[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 2 (Thursday, January 7, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E18-E24]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
UNDERLYING THE IMPEACHMENT CRISIS--HISTORY: THE WAY WE SEE IT
______
HON. JESSE L. JACKSON, JR.
of illinois
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, January 6, 1999
Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, Republicans say the underlying
issue is not about sex, it's about perjury and obstruction of justice.
Democrats say the underlying issue is about sex--a private consensual
sexual relationship--and the President lied about it, possibly
committing perjury in the process. But since lying about sex is not an
act that involved using his official position against the state, as
Nixon did, Democrats say Clinton's sins do not reach the Constitutional
standard for impeachment.
That is the essence of the arguments we heard presented by members of
the House Judiciary Committee and members on the floor of the Congress
who voted, along partisan party lines, to impeach President Clinton.
That is what the current Republicans and Democrats are saying. What
will history say?
Underlying the Clinton impeachment is neither sex, nor lying, nor
perjury, but American history itself. Essentially the same economic and
political forces that drove the presidential impeachment process
against Andrew Johnson in 1868 are driving the impeachment process 130
years later. There has been a ``role reversal''--the Republicans of
1998 were the Democrats of 1868 and I will show how their roles
reversed--but the underlying issue is essentially the same;
reconstruction. Our nation's first effort at economic reconstruction
after the Civil War was at issue in 1868, our nation's second effort at
economic reconstruction after the Civil War, beginning with Brown in
1954, is at issue in 1998.
The end of the Civil War and the adoption of the 13th Amendment to
the Constitution on December 18, 1865 ended legal slavery. Slavery, the
Democratic Party, its geography and its ideology were all defeated. But
Lincoln's assassination five days after Appomattox denied him and the
Republican Party the opportunity to pursue a ``Big Federal Government''
policy of economic reconstruction and political enfranchisement for all
Americans, leaving no American behind.
When legal slavery ended, there were nine million people in the old
Confederacy, which was led by the party of Thomas Jefferson. Then, the
Democratic Party defined itself in exclusive terms--as slave holders
with private property rights, which were protected legally by ``states'
rights'' governments. Four million of the southerners were uneducated
and untrained former slaves who needed to be educated, trained and
brought into the economic mainstream and politically enfranchised with
the right and ability to vote. That didn't include
[[Page E19]]
poor and working class whites who had similar needs and had been
exploited, manipulated, misused and politically diverted through a
focus on social issues (then, perpetuating the fear of interracial
marriage and sex) by the slave owners to preserve and protect the
southern economic system of elite special interests.
Just eight years earlier, in 1857, in the Dred Scott decision, the
Court had ruled that blacks had no rights that a white man must respect
and that Congress could not outlaw slavery anywhere in the U.S. The
Confederacy--its economy, religion, family, social customs, mores and
politics--was based and built on the institution of slavery. The Civil
War ended slavery, but there were still two outstanding problems: (1)
How to bring four million former slaves into the economic mainstream?
And (2) How to politically enfranchise them? That was the goal of the
First Reconstruction and its goal has never been realized and those
twin problems have never been completely fixed! One-hundred-and-thirty-
two historically black colleges and universities were founded in this
context.
It was a massive Federal government commitment to educate the newly
freed slaves--who were nearly half the population of the eleven former
confederate states--not a commitment by those states to educate them.
This Federal commitment to educate the newly freed slaves was
determined to be central to a new black middle-class that could then
lift themselves or take advantage of opportunities in the general
economy. Northern Republican Federal troops were occupying the South
after the Civil War because they could not depend on the Democratic
South to enforce federal laws. With regard to education, it was the
only way the Federal Government could prevent racial discrimination and
insure that educated blacks had an equal opportunity of getting hired
after they were educated and trained.
Lincoln fought to preserve the Union and to end slavery. He defeated
the southern slave forces militarily at a national cost of 620,000
lives and was prepared to reconstruct the nation with a Republican
program of inclusion and political enfranchisement. ``Former''
Democratic Confederates opposed and resisted the ``Big Centralized
Republican Federal Government'' and wanted ``the government off of
their states' backs'' so they could go back to a legal system
(``States' Rights'') that protected their economic interests (the
ability to own slaves).
The identification of Lincoln and the Republican Party with ending
slavery and commencing reconstruction led southern Democrats to refer
to Lincoln as the Black President and the Republican Party as the Black
Republican Party. Blacks, after Lincoln's assassination, remained loyal
to the Republican Party until 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's second
term. The New Deal appealed to black economic interests. Roosevelt
defined a new more inclusive Democratic Party by offering an economic
agenda that appealed to every American. The political history of
African Americans shows that their loyalty follows reconstructive
efforts.
Senator Andrew Johnson was a Tennessee Democrat who had refused to
join his fellow southern Democratic Confederates and stayed with the
northern Unionists. Lincoln's concern about preserving and reunifying
the nation following the war led our first Republican President to
reward Johnson's loyalty by nominating him for Vice President in the
1864 campaign.
After Lincoln's assassination, President Johnson focused on putting
the Union back together, but lacked the Republican commitment to build
a ``more perfect Union'' for all Americans. Unlike Lincoln and the
Republicans, he was willing to preserve the Union by leaving some
Americans behind, sacrificing the rights and interests of the former
slaves. As a result, angry northern Radical Republicans investigated a
vulnerable Johnson--who was not unlike Bill Clinton in terms of his
personal foibles--to try to come up with an excuse to impeach him. It
was a partisan Republican attack on a Democratic President in order to
preserve undertaking the Republicans' First Reconstruction program.
The struggle between these radical progressive northern Republicans
and these radical conservative southern Democrats (Dixiecrats)
continued following the Civil War, and finally came to a head in the
1876 presidential election and Tilden-Hayes Compromise of 1877--which
ended reconstruction. Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, was finally
elected President by one vote in the House in exchange for pulling out
Federal troops protecting the newly freed slaves in the South, and
agreeing to appoint conservative Dixiecrats to the Supreme Court. The
Dixiecrats, with the help of new ``black laws'' of discrimination,
psychological intimidation, physical violence and murder, were now on
their way back to power in the South.
