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A fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.

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The Principles of the Twelve Steps - from Step Twelve of The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous

Spiritual Principles in the Twelve Traditions

The Principles of the Twelve Traditions - from the Service, Traditions and Concepts Workshop Manual

Spiritual Principles in the Twelve Concepts

The Principles of the Twelve Concepts - from The Twelve Concepts of OA Service

Concept 1 - Unity

Concept 2 - Conscience

Concept 3 - Trust

Concept 4 - Equality

Concept 5 - Consideration

Concept 6 - Responsibility

Concept 7 - Balance

Concept 8 - Delegation

Concept 9 - Ability

Concept 10 - Clarity

Concept 11 - Humility

Concept 12 - Guidelines

(a) Selflessness

(b) Realism

(c) Representation

(d) Dialogue

(e) Compassion

(f) Respect

Download a copy of all of the principals for further study.

Blessed Beyond Anything

Having worked the Twelve Steps, what did I learn about the Principles? (MORE)

Honesty. I learned to look truthfully at ugly things that I am powerless over yet make my life unmanageable. It takes honest vision to fully understand there is a problem and that I have no way to solve it myself.

Hope. I came to believe I can have a relationship with a Higher Power who can do things for me that I can't and that I can be restored to sanity. There is hope that the painful parts of my life can change and that HP has a better plan for me.

Faith. It was a leap of faith that something would sustain me when I stopped my way of doing things. But what I couldn't imagine doing forever, I could do for one day. Those days added up to a miracle. Aligning my will with God's and going through scary places in recovery is faith working in my life.

Courage and Integrity. Note the word "fearless" in fearless moral inventory; fear and faith don't coexist. It takes courage and integrity to look back at unflattering moments and share them with another person. To overcome my fear, become vulnerable, and present my true self is the basis for real relationships and connection.

Willingness. It's the whatever-it-takes clause in the contract with God and being ready, in God's time, to let go not only of hurtful things we want to change but also defects we enjoy. That's a scary concept. It's also one filled with honesty, hope, faith, courage, and integrity - amazing how these Principles work together.

Humility. When I earnestly ask for help, God goes to work, but not necessarily in ways I expect. Humility is acceptance of who we really are and the need to live in harmony with God's will to find serenity.

Self-discipline and love for others. Life is easier when I avoid doing things that make me owe amends and when I admit my part as soon as possible. The "my part" piece is a revelation - no matter what, I can act with a loving approach.

Perseverance. Even when God's plan feels difficult, by saying "I can do it today" and doing the next right thing, the todays add up. If I turn back, I'll never get to the destination.

Spiritual awareness. I came to understand that God is with us always. Spiritual awakening is having a living God in my life; I am taken care of and will get what I need. We are enough and are loved for who we are. I experience God in my connecting with God in others. Connection with God requires work and practice. To hear and understand God's will, I need to clear my mind.

Service. I don't only carry the message - I am the message. I don't need to sell program. I just need to live these Principles. And to keep this recovery, I need to share my experience, strength and hope with others.

I came to OA thinking I had a problem with food yet learned I had a problem with life. I've been blessed beyond anything I every thought to wish for.

Lifeline April 2015

Podcasts

Principles of the 12 Steps Podcast

In All Our Affairs Podcast

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Program Principles - Overeaters Anonymous

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Spiritual Principles in the Twelve Steps The Principles of the Twelve Steps - from Step Twelve of The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous Step 1 - Honesty Step 2 - Hope Step 3 - Faith Step 4 - Courage Step 5 - Integrity Step 6 - Willingness Step 7 - Humility Step ...

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An established or official way of doing something.

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Sharecropping is a form of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land.

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sharecropping, form of tenant farming in which the landowner furnished all the capital and most other inputs and the tenants contributed their labour. Depending on the arrangement, the landowner may have provided the food, clothing, and medical expenses of the tenants and may have also supervised the work. The tenants' payment to the owner was in the form of a share in the product, or in cash, or in a combination of both.

