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The Lessons of History

By Stephan Thernstrom
Posted Thursday, Dec. 17, 1998, at 12:40 PM ET

Dear Abby:

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Back to impeachment on what was supposed to be The Day.

As history is being made, misconceptions and distortions of the historical record continue to be used as weapons. Thus the history lesson offered by Jonathan Alter in the current Newsweek. Federalist No. 65, he says, tells us that impeachment should not be used when "the dispute between Congress and the president is 'connected to pre-existing factions.'"

The trouble with this is that by "pre-existing factions" the Founding Fathers simply meant what we now call political parties. None of them believed that parties should exist in a democratic republic, and they hoped that the Constitution created a frame of government that would keep them from forming. It didn't work out that way, obviously. Their successors came to view political parties as legitimate and indeed necessary. If we were to heed the advice in the Federalist passage quoted by Alter, the impeachment clause would be a dead letter until we manage to abolish parties.

The newest Time also wades into historical waters. Adam Cohen argues that "history has sided with" those who voted against the conviction of Andrew Johnson. His source for this belief is JFK's 1956 Profiles in Courage. Kennedy argued there that Johnson was merely trying to "carry out Lincoln's policy of reconciliation with the defeated South." Kansas Senator Ross, who broke ranks to rescue Johnson from crucifixion by power-hungry Republican Radicals, was therefore a hero to remember.

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It is odd for Clinton's defenders to take this simplistic view, claiming that Republican Radicals were the bad guys, out to get a president just doing his job. In fact, Johnson's policies towards the South sought to reverse the outcome of the Civil War. And those wicked Republican Radicals were fighting to extend the ballot and other basic civil rights to the newly-freed slaves. Johnson backed the ex-Confederate states when they passed Black Codes designed to keep blacks down; he opposed the Fourteenth Amendment; and he used his power as Commander-in-Chief to frustrate Republicans who wanted the U.S. Army to protect southern blacks. John Kennedy derived his misconceptions about Reconstruction from books like Claude Bower's The Tragic Era, a 1920 work that is about as reliable a guide to the period as Birth of a Nation. Reconstruction was a disaster that should never have been attempted, Bowers argued. Blacks were incapable of self-government, and the KKK justifiably drove them from power. No serious historian today endorses these racist views. Indeed it is shocking that JFK is not held accountable for them.

Yes, the case for removing Johnson from office rested on legally shaky grounds. But whatever one thinks of Clinton and the impeachment question, let us not perpetuate the mythology that Johnson's defenders were profiles in courage and his opponents partisan thugs. "History," as it is understood today, certainly has not vindicated Andrew Johnson, whatever John Kennedy thought more than 40 years ago.

Steve