AAA
...roup in the Republican Party, the Radicals. The Radicals believed that Johnson had thrown away a golden opportunity to impose fundamental reforms on Southern society. In particular, the Radicals wanted African Americans to be accorded full citizenship and black men given the right to vote. When Johnson vetoed the Freedmen Bureaus Bill which called for “direct funding of the bureau, empowered it to build and support schools and authorized bureau agents to assume legal jurisdiction over crimes involving blacks and civil rights” and then later the Civil Rights Bill which provided for the citizenship of African Americans the Radicals began to advocate openly his impeachment (543). They believed that unless the President could be removed from office, he would be in a position to frustrate their ambitions for interracial government in the South. Of special concern to Congress was Johnson's Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. Stanton was a holdover from the Lincoln administration, and had over time shifted politically toward the Radical wing of the Republican Party. Understandably, the decision of Congress in early 1867 to take over Reconstruction policy made the Secretary of War vulnerable. Johnson knew that he could not expect Stanton's support in hamstringing the implementation of congressional reconstruction. For those same reasons, congressional Republicans, especially the Radicals wanted to keep Stanton as Secretary of War. He would be an excellent agent of Congress in bypassing the President. To keep Stanton in office and protect other congressional supporters still in the executive branch, Congress passed, in March 1867, the Tenure of Office Act. The Tenure of Office Act gave the Senate the right to accept or to reject the dismissal of presidential appointees. Under this law, the president could not remove officials in the executive branch while the Senate was in session without a majority vote in favor of the action (543). During the summer of 1867, while Congress was in recess, Johnson suspended Edwin M. Stanton under the provisions of the Tenure of Office Act, replacing him with the commanding general of the U.S. army, Ulysses S. Grant. As Johnson attempted to remove Stanton from his office he provoked the House of Representitives to vote on impeachment. Grounds for impeachment were, according to Maier: “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors” (543). Apparently, the violation of the Tenure of Office Act fell into that category. However, Johnson prevailed, escaping impeachment by one vote. Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 and then again in 1996. Clinton brought to the table, as Maier would call it, a prosperous nineties up until his slight flirtation with the idea of leaving office. Under the latter Clinton administration, “the economic boom that had begun early in the nineties grew more exuberant. . . In 1998, wages and benefits rose at twice the rate of infaltionship, was was only 1.7 percent” (1063). However, these successes were watered down by the scandals that surrounded Clinton starting from early 1998. Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor looking over the Whitewater affair shone light on the Clinton scandals, forcing the public to speculate his credits as a respectable president and worthy leader of the nation. Starr had received reports from an employee named Linda Tripp that a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky was having an ongoing affair with the President. Prior to this discovery, Paula Jones had been trying to get a sexual suit against the president. Jones’ lawyers received word of the affair of Lewinsky and the President and “obtained a ruling from the Supreme Court requiring Clinton to answer their questions, establishing the precedent that a sitting president could be compelled to testify in a civil suit concerning actions that took place before his presidency” (1073). Clinton responded under oath that he “did not have sexual relationship with that woman [Lewinky]” (1073). According to Maier, the Clinton administration blamed the allegations of the affair on a conspiracy led by the right-wing to get a democrat out of office. However, under the threat of prosecution by Starr, Lewinsky told a jury an explicit description of the affair and handed over a dress supposedly stained with Clinton’s semen. After the testing of the semen confirmed it was his, he told the American public that his acts with Lewinsky were wrong, but asserted that he in no way acted illegally, i.e., lied under oath. This meaning, his definition of “sexual relationship meaning sexual intercourse, which he did not engage in with Lewinsky. However, after Starr handed over his 445 page report detailing grounds for impeachment, the House voted to launch an impeachment investigation. Like Johnson, Clinton was not voted out of office. So ...