Following the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery, most freed people lacked land or money and had to continue working for white plantation owners. Indeed, many plantations continued to run as large operations that were worked by wage-labourers or sharecroppers, including also poor rural whites, and sharecropping gradually became the accepted labour system in most of the South. Landowners, short of capital, favoured the system because it did not require them to pay cash wages. In addition to the land, the owners usually provided animal power, machinery, and most of the other inputs in the form of an advance. Cabins were commonly rented to the workers. Charges for the land, supplies, and housing were deducted from the sharecroppers' portion of the harvest, often leaving them with substantial debt to the landowners in bad years. Sharecroppers received what was left if they were able to pay back the owners-generally about half of what had been produced under decent arrangements. A string of poor seasons or periods of low prices, coupled with the proliferation of unfair practices with little legal recourse, meant that many sharecroppers were held under the tacit bondage of economic insecurity (see also debt slavery).

Contracts between landowners and sharecroppers were typically harsh and restrictive. Many contracts forbade sharecroppers from saving cotton seeds from their harvest, forcing them to increase their debt by obtaining seeds from the landowner. Landowners also charged extremely high interest rates. Landowners often weighed harvested crops themselves, which presented further opportunities to deceive or extort sharecroppers. Immediately following the Civil War, financially distressed landowners could rent land to African American sharecroppers, secure their debt and labour, and then drive them away just before it was time to harvest the crops. Southern courts were unlikely to rule in favour of Black sharecroppers against white landowners.

The Great Depression had devastating effects on sharecropping, as did the South's continued overproduction of and overemphasis on cotton and the ravages of the destructive boll weevil. Cotton prices fell dramatically after the stock market crash of 1929, and the ensuing downturn bankrupted farmers. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 offered farmers money to produce less cotton in order to raise prices. Many white landowners kept the money and allowed the land previously worked by sharecroppers to remain empty. Landowners also often invested the money in mechanization, reducing the need for labour and leaving more sharecropping families, Black and white, underemployed and in poverty. Sharecropping in the United States gradually died out after World War II as the mechanization of farming became widespread. So too, African Americans left the system as they moved to better-paying industrial jobs in the North during the Great Migration. Similar forms of tenant farming are still found in some places around the world.

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Sharecropping | Definition, Significance, History, & Facts

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Sharecropping, form of tenant farming in which the landowner furnished all the capital and most other inputs and the tenants contributed their labor. The tenant's payment to the owner was in the form of a share in the product or in cash, or in a combination of both.

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Plessy v. Ferguson, case in which the U.S. Supreme Court, on May 18, 1896, by a seven-to-one majority , advanced the controversial “separate but equal” doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws.

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(1896)

Plessy v. Ferguson, a US Supreme Court decision handed down on May 18, 1896, enacted "separate but equal" racial segregation as the law of the land for nearly six decades to follow, and it stands as one of three watershed civil rights cases in American history. The case was initiated from the 1892 arrest of New Orleanian Homer Plessy, who purposely tested the constitutionality of Louisiana's segregated trains by boarding a whites-only passenger car. One of Louisiana's most famous cases, Plessy joins Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) as key rulings on the US civil rights timeline. The Supreme Court's decision in Plessy sanctioned racial segregation on railroad trains and provided a legal umbrella for all Jim Crow laws that forced African Americans to live as second-class citizens. The Plessy case foreshadowed the civil disobedience methods of the civil rights movements of the twentieth century.
Historical Background
The case made prominent the names of the plaintiff, Homer Adolph Plessy, and the defendant, Judge John Howard Ferguson, who ruled against him in 1892. Born Homère Patris Plessy in New Orleans on St. Patrick's Day 1863, Plessy's birth certificate identifies his parents as Adolphe Plessy and Rosalie Debergue, both of whom were listed on the certificate as free people of color born before the Civil War and residents of New Orleans. John Ferguson, who was born in 1838 on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, came to New Orleans after the Civil War and established a law practice in the city's Uptown commercial district. He took the oath of office as Judge of Section A of the Orleans Parish Criminal Court on July 5, 1892.

The two men encountered one another roughly three months after Ferguson ascended to the bench. The lawsuit that brought them together represented an attempt to reinstate the legal barriers between the races that had begun to fall after the Civil War. The Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth Amendments (1870) emancipated the enslaved, granted equal citizenship rights, and prohibited the denial of suffrage rights based on race, respectively. By the late nineteenth century, however, the trend began to reverse after the post-Civil War Reconstruction government was disbanded following the Compromise of 1877.

