Beschreibung:

Property of a New York Collector
(Johnson, Andrew)A manuscript draft article of impeachment against President Andrew Johnson, in the holograph of Missouri Congressman Robert Thompson Van Horn and prepared by Van Horn and Missouri Senator John Brooks Henderson and for the Committee of Managers
14 pages (319 x 202 mm) written on rectos only of 14 leaves of machine-laid, blue-ruled paper (with blindstamp of Platner & Porter | Congress), [Washington, D.C., February 1868], docketed on verso of last leaf "Article of Impeachment | against | Andrew Johnson | President of the United States | To committee of | Managers | By R.T. Van Horn | Missouri," two holes at top margins where originally tied with a white silk ribbon (ribbon present); some browning and soiling, chiefly marginal, a few fold separations, some repaired, more extensive restoration to final leaf. Accompanied by an envelope endorsed: "Article of impeachment prepared by J. B. Henderson at request of R. T. Van Horn Esq. of Missouri"; envelope soiled and restored.
Andrew Johnson "has brought contempt, shame and ridicule upon the office of the President of the United States, to the great injury and scandal of republican institutions."
This highly significant, if largely discarded, draft of an article of impeachment against President Johnson, Congressman Van Horn distills the thoughts of Senator Henderson, offering a broad indictment of Johnson’s term in office, including his racist, overly conciliatory vision of Reconstruction and his contempt of Congress. Because the official Impeachment Articles focused narrowly on Johnson’s dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Henderson subsequently joined six other Republican Senators in voting not to convict and remove Johnson, who remained in office by the margin of a single vote.
As a new year began in January 1868, there was an irreparable breach between President Johnson and the Republican leadership in Congress. The midterm elections of 1866 gave Republicans a clear mandate to adopt "Radical Reconstruction," which would include military occupation of the South, Black male suffrage, and extension of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Congress passed key pieces of legislation over the veto of Johnson, who urged southern states not to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment (which would guarantee due process and equal protection of law to "All persons born or naturalized in the United States") and attempted to wrest control of the U.S. military away from Radical Republicans. Johnson also sought to remove any military bureaucrats who vowed to enforce the new Reconstruction acts in the South and appoint conservatives or Democrats in their stead, which led to his dramatic confrontation with Secretary of War Stanton (see lot 1156).
Republicans tried to protect Stanton by passing the Tenure of Office Act in 1867, again over Johnson’s veto. This act prohibited the president from removing, without Senate approval, federal officials whose appointments had required congressional approval. When the Johnson first suspended Stanton and then fired him outright, Republican leadership resolved to impeach the President, but there was considerable disagreement over whether to focus on Johnson’s violation of the Tenure of Office Act, or whether to indict Johnson more broadly for his racist, pro-southern vision of Reconstruction. 
This highly revealing document shows the evolution of thinking amongst Republicans involved in the impeachment process. Under the Constitution, a president should not be impeached merely for policy disagreements, but for "high crimes and misdemeanors." Van Horn and Henderson castigate Johnson’s entire handling of Reconstruction, charging that he had approved new governments in former Confederate states "controlled by officers … who had been officers and prominent actors in the late rebellion.," and that these new state governments, with Johnson’s "knowledge and connivance," adopted laws of racial discrimination "the purpose and effect of which were by indirection to re-establish the institution of slavery."
Van Horn’s draft goes on to cite Johnson’s refusal to sign a continuance bill for the Freedmen’s Bureau, his veto of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, and his rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment. The blistering summation declares that Johnson "has brought contempt, shame and ridicule upon the office of the President of the United States, to the great injury and scandal of republican institutions. … Wherefore the House of Representatives charges that the said Andrew Johnson has committed high crimes and misdemeanors under the Constitution and laws of the United States, for which he should be impeached and removed from office."
Republican floor leaders in the House, particularly Thaddeus Stevens and Benjamin Butler, ultimately achieved passage of articles of impeachment that instead focused on Johnson’s removal of Edwin Stanton. On 5 March 5 1868, a court of impeachment was constituted in the U.S. Senate to hear the impeachment charges. Johnson’s counsel was William Evarts. The trial lasted nearly three months. There were three separate votes on different sets of articles of impeachment. Each time, those in favor of removing Johnson lost by one vote. Seven Republicans sidestepped party leadership and voted against removal, either because they felt that Johnson had not committed an impeachable offense, or because they believed it was in the best interests of the party to move on and concentrate on the presidential election of 1868. In November, Ulysses Grant, a Republican and war hero who supported Radical Reconstruction, was elected to succeed Johnson.
The text of this document is not listed in the Journals of Congress. The Library of Congress website, American Memory (memory.loc.gov) allows word search of the House Journal, Senate Journal, and Senate Executive Journal (all three inclusive from 1789–1875). These contain the official proceedings of Congress. None of the official impeachment articles included the wording of this version.
Van Horn later wrote a recollection of the events of February 1868, explaining that he and Henderson freely expressed their thoughts about what they would like to see in the articles of impeachment against Johnson. Van Horn’s later recollection is now at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (R. T. Van Horn Collection, Box 1, Folder 12, Western Historical Manuscript Collection).
Henderson published an account of the impeachment crisis in The Century Magazine in 1912. This article—titled, in full, "Emancipation and Impeachment: Recollections of the Senator who Proposed the Thirteenth Amendment, and Was one of the Seven Republicans who Thwarted the Attempt to Impeach President Johnson"—was written over forty years removed from events and mentions neither his relationship with Van Horn nor this draft article of impeachment. His main point in the article was his pride in his vote not to convict, which he insists was vindicated over time by Republican leaders such as James Blaine, Charles Sumner, and John Sherman. "The very nature of the so-called Court of Impeachment was a monstrosity," he wrote, "for the Senate was to act both as judge and as jury." Henderson believed, in 1868 and in 1912, that the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional and that Johnson’s removal of Stanton was perfectly justified, if politically fractious; it was certainly not grounds for impeachment.
Henderson, though pilloried for his vote at the time, especially in his home state of Missouri, was later featured in John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage: "John B. Henderson of Missouri, one of the Senate’s youngest members, had previously demonstrated high courage by introducing the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, simply because he was convinced that it would pass only if sponsored by a slave-state Senator. …" Later pressured to convict President Johnson, "John Henderson voted for acquittal, the last important act of his Senatorial career. Denounced, threatened and burned in effigy in Missouri, he did not even bother to seek re-election to the Senate. Years later his party would realize its debt to him, and return him to lesser offices, but for the Senate, whose integrity he had upheld, he was through." Kennedy was evidently unaware of Henderson's role in framing the present broader, more legally justifiable article of impeachment.
Sotheby's is grateful to Seth Kaller for his assistance with this description.
PROVENANCE:The Forbes Collection (Christie's New York, 22 May 2007, lot 78)