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"From what I can gather [Johnson's crime was that he tried to pursue Lincoln's course of reconstruction after the war.]" -- What you can gather about Democrat Andrew Johnson is what Democrat historians want you to think.

Let's consider what a Republican has to say about it. Edmund G. Ross was a Republican senator from Kansas at the time of the impeachment. He had been a major in the Federal army during the war. Here is what he says:

The ostensible basis of the disagreement which in a few months after the accession of Mr. Johnson to the Presidency began to develop between himself and the Republican leaders in Congress, was the plan of reconstruction put in operation by him during the recess of Congress that year, 1865, and outlined in his North Carolina Proclamation. It availed not, that that plan had been adopted originally by Mr. Lincoln a few days before his death--that it had been concurred in by his entire Cabinet and would undoubtedly have been carried out successfully by him had he lived that plan was made the ground of criticism of Mr. Johnson by the extreme party element in control of Congress...

From: "HISTORY OF THE IMPEACHMENT OF ANDREW JOHNSON PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND HIS TRIAL BY THE SENATE FOR HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS IN OFFICE, 1868", by Edmund G. Ross (Ross)

Thanks for the post. At least you're not making idiotic comments about Catholic Cardinals and Jefferson Davis, or somesuch, like another neo-Confederate we know.

Senator Ross was wrong. The plan which Lincoln more or less approved om April 11th was Stanton's plan for military government over the South, pretty much the same plan the Republican Congress tried to PREVENT Johnson from blocking. That evening, President Lincoln gave his last speech, in which he hinted at a big change in his Reconstruction policy, closer to that of Congress. Listening in the audience, John Wilkes Booth said: "That means n____r citizenship. That's the last speech he'll ever make."

Anyway, this thread has veered so far off course that another thread is needed ...some day.