In 1890 the Louisiana legislature passed the Separate Car Act, requiring black and white passengers to ride in separate railroad cars. In 1891, as a countermeasure, eighteen New Orleans residents formed the Comité des Citoyens, also known as the Citizens' Committee for the Annulment of Act No. 111. Largely comprised of Republican activists, writers, lawyers, businessmen, former Union soldiers, and educators from New Orleans's black Creole elite, the Comité raised funds, held rallies, and hired attorneys to challenge the constitutionality of laws that segregated citizens by race on railroad trains.

Under guidance from the Comité, musician Daniel Desdunes of the Creole Onward Brass Band volunteered to defy the Separate Car Act on February 24, 1892, when he purchased a first-class ticket and boarded a designated whites-only car on the Louisiana and Nashville Railroad from New Orleans to Montgomery, Alabama. The destination of another state was chosen specifically because of the belief that prohibiting his journey would violate the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution. Desdunes was ordered off the train and arrested, but his case never went to trial because the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled on May 25 in the unrelated Abbott v. Hicks case that the Separate Car Act did not apply to interstate passengers, therefore rendering the test moot.

Plessy volunteered to be the next agitator. On June 7, 1892, the thirty-year-old shoemaker arrived at the Press Street railroad yards near the Mississippi River. He purchased a ticket for the East Louisiana train bound for Covington and took his seat in the first-class coach. After the train's conductor alerted detective Christopher C. Cain that a person of color was in the "whites-only" car, Plessy was arrested for violating the Separate Car Act.
Plessy Meets Ferguson
Plessy appeared before Judge Ferguson on October 13, 1892, in Case No. 19117, Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Louisiana, and pleaded not guilty to the charges of violating the Separate Car Act. On October 28, Plessy's local lawyer, James C. Walker, argued that the Separate Car Act violated the Fourteenth Amendment, but Judge Ferguson ruled against him on November 18, 1892. "There is no pretense that he [Plessy] was not provided with equal accommodations with the white passengers," the judge stated. "He was simply deprived of the liberty of doing as he pleased, and of violating a penal statute with impunity." In December 1892 the Louisiana State Supreme Court, presided over by Francis Nicholls, upheld Ferguson's decision.
The US Supreme Court
Plessy hired attorney Albion Winegar Tourgée to argue his case before the US Supreme Court on April 18, 1896, in Case No. 210, Plessy v. Ferguson. Segregation's primary effect, Tourgée proffered, "is to perpetuate the stigma of color-to make the curse immortal, incurable, inevitable." The court issued its ruling on May 18, voting seven to one to uphold the Louisiana court's decision. "We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority," argued Justice Henry B. Brown, representing the majority. "If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it." John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenting justice, replied, "The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law. ... The thin disguise of 'equal' accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead any one, nor atone for the wrong this day done."

On January 11, 1897, Plessy returned to Criminal Court in New Orleans, entered a guilty plea, and paid a fine of $25. After the Supreme Court's decision, the Comité des Citoyens continued to maintain that segregation was unfair and unconstitutional. But the case set a precedent. Confident that the federal government would defer to the states on issues involving race, Louisiana and other southern states passed additional segregation laws. "Separate but equal" remained accepted doctrine until its repudiation in the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education.

More than one hundred years after the Plessy decision, the Crescent City Peace Alliance installed a historical marker at the site of Plessy's arrest in New Orleans. Members of both the Plessy and Ferguson families attended a ceremony at the corner of Press and Royal Streets on February 12, 2009.

Author: Keith Weldon Medley

Cite this entry
Chicago Manual of Style
Medley, Keith Weldon "Plessy v. Ferguson." In knowlouisiana.org Encyclopedia of Louisiana, edited by David Johnson. Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 2010-. Article published January 5, 2017. http://www.knowlouisiana.org/entry/plessy-v-ferguson.
MLA Style
Medley, Keith Weldon "Plessy v. Ferguson" knowlouisiana.org Encyclopedia of Louisiana. Ed. David Johnson. Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 5 Jan 2017. Web. 30 Oct 2017.

Suggested Reading

Desdunes, Rodolphe Lucien. Our People and Our History: Fifty Creole Portraits. Translated by Dorothea Olga McCants. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2001.

