11. The first to face articles of impeachment, President Johnson escaped being convicted in the Senate and removed from office by a single vote in March 1868
The first impeachment of a sitting President of the United States, Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth inhabitant of his office, was impeached by the House of Representatives in March 1868. Adopting eleven articles of impeachment, detailing the “high crimes and misdemeanors” committed, the primary charge against President Johnson was his violation of the Tenure of Office Act. Passed a year earlier despite Johnson’s use of the presidential veto in an attempt to thwart the bill, the act repealed in 1887, restricted the president from removing confirmed office-holders without Senate approval.
In removing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, whom the act had specifically been written to protect from dismissal, Johnson willfully plunged himself into political crisis. Commencing the trial in the Senate on March 5, the chamber returned a verdict of thirty-five to nineteen in favor of conviction just eleven days later. Falling short of the two-thirds majority necessary to convict by a single vote, following a second attempt returning the same result proceedings were adjourned. Both sides of the issue employed bribery and coercion to extreme lengths in pursuit of their goal, with public opinion at the time in favor of conviction.