The Impeachers; The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation

New York: Random House, 2019. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Elena Seibert (author photograph). xxix, [1], 543, [3] pages. Illustrated endpapers. Illustrations. Dramatis Personae. Prologue. Part One: Battle Lines of Peace; Part Two: Impeachment; Part Three: Verdict; Part Four: Denouement. Epilogue. Appendix A: Tenure of Office Act. Appendix B: Articles of Impeachment. Appendix C. Dramatis Personae, Denouement. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. Brenda Wineapple is an American nonfiction writer, literary critic, and essayist who has written several books on nineteenth-century American writers. She graduated from Brandeis University. In 2014, Wineapple received an Literature Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her book White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. She was elected a Fellow of the Society of American Historians and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she is also an elected Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU. She serves as literary advisor for the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of America, and she is on the advisor board of Lapham's Quarterly and The American Scholar. Wineapple teaches in the MFA programs at Columbia University's School of the Arts and at the New School in New York City. She was previously the Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at The Graduate School, CUNY, and its Writer-in-Residence. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review, The Nation and other national publications. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times · The New York Times Book Review · NPR · Publishers Weekly. This absorbing and important book recounts the titanic struggle over the implications of the Civil War amid the impeachment of a defiant and temperamentally erratic American president.--Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of America. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and Vice-President Andrew Johnson became the Accidental President, it was a dangerous time in America. Congress was divided over how the Union should be reunited: when and how the secessionist South should regain full status, whether former Confederates should be punished, and when and whether black men should be given the vote. Devastated by war and resorting to violence, many white Southerners hoped to restore a pre-Civil War society, if without slavery, and the pugnacious Andrew Johnson seemed to share their goals. With the unchecked power of executive orders, Johnson ignored Congress, pardoned rebel leaders, promoted white supremacy, opposed civil rights, and called Reconstruction unnecessary. It fell to Congress to stop the American president who acted like a king. With profound insights and making use of extensive research, Brenda Wineapple dramatically evokes this pivotal period in American history, when the country was rocked by the first-ever impeachment of a sitting American president. And she brings to vivid life the extraordinary characters who brought that impeachment forward: the willful Johnson and his retinue of advocates, including complicated men like Secretary of State William Seward, as well as the equally complicated visionaries committed to justice and equality for all, like Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass, and Ulysses S. Grant. Theirs was a last-ditch, patriotic, and Constitutional effort to render the goals of the Civil War into reality and to make the Union free, fair, and whole. Praise for The Impeachers: In this superbly lyrical work, Brenda Wineapple has plugged a glaring hole in our historical memory through her vivid and sweeping portrayal of President Andrew Johnson's 1868 impeachment. She serves up not simply food for thought but a veritable feast of observations on that most trying decision for a democracy: whether to oust a sitting president. Teeming with fiery passions and unforgettable characters, The Impeachers will be devoured by contemporary readers seeking enlightenment on this issue. . . . A landmark study.--Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Grant.