Impeachments: Trump, Nixon, Clinton, and Johnson
When just the other day I heard for the first time the name of Edmund G. Ross mentioned in media coverage of the Trump impeachment hearings, I realized the time had come to do my part in spreading a little of what I've come to learn recently about who Ross was, how he once had been remembered, and how now still newer perspectives have arrived. (Buckle your revisionist seat-belts.) Something I'd read a couple of months back suggested that, for understanding historical comparisons, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson (beginning in 1868) was a lot more instructive, and significant, in comparison with Trump's, than either the near-impeachment of Richard Nixon (forestalled by his resignation, in 1974); or especially when compared to the impeachment of Bill Clinton (in 1998). Good news for the curious, a new book on the topic has just come out, called The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson, and the Dream of a Just Nation , by historian and biographer Brenda Wineapple. I