By 1896, the Supreme Court appointments resulted in Plessy, which
ushered in Jim Crow, and by 1901 the first Congressional Black Caucus
was completedly eliminated from Congress, not to return for three
decades.
It is the same elitist southern forces and their continuing anti-
Federal government ideology--except today they are called Republicans--
who want, this time, not to preserve but undo the nation's effort at
reconstruction, a Second Reconstruction begun in 1954 with Brown--the
desegregation of all aspects of American life, from public facilities
to private corporate behavior--and continued with the 1964 Civil Rights
Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, affirmative action and majority-
minority political districts. The southern Democratic Party, with the
legacy of the Confederacy, generally found itself on the wrong side of
history again in the 1960s. Governors George Wallace of Alabama, Lester
Maddox of Georgia and Orville Faubus of Arkansas were all Democrats
from Dixie. Renowed segregationists like Senator Richard Russell of
Georgia and Congressman Howard Smith from Virginia were Democrats.
Today's Senators Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Richard Shelby of
Alabama were originally Dixiecrats, but are now Republicans.
Today's conservative southern-based Republicans' target is Second
Reconstruction, especially the ``liberalism'' of Democratic President
Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, but also ultimately including many of
the ``Big Government'' economic programs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
New Deal. The real underlying dynamic of this impeachment proceeding is
not the removal of Bill Clinton, but the removal of the social and
economic programs of the New Deal and the Second Reconstruction of the
Great Society, a weakening of the Big Federal Government generally, and
the destruction of liberalism as a viable political ideology in
particular.
Whether these conservative anti-Federal government Republicans are
successful or not will be determined by history. There will be a few
pro-impeachment Democrats thrown in for good measure because,
politically, they must factor in the old Democratic forces in the
South, now controlled by the Republicans. The Republican impeachment
strategy can only be measured by future elections. Will the American
people be lead astray again by the Republicans' new sex diversion or
will a strong political leader be able to get them to focus on their
real economic interests of full employment, comprehensive and universal
health care, affordable housing and a quality public education?
History--not President Clinton or the current crop of Democrats and
Republicans-- will render that judgment!
Today, the political, ideological and geographical roots of the anti-
reconstruction and anti-more-perfect-union effort is in the South,
though its tentacles have spread beyond the South. This Republican
impeachment effort allows us to look at the roots, dynamic and current
political structure of this post-Civil War and Current conservative
political movement. One-hundred-and-thirty-three years after the
``Great Quake,'' the impeachment of President Clinton is a mere tremor
in the on-going struggle to reconstruct America.
Begin with the Judiciary Committee. Ten of the eighteen Republican
members of the Judiciary Committee are ultra-conservatives from former
Confederate states. In the middle of the impeachment hearings, one of
them, Bob Barr of Georgia, was exposed for having recently spoken
before a white supremist group.
Move on to the House Republican leadership. The outgoing Speaker is
Newt Gingrich (R-GA), whose history is laced with not-so-subtle new
racial code words, and the Speaker-elect is Bob Livingston (R-LA).
Their styles are different, but their substance is essentially the
same. Both abdicated their leadership roles in the impeachment crisis
only to have another southern conservative, Rep. Tom ``The Hammer''
Delay (R-TX), fill the void. He, through intimidation, forced
Republicans, not to vote against censure, but to vote with their party
on a procedural vote--which, in essence, is a vote to kill a vote of
conscience for censure of the President's private behavior.
In addition, call the roll of House leadership and committee
chairmanships in the 105th Congress: Richard Armey (TX), Majority
Leader; Bill Archer (TX), Ways & Means; Bob Livingston (LA),
Appropriations; Floyd Spence (SC), National Security; Thomas Bliley
(VA), Commerce; Porter Goss (FL), Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence.
In the 105th Republican-controlled Senate: Trent Lott (MS), Senate
Majority Leader; Strom Thurmond (SC), President Pro Tem (3rd in line to
be President), Chairman, Armed Services; Jesse Helms (NC), Senate
Foreign Relations; John Warner (VA), Rules; Richard Shelby (AL), Select
Committee on Intelligence. Today in Congress there are more people
arguing on behalf of States rights than there are people arguing on
behalf of building a more perfect union. That is why fighting against
racial injustice cannot be relegated to a department of the government.
That is why several of the nation's top journalists have chosen to
focus on what Trent Lott (R-MS) and Bob Barr (R-GA) do with their
political
[[Page E20]]
spare time, including speaking before and having memberships in certain
southern political organizations. The institutional nature of our
historic problem requires eternal vigilance on many fronts and in every
election.
The presiding officer at an impeachment trial in the Senate will be
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the ultimate
conservative states' righter. Nominated to the Court by Nixon and
elevated to Chief Justice by Reagan, this intellectually gifted
conservative, while clerking for Justice Robert H. Jackson between 1952
and 1953, wrote a memorandum arguing in favor of upholding the
``separate but equal'' doctrine of Plessy versus Ferguson in
preparation for the 1954 decision on Brown. As a conservative Phoenix
lawyer, he appeared as a witness before the Phoenix City Council in
opposition to a public accommodations ordinance and took part in a
program of challenging African American voters at the polls.
From 1969 until 1971, he served as assistant attorney general for the
Office of Legal Counsel. In that position, he supported executive
authority to order wiretapping and surveillance without a court order,
no-knock entry by the police, preventive detention and abolishing the
exclusionary rule, that is, a rule to dismiss evidence gathered in an
illegal way.
As a member of the Burger Court, Rehnquist played a crucial role in
reviving the debate regarding the relationship between government and
the states. The consequences of Rehnquist's state-centered federalism
surfaced dramatically in the area of individual rights. Since the
1960s, the Court had held that nearly every provision in the Bill of
Rights applies to the states through the Due Process Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Rehnquist voiced his disagreement with such a
method of determining the constitutional requirements of state action,
particularly in the context of criminal proceedings, urging a return to
an earlier approach whereby the states were not required to comply with
the Bill of Rights but only to treat individuals with ``fundamental
fairness.''
