surrender to make sure that the Union soldiers had not died in vain.

The long-term precedent of a conviction over a policy disagreement would have had a dramatic impact on the balance of power between Congress and the Presidency. As it was, the next twenty years after the Johnson Administration were an era of Congressional dominance. It took a long-time for the Executive and Judicial branches to regain equality.

Answer 2

It wouldn't have made a bit of difference since he was pretty much unaffective by then anyway.