History will record that a president was impeached by his partisan enemies, not because he had committed high crimes and misdemeanors but simply because he opposed them and did so in what they complained was unpresidential speech and demeanor.

They accused him of being boorish and a would-be dictator out to destroy America’s institutions. They deplored and denounced what they regarded as his “intemperate, inflammatory and scandalous harangues” with which he aroused the passions of the crowds at his political rallies.

Actually, history has already recorded it. The president was Andrew Johnson, the year was 1868. I venture that most of us don’t know much about the man, aside from the fact that he was the vice-president who assumed the presidency when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Aside from that, he pretty much disappears until another president such as Nixon and Clinton is impeached, and we’re all reminded that Johnson was the first one to face removal from office.

Johnson, a Democrat, had been a senator from Tennessee when Lincoln selected him as a running mate in 1864. It was felt that because Johnson was a southerner, but one who was opposed to secession, the ticket could help unify the nation after the Civil War.

But when Lincoln was killed, the Republican-dominated House viewed the 17th president with suspicion and resentment.

Johnson had been raised in abject poverty. He was in his teens before he learned to read and it was his wife who would later teach him to write. But he was politically ambitious and won a series of elections before Lincoln plucked him out of the Senate.

I only know some of this because of an article by Steve Byas in The New American.

Johnson opposed slavery on moral grounds, but felt, as a confirmed federalist, that the issue was best left to the states. He supported the Civil War only because he believed in preserving the Union.

The Republicans in Congress wanted to punish the South, but Johnson thought that was both mean and short-sighted. If the country was to be made whole again, recriminations would only delay — perhaps indefinitely — that ever taking place.

Johnson was also at odds with the House over voting rights for slaves. The Republicans fought for those rights, not from any sense of moral obligation, but because they realized that if the freedmen were denied the vote, the Democrats would soon retake control of Congress. The law was passed and was soon enshrined as the 14th Amendment.

There followed a series of unconstitutional laws passed by the House in order to neuter Johnson’s power. He naturally vetoed them, but with their super majority, the Republicans had no trouble overriding his objections.

Johnson then increased their fury when he replaced Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who had openly colluded with the Republicans, with General Ulysses Grant. But the House then voted to remove Grant, who resigned. In response, Johnson refused to allow Stanton’s return.

That finally led the House to impeach Johnson by a margin of 126-47. In the meantime, Stanton reclaimed his office at the War Department with armed volunteers stationed outside to prevent his removal.

Things looked bleak in the Senate, where the GOP held more than two-thirds of the seats. Although the Democrats could be counted on to vote against the President’s removal, it would require that seven Republicans break ranks and vote against impeachment.

Not willing to take any chances, the Republicans employed bribery, intimidation and even tried to rush statehood for Colorado, with its tiny 40,000 population, through the system. They failed. Colorado would have to wait until 1876.

Johnson’s lawyer, William Evarts, argued that not only were the charges vague and bogus, but that the Republicans were trying to have it both ways by denying they were a court — and therefore did not have to grant Johnson the constitutional protections of a man on trial — but which meant they were instead enacting a bill of attainder, which is specifically forbidden by the Constitution.

Evarts had come loaded for bear. He argued that nearly all the items of impeachment involved Johnson’s removal of Secretary Stanton, but that President Lincoln had argued that the president should be aided by a Cabinet that agrees with him “in political principle and general policy,” which Stanton clearly did not. Evarts also pointed out that among those who had publicly agreed with Lincoln were now two of the ringleaders calling for Johnson’s head on a platter, Senators Charles Summer and John Sherman.

In the end, it came down to one vote. Because six Democrats had already voted their consciences not to impeach, the vote stood at 35 guilty, 18 not guilty. It was up to Sen. Edward Ross of Kansas to cast the all-important deciding 36th vote.

To set the scene, Ross, 42 at the time, had already been threatened with assassination. At the very least, a not-guilty vote would constitute political suicide in Kansas. Also, he was known to not only oppose Johnson’s policies, but to despise him personally. So his vote might have gone either way. Which is why the Senate chamber was totally silent when he rose to vote…not guilty.

As Ross later wrote: “I almost literally looked down into my open grave. Friendships, position, fortune, everything that makes life desirable to an ambitious man were about to be swept away by the breath of my mouth, perhaps forever.”

As Ross and the other six recalcitrant Democrats fully expected, they lost their bids for re-election in 1870.

Years later, Ross reported that he had no regrets. “In a large sense, the independence of the executive office as a coordinate branch of government was on trial. If the president must step down, a disgraced man and a political outcast, upon insufficient proofs and from partisan considerations, the office of the president would be degraded…and a guilty verdict would have subjected the United States to that intolerance which so often characterizes the sway of great majorities and makes them so dangerous.”

Pretty well said for a man who didn’t learn to write until he was in his 20s and married.

Although the positions of the two political parties are reversed, the parallels to our own time are astonishing. Just as Johnson caused consternation because he didn’t speak or act, in the words of his political foes, presidential, the Democrats now carry on as if Donald Trump somehow snuck into the White House while everybody’s back was turned, blithely ignoring the 63 million votes he garnered and the 30 states he won in spite of widespread voter fraud.

The Democrats condemned Trump for exercising his constitutional authority to fire the disloyal likes of FBI Director James Comey and the ex-ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, just as the Republicans carried on over Johnson’s dumping the backstabbing Edwin Stanton.

The major difference I see between the events of 1868 and today is that there is nobody in the Senate who even faintly resembles Edward Ross. He was, as illustrated in John Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage,” one of those rare men in public life who make you proud to be a fellow member of the human race, a man who put principles above politics, the nation ahead of personal ambitions.

Edward G. Ross eventually moved to New Mexico. In 1907, shortly before he died, General Hugh Cameron of Lawrence visited the 80 year old, bringing with him a slew of testimonials from a great many Kansans who had finally, belatedly, come to recognize the greatness of the man and the tremendous debt the nation owed him.