See L. Foster, The Life and Speeches of Andrew Johnson (1866); D. M. De Witt, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1903); C. E. Chadsey, The Struggle between President Johnson and Congress over Reconstruction (1896); and W. A. Dunning, Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction (1898). Also see W. A. Dunning’s paper “More Light on Andrew Johnson” (in the American Historical Review, April 1906), in which apparently conclusive evidence is presented to prove that Johnson’s first inaugural, a notable state paper, was written by the historian George Bancroft.
[1] The charges centred in the president’s removal of Secretary Stanton, his ad interim appointment of Lorenzo Thomas, his campaign speeches in 1866, and the relation of these three things to the Tenure of Office Act. Of the eleven charges of impeachment the first was that Stanton’s removal was contrary to the Tenure of Office Act; the second, that the appointment of Thomas was a violation of the same law; the third, that the appointment violated the Constitution; the fourth, that Johnson conspired with Thomas “to hinder and prevent Edwin M. Stanton ... from holding ... office of secretary for the department of war”; the fifth, that Johnson had conspired with Thomas to “prevent and hinder the execution” of the Tenure of Office Act; the sixth, that he had conspired with Thomas “to seize, take and possess the property of the United States in the department of war,” in violation of the Tenure of Office Act; the seventh, that this action was “a high misdemeanour”; the eighth, that the appointment of Thomas was “with intent unlawfully to control the disbursements of the moneys appropriated for the military service and for the department of war”; the ninth, that he had instructed Major-General Emory, in command of the department of Washington, that an act of 1867 appropriating money for the army was unconstitutional; the tenth, that his speeches in 1866 constituted “a high misdemeanour in office”; and the eleventh, the “omnibus” article, that he had committed high misdemeanours in saying that the 39th Congress was not an authorized Congress, that its legislation was not binding upon him, and that it was incapable of proposing amendments. The actual trial began on the 30th of March (from the 5th of March it was adjourned to the 23rd, and on the 24th of March to the 30th). On the 16th of May, after sessions in which the Senate repeatedly reversed the rulings of the chief justice as to the admission of evidence, in which the president’s counsel showed that their case was excellently prepared and the prosecuting counsel appealed in general to political passions rather than to judicial impartiality, the eleventh article was voted on and impeachment failed by a single vote (35 to 19; 7 republicans and 12 democrats voting “Not guilty”) of the necessary two-thirds. After ten days’ interval, during which B. F. Butler of the prosecuting counsel attempted to prove that corruption had been practised on some of those voting “Not guilty,” on the 26th of May a vote was taken on the second and third articles with the same result as on the eleventh article. There was no vote on the other articles.
JOHNSON, BENJAMIN (c. 1665-1742), English actor, was first a scene painter, then acted in the provinces, and appeared in London in 1695 at Drury Lane after Betterton’s defection. He was the original Captain Driver in Oronooko (1696), Captain Fireball in Farquhar’s Sir Harry Wildair (1701), Sable in Steele’s Funeral (1702), &c.; as the First Gravedigger in Hamlet and in several characters in the plays of Ben Jonson he was particularly good. He succeeded, also, to Thomas Doggett’s rôles.
JOHNSON, EASTMAN (1824-1906), American artist, was born at Lovell, Maine, on the 29th of July 1824. He studied at Düsseldorf, Paris, Rome and The Hague, the last city being his home for four years. In 1860 he was elected to the National Academy of Design, New York. A distinguished portrait and genre painter, he made distinctively American themes his own, depicting the negro, fisherfolk and farm life with unusual interest. Such pictures as “Old Kentucky Home” (1867), “Husking Bee” (1876), “Cranberry Harvest, Nantucket” (1880), and his portrait group “The Funding Bill” (1881) achieved a national reputation. Among his sitters were many prominent men, including Daniel Webster; Presidents Hayes, Arthur, Cleveland and Harrison; William M. Evarts, Charles J. Folger; Emerson, Longfellow, Hawthorne, James McCosh, Noah Porter and Sir Edward Archbald. He died in New York City on the 5th of April 1906.
JOHNSON, REVERDY (1796-1876), American political leader and jurist, was born at Annapolis, Maryland, on the 21st of May 1796. His father, John Johnson (1770-1824), was a distinguished lawyer, who served in both houses of the Maryland General Assembly, as attorney-general of the state (1806-1811), as a judge of the court of appeals (1811-1821), and as a chancellor of his state (1821-1824). Reverdy graduated from St John’s college in 1812. He then studied law in his father’s office, was admitted to the bar in 1815 and began to practise in Upper Marlborough, Prince George’s county. In 1817 he removed to Baltimore, where he became the professional associate of Luther Martin, William Pinkney and Roger B. Taney; with Thomas Harris he reported the decisions of the court of appeals in Harris and Johnson’s Reports (1820-1827); and in 1818 he was appointed chief commissioner of insolvent debtors. From 1821 to 1825 he was a state senator; from 1825 to 1845 he devoted himself to his practice; from 1845 to 1849, as a Whig, he was a member of the United States Senate; and from March 1849 to July 1850 he was attorney-general of the United States. In 1856 he became identified with the conservative wing of the Democratic party, and four years later supported Stephen A. Douglas for the presidency. In 1861 he was a delegate from Maryland to the peace convention at Washington; in 1861-1862 he was a member of the Maryland House of Delegates. After the capture of New Orleans he was commissioned by Lincoln to revise the decisions of the military commandant, General B. F. Butler, in regard to foreign governments, and reversed all those decisions to the entire satisfaction of the administration. In 1863 he again took his seat in the United States Senate. In 1868 he was appointed minister to Great Britain and soon after his arrival in England negotiated the Johnson-Clarendon treaty for the settlement of disputes arising out of the Civil War; this, however, the Senate refused to ratify, and he returned home on the accession of General U. S. Grant to the presidency. Again resuming his practice he was engaged by the government in the prosecution of Ku-Klux cases. He died on the 10th of February 1876 at Annapolis. He repudiated the doctrine of secession, and pleaded for compromise and conciliation. Opposed to the Reconstruction measures, he voted for them on the ground that it was better to accept than reject them, since they were probably the best that could be obtained. As a lawyer he was engaged during his later years in most of the especially important cases in the Supreme Court of the United States and in the courts of Maryland.