Had SC led a secession movement on Jackson’s watch, he supposedly claimed (or alleged) he’d have hanged the leaders of such a movement (that was more or less directed towards his VP John C. Calhoun, who led the Nullifiers).
As for Andrew Johnson, my position is I agree he had the right to fire his Cabinet members (after all, if a President doesn’t have that authority, he’s reduced to a figurehead). The Radicals were looking for any excuse to remove him from office, and that was a pretty odious reason. Senate President Pro Tempore Benjamin Wade didn’t make himself look good during the proceedings (especially openly casting a vote to make himself President) and there was the claim that the reason some of the Republicans voted “not guilty” was because they didn’t want Wade as President.
As it was, Wade would’ve only been President for less than a year had impeachment been successful (and it would’ve been unlikely Wade would’ve been nominated, as Grant was the leading choice). Grant was actually pressured into choosing Wade as his VP running mate, but he shot that idea down. Wade lost reelection for 1869 as it was, since OH voters elected a Dem legislature, and they replaced Wade with Allen Thurman (of whom would also later go on to be President Pro Tempore and was actually President Grover Cleveland’s running mate during his unsuccessful run for reelection in 1888 — at the age of 75 !).
As for Reconstruction itself, as Grant himself noted, for it to have been fully implemented (at least with respect to assuring Black Civil Rights), it likely would’ve required a permanent military presence in the South and would’ve sparked another war. The North no more wanted to have that happen than the South was to have a repeat. If the Republicans had pressed that, they’d have swiftly been defeated at the next election. It was going to end one way or the other after 1876, especially with the corrupt bargain. A President Tilden WAS going to end the occupation, period. Hayes was “allowed” to win without a Democrat challenge (the Democrats held the House) because he agreed to also end the occupation of the Southern states.
As I was discussing the issue with my father several days ago, Blacks were screwed one way or the other. Northern Whites, no matter how allegedly “tolerant” they were, were going to put back on the uniform to spill blood to guarantee Black rights, period. They may have been sympathetic for them, but from far away. It’s always easy to be sympathetic and “high minded” to causes far removed from your neck of the woods.
Paul Johnson said it best in his "History of the American People" (and it pains me to say that) about Reconstruction: "The U.S. was still a democracy," meaning that people get what they want.
This is where we are today and it is why I think we need more partisanship, not less. People get what they want. But people always want everything, and want to avoid hard choices. The only way to force them into "doing the right thing" is to make sure that the alternatives are blatantly obvious and open and exposed as they can be. If I had my way, I'd see someone like a Palin vs. an Obama (not necessarily her vs. him): someone of the hard right vs someone of the hard left. I think in the end Americans would choose an uberconservative. But so long as a candidate can appear "moderate," a Dem will ALWAYS have an advantage because the language of the left is less threatening and more nurturing---even though in the end it is vicious and deadly.
What I love about Lincoln is that he NEVER waivered from the position that slavery in the territories HAD TO BE STOPPED and therefore, as all southerners knew, ultimately all property rights in slaves would be under assault, because either a person is a person or a person is property, and a person is a person in KS as well as OH as well as AL.