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You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Timely Content Open Thread: The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

Timely Content Open Thread: The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

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Michael Harriot is the Roots writer who had that much-discussed convo about racism with Pete Buttigieg. I knew the basics of Johnson’s impeachment, but I learned stuff from Harriot’s thread here. Click on the tweet below to read the whole thing with the extraneous headers stripped out:

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39Comments

  6. 6.

    Elizabelle

    @debbie:   I know.  Between the GOP winger-whingers at the Impeachment hearings, and BoJo taking a victory lap.  I will take the 19th century and discussing what is known any day.

    We have to learn from history.  This decade has been terrifying for diving right back into the late 1920s and 30s.

  8. 8.

    smintheus

    Johnson and Nixon both deserved many times over to be impeached and removed from office. Both were frothing-at-the-mouth bigots, both were thoroughly lacking in shame or made the slightest attempt to feign contrition when they were caught abusing the powers of their office. Then there’s Trump.

  9. 9.

    patrick II

    I have come to realize over the years that John Wilkes Boothe did even more harm than I understood.

  10. 10.

    Jay Noble

    Had to go check because I haven’t read it since Jr. High, but this guy was one of JFK’s Profiles in Corage.

    “Edmund G. Ross, from Kansas, for voting for acquittal in the Andrew Johnson impeachment trial. As a result of Ross’s vote, along with those of six other Republicans, Democrat Johnson’s presidency was saved, and the stature of the office was preserved.”

    Some narrative they put out there.

  11. 11.

    R-Jud

    There’s a fiction podcast (audio drama, people) called 1865 which begins with the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth and continues through Johnson’s impeachment. I highly recommend it. Download a podcast app and search for it.

  12. 12.

    cmorenc

    A dubious distinction of North Carolina history:

    – NC claims three US Presidents as having been born in North Carolina: Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, and James Polk – there’s actually a statue on the old state capitol grounds honoring the trio.  The first two were two of our very worst Presidents – both virulent racists, and Jackson had a very Trump-like personality, and stabbed in the back his Native American allies who provided critical support to Jackson in the military victories that brought him to prominence with the forced removal of NAs to Oklahoma territory.  No wonder Jackson is Trump’s favorite President.  Polk is more of a coin flip – very effective at annexing territory to the US that formerly belonged to Mexico, for all the better or worse that was involved with his means of doing so.  The potential small saving grace wrt NC’s claim to be Jackson’s birthplace is that his mother was actually en route south when she gave birth, and it’s ambiguous whether the actual birth site was just on the NC side or else on the SC side of the state line.  So maybe he wasn’t ours to begin with, even for 24 hours.  SC is a much better cultural fit to have been Jackson’s birthplace.

  17. 17.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @smintheus:

    Johnson and Nixon both deserved many times over to be impeached and removed from office. Both were frothing-at-the-mouth bigots, both were thoroughly lacking in shame or made the slightest attempt to feign contrition when they were caught abusing the powers of their office. Then there’s Trump.

    What never ceases to amaze me, though, is Nixon actually did good and admirable things while in office, even while being such a tortured, dark human being. Completely in contrast to these other two jackasses.

  23. 23.

    Kent

    @Ella in New Mexico:

    What never ceases to amaze me, though, is Nixon actually did good and admirable things while in office, even while being such a tortured, dark human being. Completely in contrast to these other two jackasses.

    Well, Nixon did sign a lot of Liberal environmental legislation passed by solid Dem majorities that would likely have still been approved by veto overrides had he opposed them.

    What is on your list of good and admiral things that Nixon did in office?  I guess there was Detente and the ABM treaty.

  24. 24.

    Mike in NC

    @chris:  When we were in London in August, a tour guide stated that there were approximately 300 languages spoken in the city. That’s 299 more than Trump and Miller would approve of.

  25. 25.

    Jay

    @chris:

    On the bright side, we don’t have Andrew Scheer to kick around any more, ( until he joins the Manning Center, the Fraser Institute, and gets a gig with Post Media and the Grope and Flail).

     

    should be fun watching Kenney bail on Alberta for the big time.

  26. 26.

    cmorenc

    @Baud:

    So you’re saying John Edwards would have been a step up!

    Easily over Jackson or Johnson.  The often-revered John F Kennedy was a far more egregious philanderer than John Edwards, who at least picked a documentary filmmaker to have an affair with rather than a mistress (Judith (Campbell) Exner, who simultaneously was also the mistress with a notorious Mafia bosses, Sam Giancana.  So, for that matter, was Bill Clinton, who was an indiscriminate seducer of any attractive willing person who possessed a vagina.

  30. 30.

    Procopius

    Wow. I mean, just wow! Thanks so much for that link. I don’t do Twitter, so the thread reader thingy was helpful. I’m definitely going to start following Michael Harriot. That’s terrific writing. Also, too, did you notice that there are at least ten moderate Democrats who are very likely to vote against impeachment in an attempt to pass themselves off as faux Republicans to their constituents.

  36. 36.

    Ruckus

    @debbie:

    Everyone starts out knowing no more than how to breathe and have a beating heart. You have to learn all of it, every single thing. And right now a lot of people are being taught history and living by faux not news and every republican office holder. So a massive misinformation project dating back to the civil war. At least. In my youth we got, minimal education aimed at the least qualified so that they didn’t play in the middle of a major street, or feed the lions – by hand. Why? because being better costs money and in a government that means taxes. Exactly the same as what we see today, 50-60 yrs later. Taxes are too high, so we have to screw the majority for the wealthy minority that will take their bullshit and go home. Except they won’t because this is the only game of life.

  39. 39.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Herriot’s thread on the Johnson impeachment is excellent. Don’t miss it!

    (Plus: Civil War = World War Wypipo is icing!)

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