Likewise, Rehnquist narrowly construed the Fourteenth Amendment's
mandate to the states not to deny any person the equal protection of
the laws. He contended that all that the framers of the Fourteenth
Amendment hoped to achieve with the Equal Protection Clause was to
prevent the states from treating black and white citizens differently.
The most important value for Rehnquist is his state-centered
federalism, followed by private property and individual rights. In
other words, his current views are consistent with the core of the
states' rights legal philosophy a century-and-a-half-ago, where the
individual right to own property (slaves) was to be protected by a
states' rights government! (Source: The Oxford Companion To The Supreme
Court)
To capture a new political base, Republicans abandoned the essence of
Lincoln and decided to go after Dixie, using social issues as cover for
their narrow economic interests. Barry Goldwater launched this modern
conservative anti-Federal government movement with his 1964
presidential campaign. Ronald Reagan picked it up and sent the same
signal by launching his southern campaign from Philadelphia,
Mississippi in 1980, in the name of states' rights, where two Jews and
a Black were murdered, in the name of states' rights, fighting for the
right to vote. Now Republicans want to complete Mr. Gingrich's 1994
``Revolution of Devolution'' by defeating and eliminating the twin evil
forces of ``liberalism'' and ``Big Government'' in the 2000 election.
The Republicans know that, based on the information they have
gathered, if the President is impeached in the House, he will not be
convicted in the Senate. They don't want him convicted and out of
office, with President Al Gore given two years to solidify his hold on
the White House. They want an impeached, but not convicted, President
twisting in the wind for two years leading up to the 2000 election.
This is a continuation of the November 3, 1998, strategy of the
Republican hard liners to motivate and build their conservative
``social values'' political base as a diversion from economic justice
issues. The Republicans will not allow censure because that would allow
Democrats to say that they took some action against the President for
his immoral actions, which would take away their ``social-moral'' issue
for 2000 campaign.
What the Republicans want out of this impeachment crisis is a
``family values'' issue for the 2000 presidential campaign. They want
to say that Clinton's sexual misconduct is the result of the ``decadent
values'' of the 1960's and liberalism generally. In other words, in
some form, the Lewinsky matter will become a Republican ``wedge issue''
in the 2000 campaign. The fact that African Americans are so closely
identified with both President Clinton and liberal ``Big Government''
programs fits perfectly with their consistent use of race to divide the
electorate in presidential campaigns. They can send the subliminal race
signal while publicly denying they are using race as an issue in the
campaign,
The Republican goal in 2000 is to use this strategy to retain control
of the House and Senate and to gain control of the White House. They
can then appoint hardcore right wing conservatives to the Supreme Court
after 2001. Remember, Kenneth Starr's ambition before being sullied by
the Lewinsky affair was to be appointed to the Supreme Court.
Republicans, with Dixie as its geo-political and theological center,
in control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the
Federal government, could turn the clock back to a twenty-first century
version of the States' Rights days of the 1850s and the 1896 ``separate
but equal'' days of Plesssy versus Ferguson--not a return to slavery,
but a return to the days when equal opportunity for all is twisted and
converted to equal opportunity for a limited few.
By putting impeachment in the legislative rather than the judicial
branch of government, the framers of the Constitution deliberately made
it a political-legal affair. Republicans have done in 1998, what
Democrats did in 1868. They have use the political-legal nature of the
impeachment process to turn it into a political-political affair to
further their anti-Big Government aims.
Clinton launched a dialogue to talk about race, but the real race
dialogue is what will happen to economic reconstruction in 2001 if the
reactionary Republican strategy works. Clinton has worked hard to
separate the race dialogue from the economic dialogue--joining with the
Republicans in 1997, and ignoring his strongest liberal supporters
today, to cut a budget deal to ``balance the budget'' with conservative
Republicans. That deal assures that there will not be enough money to
fix our historic problem or build a bridge to the future for Americans
left behind. He has reduced his own defense to a personal defense
instead of a defense of history.
Republicans are trying to impeach reconstruction. The President's
reckless behavior played into the political hands of Dixie's history-
driven religiously-based self-righteous politics of advancing it's own
lost cause.
To whom much is given, much is required. The President was not
elected to be our pastor, priest, rabbi or imam. He was elected to
protect our constitutional rights. All Presidents are public servants,
not perfect servants. His error of private behavior and poor public
judgment played perfectly into Dixie's regional politics to undermine a
century-and-and-a quarter of economic progress for all. President
Clinton risked all of that history of social and economic progress by
lying about an issue of personal satisfaction. He has not committed
treason as defined by the Constitution as an impeachable offense. His
``teason'' is against the cause of building a more perfect union.
After economic and socially conservative Presidents Nixon, Ford,
Carter (and economic conservative, but more liberal socially), Reagan
and Bush, a moderate-to-conservative southern Democrat, President
Clinton, has helped to prepare an economic bridge which would allow us
to again begin to work on some of the unfinished and unreconstructed
tasks of the Civil War. The Monica Lewinsky affair has now reduced the
defense of that agenda to a defense of him.
On December 19, 1998, Republicans are trying to impeach Social
Security (privatize it), affirmative action, Medicare, Medicaid, a
clean environment, women's freedom to choose, Supreme Court justices
who believe in equal protection under the law for all Americans, public
education for all over vouchers for some, universal and comprehensive
health coverage over medical savings accounts for the few, affordable
housing for all, versus mansions for a select few.
Something deeper in history than sex, lying and perjury is at issue
here--just as something deeper in history than the removal of a cabinet
secretary was at stake in 1868. At stake in 1868 was the First
Reconstruction. At stake in 1998 is the Second Reconstruction. The
struggle taking place in Congress and nationally today is between those
political forces who want to build a more perfect union for all
Americans, leaving no American behind, and those who want to return an
elitist economic program of more perfect ``States' Rights'' for the
few. That is what underlies the impeachment crisis.