Elliott, Mark. Color Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Medley, Keith Weldon. We As Freemen. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 2003.

Schwartz, Bernard. A History of the Supreme Court. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

External Links

Disclaimer " If you click on any of the links below, you will leave knowlouisiana.org. The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities does not certify the accuracy of information, nor endorse points of view expressed on the site to which you are navigating, with the exception of other LEH sites.

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(1896) Plessy v. Ferguson, a US Supreme Court decision handed down on May 18, 1896, enacted "separate but equal" racial segregation as the law of the land for nearly six decades to follow, and it stands as one of three watershed civil rights cases in American history.

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Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States.

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In 1865 and 1866, state governments in the South enacted laws designed to regulate the lives of the former slaves. These measures, differing from state to state, were actually revisions of the earlier slave codes that had regulated that institution.

Some common elements appeared in many of the Codes:

Race was defined by blood; the presence of any amount of black blood made one black

Employment was required of all freedmen; violators faced vagrancy charges

Freedmen could not assemble without the presence of a white person

Freedmen were assumed to be agricultural workers and their duties and hours were tightly regulated

Freedmen were not to be taught to read or write

Public facilities were segregated

Violators of these laws were subject to being whipped or branded.

Existence of the black codes was taken as evidence by many Northerners (especially the Radical Republicans ) that the South had not really been subdued. Slavery had simply taken a new form.
The Freedmen's Bureau worked to halt enforcement of many of these laws and the Republican state governments (imposed by the North) repealed the measures.

When Reconstruction was over, many of the Black Code elements would reappear in Jim Crow legislation.

Off-site search results for "The Black Codes"...

The Black Codes of 1865
You are here:About>Education>African-American History> Black Codes> The Black Codes of 1865 Education African-American HistoryEssentialsPhotographsBiographiesQuotesMartin Luther King Jr.This Day in African American History TopiThe Black Codes of 1865 Education African-American HistoryEssentialsPhotographsBiographiesQuotesMartin Luther King Jr.This Day in African American History TopicsAbolition ...
http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/blackcodes/a/blackcodes1865.htm

SparkNotes: Reconstruction (1865â€"1877): The Postwar South and the Black Codes: 1865â€"1877
Some of the black codes forced former slaves to sign contracts, requiring them to work for meager wages, while some even required them to work on chain gangs in the fields. Once the Republican Party took control of Reconstruction, the black codes forced former slaves to sign contracts, requiring them to work for meager wages, while some even required them to work on chain gangs in the fields. Once the Republican Party took control of Reconstruction, they forced ...
http://www.sparknotes.com/history/american/reconstruction/section4.rht ...

Black Codes
... ResourcesSort By : Guide Picks | Alphabetical | Recent The Black Codes of 1865 The Black Codes of 1865 turned out to be a unique way for white southerners to attempt to maintain the way of life they had known prior to the CivilThe Black Codes of 1865 The Black Codes of 1865 turned out to be a unique way for white southerners to attempt to maintain the way of life they had known prior to the CivilThe Black Codes of 1865 turned out to be a unique way for white southerners to attempt to maintain the way of life they had known prior to the Civil War. While ...
http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/blackcodes/

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In 1865 and 1866, state governments in the South enacted laws designed to regulate the lives of the former slaves. These measures, differing from state to state, were actually revisions of the earlier slave codes that had regulated that institution.

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The action or state of setting someone or something apart from other people or things or being set apart.

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Home / General / School Segregation: The Evil of a Racist Nation

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This is a great interview between Jeffrey Goldberg and the civil rights writer Nikole Hannah-Jones. Two critical points here. First, it's that our school segregation is the sign of an inherently racist society, something that white liberals refuse to confront in a serious way, as we see in the comments to my post on this topic yesterday.

Goldberg: Two issues preoccupy you: housing segregation and education segregation. They're linked, obviously. To get to a place where there's actual equality in housing and actual equality in educational opportunities for African-Americans, what has to happen? It's not just a legislative process.

Hannah-Jones: It is not. Though, equal rights for black Americans has always had to be legislated. It's never been willingly given. What it would take, if we're honest, is a fundamental restructuring of society. Our public schools are not broken, but are operating as designed. Our public schools were set up to provide unequal, inadequate education for black children. So that's what they do.

