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Andrew Johnson

Although he was scrupulously honest, Andrew Johnson angered members of Congress by thwarting their plans for Reconstruction.

The administration of Andrew Johnson, which began upon Lincoln's assassination in April, 1865, was predominantly concerned with redefining the status and rights of people, both black and white, living in the defeated Confederate states.

The Senate convened twenty years ago to determine whether President Bill Clinton had committed "high crimes and misdemeanors"

An impetuous and sometimes corrupt Congress has often hamstrung the efforts of the president since the earliest days of the Republic

On a little-remarked, steamy day in late June 1973, a revolution took place in Washington, D.C., one that would transfer far more power and wealth than did the revolt against King George III in 1776.

Lincoln painstakingly evolved a plan for harmonious reconstruction of the Union, which Radical Republicans moved to sabotage

Lincoln painstakingly evolved a plan for harmonious reconstruction of the Union, which Radical Republicans moved to sabotage

Would the disastrous Reconstruction era have taken a different course?

What would have happened had Abraham Lincoln not been assassinated? Every time I lecture on Lincoln, the Civil War, or Reconstruction, someone in the audience is sure to pose this question—one, of course, perfectly natural to ask but equally impossible to answer. This has not, however, deterred historians from speculating about this “counterfactual” problem.

William Jefferson Clinton, Andrew Johnson, and the judgment of history

When the 105th Congress took a pre-election recess last October, the House of Representatives had already made itself a place in the record books by resolving, for the second time in a quarter of a century and only the third in the nation’s experience, to hold hearings on the p

Whatever you were taught or thought you knew about the post-Civil War era is probably wrong in the light of recent study

Conjectural or speculative history can be a silly game, as in “What if the Roman legions had machine guns?” But this historian argues that to enlarge our knowledge and understanding it sometimes makes very good sense to ask …

What if any of the pre-Civil War Presidents had gone mad? What if Andrew Johnson had been successfully impeached? What if William McKinley had not been assassinated?

The ex-Presidency now carries perquisites and powers that would have amazed all but the last few who have held that office

Vinnie Ream sculptured Lincoln while she was still a teen-ager

President Lincoln had been dead more than three years in May of 1868, and the model of his statue still rested unfinished in young Vinnie Ream’s Capitol studio.

Was it, as Navy Secretary Welles believed, “a conspiracy to overthrow the government”?

“The President came forward and the sun burst through the clouds.”

One of the saddest tales in American history tells how a well-intentioned President lost a dazzling opportunity

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