[From the Washington Post, Dec. 13, 1998]
130 Years Ago, Parallels Up to a Boiling Point
(By Peter Carlson)
The president was a Southern Democrat who'd risen from the
class scorned as ``white trash.'' His personal life inspired
widespread snickering. The Republicans who controlled
Congress detested him. They investigated every aspect of his
life and then voted to impeach him. With his fate in the
hands of a few moderates, he hired a claque of lawyers
skilled in nitpicking and pettifoggery.
The president was, of course, Andrew Johnson. The year was
1868. When news of Johnson's impeachment reached
Philadelphia, Republicans celebrated by firing a 50-gun
salute while Democrats threatened to send scores of armed men
to defy Congress. In
[[Page E21]]
1868, unlike 1998, Americans were not blase about
impeachment. Passions ran high, at least at the beginning.
The issue was not sex--or even perjury. It was far more
incendiary. On paper, the question was whether the president
could fire the secretary of war without the consent of
Congress. In reality, it was a battle over Reconstruction--
over the fate of former Confederates and former slaves.
Wild rumors spread: Johnson would use the Army to stay in
power. Confederates were marching toward Washington to help
him. The Houston Telegraph reported that the War Department
had been burned, the secretary wounded in battle. The
Louisville Democrat asked readers: ``Are you ready once more
to take up the musket?'' Many Americans were ready to fight.
Iowa's governor, who supported impeachment, cabled his
state's congressional delegation: ``100,000 Iowans are ready
to maintain the integrity of the Union.'' On the same day, a
man from Terre Haute cabled Johnson: ``Indiana will sustain
you with 100,000 of her brave, stalwart and tried men.''
For a while, it seemed that America was on the verge of a
second Civil War. But soon things settled into a spectacle
more familiar to today's impeachment watchers--one part
drama, one part farce and many, many parts legal
hairsplitting, windy speechifying and mind-numbing tedium.
The Secretary of War War
``I am in favor of the official death of Andrew Johnson,''
an Indiana congressman said during the House debate on
impeachment. ``I am not surprised that one who began his
presidential career in drunkenness should end it in crime.''
Other congressmen were almost as nasty. One said the
president was stained with ``the filth of treason.'' Another
called him a ``despicable, besotted, traitorous man.''
The only American president ever impeached was a tailor by
trade. He grew up dirt poor in Raleigh, N.C., and didn't
learn to read until he married and his bride tutored him. He
opened a tailor shop in Tennessee and drifted into
politics. He had a gift for oratorical invective--populist
volleys directed at the Southern planter elite. He was
elected state legislator, then congressman, then governor,
then senator.
In 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president and
Southern states began seceding from the Union, Sen. Johnson
returned to Tennessee to campaign against secession. He
wasn't opposed to slavery--he owned a few slaves himself--but
he was loyal to the Union. When Tennessee joined the
Confederacy, Johnson returned to Washington. On the way, he
was nearly lynched by a rebel mob in Lynchburg, Va.
The only Southern senator who stayed with the Union, he was
a hero in the North--``the greatest man of the age,'' said
the New York Times. In 1864, Lincoln chose him as his vice
presidential running mate. Feeling a tad sick on inauguration
day in 1865, Johnson fortified himself with whiskey--too much
whiskey. Visibly soused, he delivered an incoherent speech,
and forever after his enemies mocked him as a drunk.
When Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson inherited the task
of reuniting the nation. He was determined to bring the South
back into the Union as quickly as possible. Under his rules,
the rebel states merely had to end slavery and pledge loyalty
and they could send representatives to Congress. In December
1865--only eight months after the war's end at Appomattox--
those representatives arrived. Chosen in whites-only
elections, they included the Confederate vice president, six
members of the Confederate Cabinet and four Confederate
generals.
Northern congressmen were incensed. Asked Sen. Ben Wade of
Ohio: Did any nation in history ever welcome ``traitors''
into its Congress as equals? ``Would a man who was not
utterly insane advocate such a thing?''
Congress refused to seat the Southern delegations. Johnson
was outraged. It was the beginning of the long battle that
led to impeachment.
When the Republican-dominated Congress passed a bill giving
full citizenship rights to blacks, Johnson vetoed it. When
Congress passed a bill funding a Freedmen's Bureau to assist
former slaves, Johnson vetoed it. When Congress passed a bill
allowing blacks in the District of Columbia to vote, Johnson
vetoed it.
In the South, the all-white ``Johnson governments'' passed
laws denying blacks the right to vote or buy property or own
firearms. Angry Republicans asked: Are we losing in peace
what we won in war?
But Johnson wasn't interested in the problems of former
slaves. He wanted only to reunite the country. He was for
union in 1860, he said, and he was still for union in 1866.
He broke with the Republicans and toured the country
campaigning against them.
His strategy backfired. Republicans won big in the election
of 1866. Emboldened, they started investigating Johnson,
spreading rumors that he had conspired with the men who
killed Lincoln. Over his veto, they enacted a
Reconstruction Bill that dissolved the ``Johnson
governments'' and put the South under military rule.
That law gave Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who ran the
military, a great deal of power over Reconstruction. Stanton
was allied with the Republicans. To keep him in office,
Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, which barred the
president from firing Cabinet secretaries without the consent
of the Senate. Johnson asked for Stanton's resignation.
Stanton refused. Johnson asked the Senate to fire him. The
Senate refused. Johnson fired him anyway but Stanton refused
to leave, barricading himself in his office.
Johnson's treasury secretary warned the president that he
could be impeached if he persisted in removing Stanton.
``Impeach and be damned,'' Johnson replied.
The Show
Slowly, painfully, Thaddeus Stevens, the aged, sickly
leader of the House Republicans, shuffled into the hushed
Senate chamber on Feb. 25, 1868, followed by a group of
congressmen.
``We appear before you,'' Stevens said, ``and in the name
of the House of Representatives and all the people of the
United States, do impeach Andrew Johnson, president of the
United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.''
Clubfooted, gaunt and grim-faced, Stevens, 76, was an avid
abolitionist who had spent the war urging Lincoln to crush
the Confederates mercilessly, even if ``their whole country
is to be laid waste.'' The rebels hated him so much they
detoured on their way to Gettysburg just to burn down his
Pennsylvania ironworks. After the war, he lived in sin with
his black housekeeper and didn't much care who gossiped about
it. He sponsored the impeachment bill, and after it passed,
126-47, the House named him to the committee that would
prosecute the president in the Senate.