Goldberg: But aren't the public schools just a downstream problem of housing segregation policies?

Hannah-Jones: No. They are clearly linked, but whether you have integrated communities or segregated communities, we have school segregation. In communities that are gentrifying, the gentrification stops at the schoolhouse door. White communities want neighborhood schools if their neighborhood school is white. If their neighborhood school is black, they want choice. Housing segregation just becomes a convenient excuse. The problem-and I never use the phrase "white supremacy" because it's a word that people automatically discount as soon as you use it, but that is the problem.

We have a system where white people control the outcomes. And the outcome that most white Americans want is segregation. And I don't mean the type of segregation that we saw in 1955. I don't mean complete segregation. I don't think there are very many white Americans who want entirely white schools. What they do want is a limited number of black kids in their schools.

Goldberg: What do you call "curated diversity."

Hannah-Jones: I never talk about school inequality in terms of "diversity" because I think it's a useless word. I think it's a word that white people love. When I say "curated diversity," it means white parents like a type of diversity so they'll still be the majority and there won't be too many black kids.

White Americans, in general, are willing to accept about the ratio of black Americans at large: 10 to 15 percent.

Goldberg: But you get into the 20s...

Hannah-Jones: When you get into the 20s, white folks start to exaggerate how large the percentage is. So in New York City, one of the most segregated school systems in the country, if you're a white parent in the public schools, you don't want all-white schools.

Goldberg: Because you're a liberal?

Hannah-Jones: Yeah. But what you want is a majority-white school with a small number of black kids and a good number of Latino, a good number of Asian. That makes you feel very good about yourself because you feel like your child is getting this beautiful integrated experience. The problem is that the public schools in New York City are 70 percent black and Latino. So, for you to have your beautiful diversity, that means that most black and Latino kids get absolutely none.

The tolerance for increasing particularly the percentage of black kids is very low, and even lower if those black kids are poor. No white parents in New York City mind having my kid in their school because they feel like I'm on their level. But if you get too many of kids like mine who are black but poor, there's very little tolerance.

And despite what white liberals want to say about their own actions to give their children "the best education," there is overwhelming evidence that these choices lead to racist outcomes. We will certainly not become serious about dealing with racism until white liberals, not to mention other whites, are willing to even admit this is the reality of their choices. It doesn't really matter whether you are making these choices to benefit your own children. You are making the world a more unequal place. And note the fundamental question of whether private schools are immoral, to which the answer is yes, they are immoral.

Goldberg: If you were the dictator of America, would you outlaw private schools? Would you force all the white kids, and all the upper-middle class and upper-class African-American kids, into the public-school system? You'd have a deep level of parental involvement, right? Are private schools immoral in this context?

Hannah-Jones: Interestingly, right after Brown there was consideration of whether or not Brown had to apply to private schools, or whether we should get rid of private schools in the United States altogether, understanding that the way to subvert Brown is to simply withdraw from public schools. Which is what happened all across the South-rather than share a public good with black folks, state legislatures decided to shut down public schools altogether and pay vouchers for white students to go to private segregation academies. We think it sounds absolutely crazy to consider ending private schools, but that was a consideration.

The answer to your question is yes, you would have to. If you truly wanted to equalize and integrate schools, you would have to. But you can go a step shorter than that.

New York City public schools are majority black and Latino. But you can go to any of the suburbs around, and they're very heavily white. So in New York and all across the North, you could simply move into an all-white community and go to all-white public schools. And that's how you avoided desegregation. In the South, most school districts were countywide. So you either paid for private school or you dealt with desegregation. In the North, you didn't have to do that.

The key difference between the North and the South is for the vast majority of the history of this country, 90 percent of all black people lived in the South. The South responds with Jim Crow, by passing laws that restrict the movement of black people. The North doesn't have to do that. It has a very tiny black population. It's only once black people start migrating out of the South in the 1900s that the North shows its true ugly racist head.

She later goes on:

Hannah-Jones: Right. My daughter is in a high-poverty school. We're clearly not poor. I think it makes her a better human being. I think she gets to see that these kids aren't any less than her. They just have less than her. But those are all hard soft-arguments to make to people who fundamentally view education as, how my kid will rise to the top above every other kid and get into Harvard. They don't actually give a damn about their kid being a better person.

