On February 24th, 1868, after three years of open conflict with a President of the United States they universally detested, the House of Representatives of the United States passed 11 articles of Impeachment against President Andrew Johnson. The accidental President Johnson, brought to the position of the Presidency through the tragic assassination of President Lincoln, was from the first day of his oath a mistake the victorious Republican radicals of congress hoped to cleanse. Lincoln had determined at a difficult time in his reelection bid to remove the competent Hannibal Hamlin of Maine as his running mate in 1864, and replace him with Johnson, the Governor of Tennessee who was a pro Union Democrat. Lincoln, always the strategic thinker, sought to invigorate the necessary unifying forces that would help bring the nation somehow together after the bloody conflict of the Civil War. He saw the new Vice President as symbolic of the steps needed to begin binding the nation’s wounds, not remotely as a substitute for himself in the treacherous post war world that ultimately would come. The assassin Boothe would decide differently.

By 1868, Johnson and the Republican Congress were so at odds that both sought to bend the Constitution to subvert the other. Radical Republicans in Congress passed Amendments to the Constitution that would forever end slavery and provide all men with voting rights. Johnson, a Southerner and strict States Rights advocate, saw such laws as unjust with the southern states yet to be formerly represented in the post war congress. He vetoed their actions, and Congress overrode his veto. These laws, like all laws, required executive cooperation in their actualization, and Secretary of War Stanton, a Lincoln holdover and Radical Republican, took Congress’s direction over the President’s. The Congress, to prevent Johnson from removing Stanton, passed the Tenure In Office Law that demanded Congress would have last say on removal of Cabinet Ministers, a highly dubious extra-constitutional act. Johnson waited until Congress was in recess, and removed Stanton, and all hell broke loose.

For the first time, the mechanism of checks and balances put in place by the framers of the Constitution came into stark relief, as one branch, the legislative, determined to remove the Chief Executive of another branch.

The House of Representatives … shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

— Article I, Section 2, Clause 5
The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present.

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

—Article II, Section 2
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

—Article II, Section 4

The 11 articles of Impeachment passed by the House of Representatives against President Johnson included two that referred to the House’s disdain for the rough language the President was renowned for using. The other nine referred to Johnson’s determination to remove Stanton, which very likely was his Constitutional prerogative. The key to the first effort to impeach a President of the United States foundered on the rocks of the vagaries expressed in Article II, Section 4 – what exactly are High Crimes and Misdemeanors?

As bad as Congress detested Johnson, many recognized the action of removal was an extreme act for overturning an election, and on May 16,1868, the initial article was voted upon, and fell one vote short of the two thirds necessary to acquit, including 10 of the 45 Republicans voting with the minority Democrats. A ten day recess was requested in hopes of swaying at least one more vote. Rumors of bribes offered to the nay sayers were rife, but to no avail. All three votes taken were 35-19, and President Johnson kept his job.

Later years have brought at least two close calls. President Nixon resigned in August of 1973 before imminent articles of impeachment were voted upon by the House, and in 1998 William Clinton was impeached but easily survived the Senate trial falling a full 17 votes short of the article intimating Obstruction of Justice.

At the heart of each prior impeachment, there has been the intimation of a suspected crime, failure to uphold the laws of the United States by Johnson, a coverup of crimes by Nixon, and Perjury by Clinton.

And that brings us to 2020, where we find ourselves in another impeachment process again brought by an opposition House that detests the President, and dumped into a Senate that wants little to do with the political hit job . Particularly galling with this attempt – the absence of any premised much less actual crime. The House flipped to Democrat leadership in 2018, and has been on a mission to “dump Trump” for the temerity of having beaten Hillary Clinton in 2016 and sticking his thumb in the Obama legacy ever since.

The first attempt at emasculation was the two year Mueller investigation to try to connect Trump somehow to the election result through “Russian collusion”. As the facts arrived, the dirt seemed to fall dramatically more upon the attacking Democrats, with the faint stench of a possible internal “coup” attempt laced with grossly inappropriate spying and warrants around the naive Trump team entirely based upon clumsy and dirty opposition research paid for and provided by the opposition Clinton team. When that fell through, the party immediately latched upon a so called “whistleblower” , using that designation for given credence to bringing forward a private interaction between the President and a foreign leader. As with the previous attempt the dirt attached to the Ukraine story appears to have even more to say regarding Democrat actions than Trumpian misdeeds. When all is said and done, the evidence of accepting bribes, paid for influence, and corrupt action may well end Democrat candidate for President Joe Biden’s career rather than Trump.

But first, the circus must go on. Impeachment, designed by the founders as a particularly rare and necessarily nonpartisan identification of dramatic malfeasance requiring the upset of the balance powers through a mechanism other than election, has once again fallen far short of the mark. Two articles proffered by the House of Representatives , neither defining a crime, a treason or a bribe, have been submitted for the single intent to sufficiently damage Trump to prevent his re-election. Once again, the disqualification falls more upon those who would attempt to disqualify. For all his personality flaws, Donald John Trump has led an unprecedented expansion of the economy, obliteration of unemployment, restoration of some trade balance, dramatic reduction in regulations, securing of the country’s border, and restoration of the concept of deference in a dangerous world.

Hating his guts will prove to be a lousy logic for impeachment, and an even lousier one for defeating him in an election. As Lyman Trumball of Illinois, one of the Republican Senators who voted for the acquittal of President Johnson sagely reflected, the freedom to disagree with Congress has to be upheld if checks and balances of the Constitution are to be maintained. For self righteous people stoked with irrational anger, blowing up the Constitution seems to be a necessary sacrifice to make them feel vindicated. The lesson Trump is about to deliver is going to be a particularly nasty wakeup call indeed.