The smart money was betting on conviction. Acquittal, the
New York Times reported, ``is looked upon as simply
impossible, unless some new and startling development takes
place.''
The president hired five crafty lawyers, including his
attorney general, and paid them each $2,000 out of his own
pocket. They opted to stall. On March 13, they asked for
another 40 days to prepare their case.
``Forty days!'' roared Rep. Ben Butler, the former Union
general who was serving with Stevens as a prosecutor. ``As
long as it took God to destroy the world by a flood!''
Butler wanted to start the trial immediately. The Senate
compromised, scheduling the case for March 30.
When that day arrived, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase
presided over the Senate, which was stuffed with 150 extra
chairs to accommodate House members. The President did not
appear--nor was he expected--but the galleries were packed,
mostly with well-dressed women who had connections to
senators, who each got four gallery tickets, or to
congressmen, who each got two.
``Congressmen appear to be very good judges of female
beauty,'' the Washington Star reported. ``We looked and
looked in vain for a dozen plain-looking women in the
galleries.''
Butler delivered the prosecution's opening statement. He
started slowly, droning on about this unique historical
moment, but soon he was orating grandiloquently: ``By murder
most foul he succeeded to the presidency and is the elect of
an assassin to that high office!''
After a few hours, Butler's audience began to wilt but
Butler kept going. He was still chugging along on April
Fool's Day, when wags in the press gallery amused themselves
by sending notes, purportedly from women in the galleries, to
the congressmen on the floor, and then snickering as they
read the congressmen's replies.
When Butler finally finished his opening statement, he
began calling witnesses who had observed the attempt to
remove Stanton from office. The scene they described barely
rose above farce: Gen. Lorenzo Thomas, the new appointee as
secretary, went to Stanton's office and ordered him to leave.
Stanton refused and ordered Thomas to leave. Thomas refused.
Back and forth it went, each man ordering the other to leave,
until finally Stanton poured two stiff shots of whiskey and
the dueling secretaries sat down for a friendly chat.
One witness, a Delaware buddy of Thomas, recalled his
efforts to buck up the general during this historic
confrontation: ``Said I to him. `General, the eyes of
Delaware are upon you.' ''
The senators burst out laughing.
Next, Butler summoned several newspaper reporters to
testify about the president's speeches during the 1866
campaign. The reporters confirmed that the president had
indeed said many nasty things about his Republican
congressional enemies. To Butler, this was proof that Johnson
was subverting the power of Congress. To most observers, it
was proof of nothing more than politics as usual.
Tedium was setting in. Many hours were spent in the reading
of legal documents and senatorial speechifying. ``Spectators
found the proceedings rather uninteresting,'' the Star
reported. Rep. James Garfield was equally bored: ``This trial
has developed, in the most remarkable manner, the insane love
of speaking among public men,'' the congressman wrote in a
letter. ``We are wading knee deep in words, words, words .
. . and are but little more than half across the turbid
stream.''
Newspaper editorialists began complaining about the lack of
public interest in the impeachment controversy. The Baltimore
Gazette lamented that ``the greatest act known to the
Constitution--the trial of a President of the United States''
was inspiring ``less interest in the public mind than the
report of a prize fight.''
[[Page E22]]
Johnson could have enlivened things by appearing at his
trial but he never did. He also refused to make any public
comment on impeachment. Privately, he contemptuously referred
to the proceedings as ``the show.''
Behind the scenes, the president was wooing moderate
Republican senators by appointing officials whom they
supported and by sending signals that he would stop
obstructing Reconstruction. ``The president,'' the Chicago
Tribune reported, ``has been on his good behavior.''
Finally, at the end of April, both sides began to sum up
their cases. The ailing Thaddeus Stevens, who spent most of
the trial huddled under a blanket, rose on wobbly legs to
make his final statement. The case was about Reconstruction,
he said, about how the president had usurped congressional
power and helped to create new Confederate governments in the
South. Stevens denounced Johnson as a ``wretched man'' and a
``pettifogging political trickster,'' but then his strength
gave out and he had to sit down and let Butler read the rest
of his speech.
The next day, while another prosecutor was delivering a
long summation, British novelist Anthony Trollope fell asleep
in the gallery, much to the amusement of the press corps.
Then the defense began its summation, and the president's
lawyers more than earned their $2,000 fees. They quibbled
about the definition of ``high crimes and misdemeanors'' and
concluded that the president's actions did not rise to that
level. They said the Tenure of Office Act was
unconstitutional. They said that violating that act couldn't
be an impeachable offense because the act hadn't been passed
when the Constitution was adopted. Finally, in a delightful
demonstration of the art of legal hairsplitting, they claimed
that Johnson could not be convicted of removing Stanton from
office but only of attempting to remove Stanton from office.
After all, Stanton had never left his office--he was still
barricaded in his suite at the War Department.
As the speakers droned on, the Washington Star tracked the
daily fluctuations in the betting action. On May 2, the odds
were 3 to 1 for conviction. On May 5, the odds were 2 to 1
for acquittal. The next day, the paper reported: ``Today
impeachment stock is as unaccountably up as it was
unaccountably down yesterday. The bulls have it.''
On May 6, as prosecutor John Bingham prepared to deliver
the final summation of the trial, a false rumor swept the
galleries that Sen. James Grimes had died. Grimes was a
Johnson backer, and Republicans in the galleries began to
sing gleefully: ``Old Grimes is dead, that bad old man.''
Justice Chase gaveled for order and then Bingham began his
speech. It was a full-blown barn-burner. ``We stand this day
pleading for the violated majesty of the law, by the graves
of half a million martyred hero-patriots who made death
beautiful by the sacrifice of themselves for their country.''
After much florid rhetoric, he spoke the last words of the
trial: ``Before man and God, he is guilty!''
Now it was time to decide the question--except the senators
insisted on discussing the matter in secret sessions for a
few days.
Finally, on May 16, 1868, they were ready to vote.