Yes. And this is the fundamental problem with whites, education, and race.

Now, there is one other, unrelated issue, we need to discuss in this interview. And that's the idea about history getting better. There is a popular cliche that history is a slow arc that points toward justice. This is patently absurd. It does not. History is about power. No struggle is ever over. That includes, say, slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment does not guarantee that future generations will not want to put black people back into enslavement. Hell, we just saw the Republican candidate for the Senate in Alabama attack the Reconstruction Amendments. Saying that history gets better is something liberals tell themselves to feel better. It does not help. Watch Hannah-Jones eviscerate Goldberg on this point.

Jeffrey Goldberg: You and I have both had these conversations with my colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates about the arc of history and which way it bends. I've adopted the viewpoint of Barack Obama, that history is an arrow and the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice. And Ta-Nehisi says that there really is no moral arc, but if there were it would just bend toward chaos. Are you in the camp of people who say that long-term optimism is premature?

Nikole Hannah-Jones: I think it has not a lot of basis in historical fact. I would say the arc is actually a circle. It just perpetually turns back on itself.

Goldberg: But let's use African-Americans as an example. Life has gotten better, no? Before there was before there was Brown v. Board of Education, there was no Brown v. Board of Education. Before there was a Civil Rights Act, there was no Civil Rights Act. We don't live in a period of history free of lynchings, but the number of lynchings has gone down. There are more African-Americans in the middle class since Reconstruction. Life in America for African-Americans has gotten better. It's been stutter stepped, but we ain't in 1866 or 1873.

Hannah-Jones: I am not a slave. That's true.

Goldberg: Well ... All right.

Hannah-Jones: If that's the bar.

Goldberg: No, no, no.

Hannah-Jones: None of us would argue that there hasn't been progress in a range of things. I guess I get almost offended by people who want us to pause and be congratulatory about forward progress.

Goldberg: I just want it known for the record that I'm offending you already. And we haven't even started.

Hannah-Jones: I mean, in a country that has set itself apart as a beacon of democracy, the fact that we're applauding that black folks now have had, for 40 years, full citizenship rights in the country of their birth, in the country of their grandparents' birth, in the country their great grandparents' birth-it's just hard to feel a lot of optimism.

Goldberg: I'm not arguing for applauding. Obviously there is a long road to go. I'm just saying that there is a direction to things.

Hannah-Jones: Well, there's forward progress and then we move back. We're clearly right now moving back. So yes, we get the Voting Rights Act and now we get the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. We see a wave of voter suppression. We get Brown v. Board of Education and now black children are more segregated than they've been since the 1970s. We never made any real progress on housing segregation outside of the South and the West even though we outlawed housing discrimination in 1968. The wealth gap for black and white Americans is the largest that it's been since we started really recording this in the 1970s. There are more black men incarcerated than were black men enslaved during slavery. There are more black men killed by police than there were black men lynched in a year.

Goldberg: Okay fine. You win.

Goldberg wisely moves on because he has no leg to stand on. History does not get better. Not unless you fight for justice. And that includes not contributing to racial segregation in education.

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School Segregation: The Evil of a Racist Nation - Lawyers, Guns & Money

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This is a great interview between Jeffrey Goldberg and the civil rights writer Nikole Hannah-Jones. Two critical points here. First, it's that our school segregation is the sign of an inherently racist society, something that white liberals refuse to confront in a serious way, as we see in the comments to my post on this ...

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A tax levied on every adult, without reference to income or resources.

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Poll taxes in the United States - Wikipedia

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A poll tax is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual. Although often associated with states of the former Confederacy, poll taxes were also in place in some northern and western states, including California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin.

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The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

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The Compromise of 1877 refers to a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. Presidential election and ended the Reconstruction of the South period. After the Civil War, Congress started the Reconstruction. The South, of course, didn't want this Reconstruction and wanted to be more independent from the North. The North also really wanted the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, to win the presidential election. Due to these factors, the Republicans and Democrats cut a deal: reconstruction would end as long as Hayes became president. This, like the Corrupt Bargain, was a purchased presidency. However, unlike the Corrupt Bargain, it can be shown more as nationalism than sectionalism. The Corrupt Bargain highlighted the divide within the political parties, where as the Compromise of 1877 brings out a unity of the parties. Although the parties only favored the compromise because it was in their best interests, they still came together and reached just that...a compromise.