Close Call
The galleries and the Senate floor were packed but the room
was absolutely silent as Chief Justice Chase called the roll.
Conviction required a two-thirds majority, which meant 36 of
the 54 senators, and everyone knew that the vote would be
close.
``Mr. Senator Anthony, how say you?'' Chase asked.
``Guilty,'' said Henry Anthony, a Rhode Island Republican.
``Mr. Senator Bayard, how say you?''
``Not guilty,'' said James Bayard, a Delaware Democrat.
Those votes were no surprise. Anthony and Bayard, like most
of the senators, had already announced their opinions. There
were 35 certain votes for conviction and three undecided. The
first of the undecided was William Pitt Fessenden, a
Republican from Maine.
``Mr. Senator Fessenden, how say you?'' Chase asked.
``Not guilty.''
Across the country, crowds packed newspaper offices to get
news of each vote as it came over the telegraph. In the White
House, Johnson also learned of each vote by a separate
telegram.
The next undecided voter was Sen. Joseph Fowler. He was
from Tennessee, Johnson's home state, but he was a Republican
who'd frequently voted against the president.
``Mr. Senator Fowler, how say you?''
Fowler mumbled something that sounded like ``guilty.''
``Did the court hear his answer?'' a senator called out.
Chase asked the question again.
``Not guilty,'' Fowler shouted.
Now it all came down to Edmund G. Ross. A Kansas
Republican, Ross was new in office, having replaced a senator
who had committed suicide in 1866. Ross disliked Johnson and
voted against his Reconstruction policies. He'd been seen as
a certain vote for conviction until he sided with Johnson
supporters on some procedural motions. Since then, he'd been
bombarded by mail demanding that he vote to convict. But he
worried that conviction would damage the presidency forever.
During the vote, he sat at his desk, nervously ripping papers
into strips. When his name was called, he stood up and the
strips fell to the floor.
``Mr. Senator Ross, how say you?''
``Not guilty.''
It was over. The president was saved by a single vote. His
lawyers sprinted to the White House to bring him the news.
Johnson wept with joy. He called for whiskey, poured shots
for his lawyers, and they celebrated with a silent toast.
Back in the Capitol, the senators elbowed their way through
a rowdy crowd. ``Fessenden, you villainous traitor!''
somebody yelled. Fessenden said nothing and kept moving.
Too ill to walk, Thaddeus Stevens was carried from the
chamber in a chair. Seething with rage, he glared down at the
crowd. Someone asked him what had happened.
``The country,'' he screamed, ``is going to the Devil!''
____
[From the Washington Post, Nov. 18, 1998]
The Man Behind the Votes
(By Joseph A. Califano, Jr.)
The president most responsible for the Democratic victories
in 1998 is the stealth president whom Democrats are loath to
mention: Lyndon Johnson.
In March of 1965, when racial tension was high and taking a
pro-civil rights stand was sure to put the solid South (and
much of the North) in political play, President Johnson
addressed a joint session of Congress to propose the Voting
Rights Act. Flying in the face of polls that showed his
position was hurting his popularity, he said that ensuring
everyone the right to vote was an act of obedience to the
oath that the president and Congress take before ``God to
support and defend the Constitution.'' Looking members on the
floor straight in the eye, he closed by intoning the battle
hymn of the civil rights movement, ``And we shall overcome.''
One southern congressman seated next to White House counsel
Harry McPherson exclaimed in shocked surprise, ``God damn!''
That summer, with Johnson hovering over it, Congress passed
the Voting Rights Act. The president was so excited that he
rushed over to the Capitol to have a few celebratory drinks
with Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and Republican
Minority leader Everett Dirksen. The next day LBJ pressed
Martin Luther King Jr. and other black leaders to turn their
energy to registering black voters.
LBJ planned every detail of the signing ceremony in the
Capitol Rotunda. He wanted ``a section for special people I
can invite,'' such as Rosa Parks (the 42-year-old black
seamstress who refused to give up her seat on a bus in
Montgomery) and Vivian Malone (the first black woman admitted
to the University of Alabama, in 1963). He told me to get ``a
table so people can say, `This is the table on which LBJ
signed the Voting Rights Bill.' ''
He was exuberant as he drove with me and other staffers up
to Capitol Hill for the signing. Riding in the presidential
limo he spoke of a new day, ``If, if, if, if,'' he said,
``the Negro leaders get their people to register and vote.''
I rarely saw him happier than on that day. For years after
that, he fretted that too many black leaders were more
interested in a rousing speech or demonstration full of sound
bites and action for the TV cameras than in marshaling the
voting power of their people.
Well, if he was looking down on us on Nov. 3--and I'm sure
he was up there counting votes--he saw his dream come true.
Without the heavy black turnout, the Democrats would not have
held their own in the Senate, picked up seats in the House
and moved into more state houses. In Georgia, the black share
of the total vote rose 10 points to 29 percent, helping to
elect a Democratic governor and the state's first black
attorney general.
In Maryland, that share rose eight points to 21 percent,
saving the unpopular Gov. Parris Glendening from defeat. The
black vote in South Carolina kept Fritz Hollings in his
Senate seat, defeated Lauch Faircloth in North Carolina and
ensured Chuck Schumer's victory over Al D'Amato in New York.
Here and there across the country, the black vote provided
the margin of victory for democratic governors and
congressmen--and where Republicans such as the Bush brothers
attracted large percentages of Hispanic and black voters,
helped roll up majorities with national implications.
The Voting Rights Act is not the only thing Democrats can
thank LBJ for. Johnson captured for the Democratic Party
issues that were decisively important in this election. He
got Congress to pass the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act, which for the first time told the people they could look
to the federal government for help in local school districts.
It is his Medicare that Democrats promised to protect from
conservative Republican sledgehammers. LBJ was the president
who ratcheted up Social Security payments to lift more than 2
million Americans above the poverty line.
Together Medicare and Social Security have changed the
nature of growing old in America and freed millions of baby
boomers to buy homes and send their kids to college rather
than spend the money to help their aging parents. The Great
Society's Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, Motor Vehicle
Pollution, Solid Waste Disposal and Highway Beautification
acts have given Democrats a lock on environmental issues.
[[Page E23]]
LBJ was also the president who created the unified budget
to include Social Security, which helped produce a balanced
budget in fiscal year 1969. Without that budget system,
President Clinton would not be able to claim credit for
producing the first balanced budget in 30 years.
As exit polls showed, the Democratic command of the terrain
of education, health care, Social Security, the economy and
the environment--and the growth of the minority vote--paved
the road to electoral success in 1998.
With the demise of Newt Gingrich, many Republicans think
it's time to mute his libelous assault on the Great Society
programs he loved to hate. Isn't it also time for Democrats
to come out of the closet and recognize the legacy of the
president who opened the polls to minorities and established
federal beachheads in education, health care and the
environment. After all, it's the Democrats' promise to
protect these beachheads and forge forward that accounts for
much of their success this November and offers their best
chance to retain the White House and recapture the House of
Representatives in 2000.
The writer was President Lyndon Johnson's special assistant
for domestic affairs.
____
[From the Washington Post, Dec. 11, 1998]
Barr Spoke to White Supremacy Group
(By Thomas B. Edsal)
A spokesman for Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr. (R-Ga.)
acknowledged yesterday that Barr was a keynote speaker
earlier this year at a meeting of the Council of Conservative
Citizens, an organization promoting views that interracial
marriage amounts to white genocide and that Abraham Lincoln
was elected by socialists and communists.
Barr spoke at the organization's semiannual convention on
June 6 in Charleston, S.C. His presence was cited by Harvard
law professor Alan M. Dershowitz, who testified against the
impeachment of President Clinton at a hearing of the House
Judiciary Committee. Barr, the most outspoken proponent of
impeachment in the House, serves on the committee.
``Congressman Barr, who was fully aware of this
organization's racist and antisemitic agenda, not only gave
the keynote address to the CCC's national board, but even
allowed himself to be photographed literally embracing one of
their national directors,'' Dershowitz wrote Judiciary
Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) last week.
In a letter to Hyde responding to Dershowitz, Barr declared
that Dershowitz's ``accusations are unfounded and
deplorable.''
Asked to comment on the views of the council, Brad
Alexander, Barr's spokesman, said Barr is working full time
on impeachment, and ``he is not going to take time away from
it to respond to groundless attacks by Professor
Dershowitz.''
In the letter to Hyde, Barr counterattacked, accusing
Dershowitz of ``condoning the use of racism in court, most
notably in the O.J. Simpson case,'' in which Dershowitz
served as part of the defense team.
The World Wide Web site of the Council of Conservative
Citizens is dominated by material portraying the ``white
race'' as under siege. A council columnist described only as
``H. Millard'' writes:
``Take 10 bottles of milk to represent all humans on earth.
Nine of them will be chocolate and only one white. Now mix
all those bottles together and you have gotten rid of that
troublesome bottle of white milk. There too is the way to get
rid of the world of whites. Convince them to mix their few
genes with the genes of the many. Genocide via the bedroom
chamber is as long lasting as genocide via war.''
____
Lott's Odd Friends
(By Colbert I. King)
When the Senate convenes in January, its first order of
business should be to review Majority Leader Trent Lott's
fitness to serve as guiding light of the world's most
deliberative body. You heard it right. Before the senior
senator from Mississippi sits in judgment of anybody, most of
all the president, Lott's colleagues ought to pass fresh
judgment on him.
The need for a closer look arises from recent articles by
Port reporter Thomas Edsall on Georgia Republican Rep. Robert
Barr's keynote address to the Council of Conservative
Citizens, a white ``racialist'' group that, among other
things, publishes anti-black screeds capable of making bigots
weak in the knees with delight. And Barr isn't alone. Lott
and the council have kept company, too.
Barr's link with the council was first disclosed by Harvard
Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz during the House Judiciary
Committee's impeachment hearing. Barr initially screamed like
a stuck pig, claiming he knew nothing about the council's
alleged racist and antisemitic agenda. He only schmoozed it
up with council members at their meeting, said Barr, because
the group enjoyed the blessings of other big-name southern
conservatives, including Trent Lott, whom the council presses
to the bosom as one of its own.
Lott, now at the peak of his GOP legislative career and
recognizing a banana peel when he sees one, demonstrated the
public relations smoothness that helped get him where he is
today by swiftly denying through a spokesman any council
membership. Lott has ``no firsthand knowledge of the group's
views,'' said the spokesman. Would that those words had been
uttered under oath.
No sooner had Lott freed himself from the group than the
head of the council's national capital branch, Mark Cerr,
embraced the senator as an active member who had spoken to
the group in the past. And guess what? The Post next produced
a copy of the group's newsletter, Citizens Informer, with who
else but Lott on the front page delivering a suck-up speech
to a council gathering in Greenwood, Miss., in 1992. Lott
told those staunch proponents of preserving the white race
from immigration, intermarriage and ``the dark forces'' that
are overwhelming America that the council ``stand[s] for the
right principles and the right philosophy.''
Lott spokesman John Czwartacki told me this week that the
'92 event was just another case of a politician delivering a
stump speech to a local group of unknown political pedigree--
no big deal. What's more, after being confronted with
evidence of the 1992 speech and the group's views, Lott
renounced the council and said he won't truck with the likes
of them now or henceforth forevermore.
Well, not so fast.
If, as it is now being argued in Lott's behalf, the
majority leader is not comfortable with xenophobic, race-
baiting bigots, when did he first grow suspicious and really
start keeping his distance from the group? Because contrary
to claims that he participated in the council event in '92
because he didn't know any better, they seem to have been
keeping company for some time.
On my desk is a copy of a page from the 1997 Citizens
Informer with a smiling Trent Lott pictured meeting in his
Washington office with council national officers William D.
Lord Jr., president Tom Dover and CEO Gordon Lee Baum. Lord
and Baum were also in the '92 photo. And who is Lord? The
Post reports Lord was a regional organizer for the southern-
based segregationist Citizen Councils. In the '60s, white
Citizen Council members shared the Ku Klux Klan's views on
civil rights but tended to speak and dress better and not
slink around after dark in white hoods.
So much could be said about the Council of Conservative
Citizens. But let's let Citizens Informer, the group's Web
site and its other document speak for themselves:
``Given what has come out in the press about Mr. Clinton's
alleged [sexual] preferences, and his apparent belief that
oral sex is not sex one wonders if perhaps Mr. Clinton isn't
America's first liberal black president. . . . His beliefs
are actually a result of his inner black culture. Call him an
Oreo turned inside out'' (H. Millard, 1998).
``Life Magazine, the glossy photo album of folksy liberals,
has been enlarging depraved miscreants like John F. Kennedy
and Martin Luther King into national heroes for decades''
(1998).
``The most important issue facing us is the continued
existence of our people, the European derived descendants of
the founders of the American nation. As immigration fills our
country with aliens, we risk being disposed and, ultimately
displaced entirely'' (1995).
``A Formal Protest of the [Arthur] Ashe Statue unveiling
ceremony will be held on the site of a Confederate
Fortification with Battle Flags. . . . Those with confederate
battle flags will assemble behind the statue. . . . Come
early and dress formal (coat and tie) No racial slurs
please'' (Richmond Chapter, June 30, 1996).
``Black rule in South Africa a total failure.'' ``The
increase of crime and barbarism in South Africa is nothing
more than the emergence of the African ethos, so long
submerged by strong pre-deKlerk National Party governments''
(Citizens Informer, Winter, 1997-98).
``The Jews' motto is `never forget, and never forgive.' One
can't agree with the way they've turned spite into welfare
billions for themselves, but the `never forget' part is very
sound'' (``A Southern View,'' Citizens Informer, 1997).
``Our liberal establishment is using the media of
television to promote racial intimacy and miscegenation. . .
. all of the news teams on the major networks have black and
white newscasters of opposite sexes'' (Citizens Informer,
1998).
And as for Trent Lott's view of the council before the
Citizens Informer article appeared in Edsall's story? A 1995
council promotional mailer quotes Lott: ``America needs a
national organization to mobilize conservative, patriotic
citizens to help protect our flag, Constitution and other
symbols of freedom.''
Trent Lott's column regularly appears in the Informer
newsletter (including its most recent issue in 1998) along
with the publication's offensive racial columns and articles.
However, Lott's spokesman said it would be wrong to associate
his boss's noncontroversial and businesslike column, which is
widely distributed, with the repugnant views and materials
published by the council. Fair enough.
But has Lott kept his distance from the council--or are the
ties long-running and cozy? And if the relationship is ended,
when did he do it, and how clean is the break? Before hearing
the case against Bill Clinton, the Senate and the country
need to hear Republican majority leader Trent Lott's case for
himself.
[[Page E24]]
____
[From the Los Angeles Times, Dec. 21, 1998]
GOP in South Sees a Civil War It Can Win
(By Earl Ofari Hutchinson)
``Racists lead the impeachment battle to punish Clinton for his social
programs and civil rights stands.''
Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia gives us an answer to why so many
House Republicans defy public opinion, ignore the advice of
GOP governors, reject the advice of party moderates in the
Senate and are willing to paralyze the government to nail
President Clinton. Barr says that they are fighting a civil
war.
Since November 1997, Barr has been the point man for
Southern Republicans in calling for Bill Clinton's head. This
isn't the usual conservative political rage at a politician
they regard as a corrupt, immoral, big-spending, big-
government Democrat.
Barr, who represents the mostly white, conservative,
suburban 7th District in Georgia, is a big booster of the
Council of Conservative Citizens. This is the outfit that
issued ``A Call to White Americans,'' has denounced blacks as
intellectually inferior, champions the Confederate flag and
maintains tight ties to Klansman David Duke.
In House speeches, Barr has slammed the Congressional Black
Caucus, opposed hate crime laws and spending on social
programs. His Web page is linked to the pages of the most
extreme right-wing groups in the nation. His campaign against
Clinton is part of the Republican Party's Southern strategy
to roll back the civil rights gains and eliminate the social
programs of the 1960s.
Although Barr is one of the most extreme GOP race-baiters
in Congress, he has got the political muscle to push the
South's vendetta. Southern Republicans control 82 out of 228
Republican House seats, by far the largest single bloc in
Congress. Clinton's victory in 1992 temporarily derailed the
Southern bloc's plan to gut civil rights and social programs.
Southern Republicans watched as more than 85% of African
Americans voted for Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and provided the
swing vote for many Democrats in congressional and state
races this November. African Americans regard Clinton more
favorably than Jesse Jackson or Louis Farrakhan.
The Southern bloc is distressed that the Congressional
Black Caucus has been Clinton's biggest defender against the
GOP assault and dismayed that far more African Americans than
whites oppose impeachment. These Republicans are disgusted
that Clinton has appointed more blacks to high administrative
offices than any other president, supported minority
redistricting in the South, called for tougher action against
church burnings and convened the first-ever White House
conference to push for tougher penalties to combat hate
crimes.
Barr and his cohorts are enraged that Clinton is the first
president since Lyndon Johnson to empanel a commission to
talk seriously about racial problems and supported the U.S.
Sentencing Commission's recommendations to ``equalize'' the
disproportionate drug sentences given to minority offenders.
They are affronted that Clinton increased funding for job and
education programs, made numerous high-profile appearances at
black churches, conferences and ceremonies on school
integration in the South and opposed the anti-affirmative
action Proposition 209 in California. They are distressed
that Clinton is the first president to travel to and support
economic initiatives in Caribbean and sub-saharan African
nations.
The faster the Southern Republicans rush to dump Clinton,
the greater his popularity will be among African Americans.
Many blacks see impeachment as a thinly disguised attempt to
hammer the president for acting and speaking out on black
causes, and as a backdoor power grab for the White House in
the year 2000--and they're right. But as long as Southern
Republicans control such a huge block of congressional votes,
they believe that impeachment is the civil war they can win.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the author of ``The Crisis in
Black and Black'' (Middle Passage Press, 1998)
____________________