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The Compromise of 1877 refers to a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. Presidential election and ended the Reconstruction of the South period. After the Civil War, Congress started the Reconstruction. The South, of course, didn't want this Reconstruction and wanted to be more independent from the North.

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The Ku Klux Klan, commonly called the KKK or simply the Klan, refers to three distinct secret movements at different points in time in the history of the United States.

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Poetry can seem impenetrable for many readers, but the best examples usually have a simple message behind all the flowery language and symbolism. Whether they're tragic or funny, romantic or frightening, the timeless ones are always anchored in the real world-you might just have to give them a careful read to find the meaning.

Part of the reason why certain poems can endure for centuries is because the poets themselves are inspired by the same types of issues we endure every day: love, loss, fear, rage. The best of these works have a backstory that's just as interesting as the verses themselves; here's the story behind 15 poems we all learned in school.

1. "INVICTUS" // W.E. HENLEY

Perhaps no other poet on this list put their struggles down on paper as succinctly as W.E. Henley did with "the age of Invictus." At 12, Henley was diagnosed with arthritic tuberculosis, which eventually required the amputation of one leg during his late teens, and the possibility of losing the other. Refusing this fate, when Henley was in his mid-twenties, he instead turned to Dr. Joseph Lister, who performed an alternative surgery that saved the leg.

It was during the years spent in the hospital that Henley wrote "Invictus," a stark proclamation of his resistance against life's trials and tragedies. "Out of the night that covers me," it starts, "Black as the pit from pole to pole/I thank whatever gods may be/For my unconquerable soul." The poem famously ends with "I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul."

It's a poem that endures across all races and cultures. It was an inspiration to Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment and has been referenced in countless movies, television shows, and books ever since its publication in 1888.

2. "THE RED WHEELBARROW" // WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

It was originally published without a title-simply known by the number XXII-but "The Red Wheelbarrow" has grown into one of the most memorable short poems of the 20th century. It sprung from the mind of William Carlos Williams, whose day job was as a doctor in northern New Jersey. It's only 16 words, but it paints an unforgettable picture:

Williams had said that the imagery was inspired by a patient of his that he had grown close to while making a house call. "In his backyard," Williams said of the man, "I saw the red wheelbarrow surrounded by the white chickens. I suppose my affection for the old man somehow got into the writing."

It took some research and census records, but William Logan, an English professor at the University of Florida, finally discovered in 2015 that the man was Thaddeus Lloyd Marshall Sr. of Rutherford, New Jersey.

3. "IF-" // RUDYARD KIPLING

There may be no more fitting national mantra for the British people than Rudyard Kipling's " If-." The poem, which champions stoicism, is routinely one of the UK's favorites in polls, with lines like "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same" and "If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew/To serve your turn long after they are gone" serving as a rallying cry for the stiff-upper-lip crowd.

For everything that Kipling put on the page, the story behind the poem is just as notable. Kipling was inspired by the actions of Leander Starr Jameson, a politician and adventurer responsible for leading the infamous Jameson Raid, a failed attempt over the 1895-96 New Year holiday to incite an uprising among the British "Uitlanders" in South Africa against the Boers, or the descendants of early, chiefly Dutch, settlers.

The raid was a catastrophe, and Jameson and his surviving men were extradited back to England for trial as the government condemned the attempt. He was sentenced to 15 months (though he was released early), but his actions had gained the respect of the people of England-Jameson was punished, but it was felt that he was betrayed by his own government, including Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, who was widely suspected of having supported the raid during the planning but denounced it when it failed.

This theme can be read in Kipling's words "If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you" and "If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,/Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,/Or being hated, don't give way to hating."

4. "JABBERWOCKY" // LEWIS CARROLL

Long before Lewis Carroll introduced the nonsensical " Jabberwocky" in 1871's Through the Looking-Glass, he wrote a rough version of the poem in 1855 under the title "Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry." It appeared in the periodical he created to amuse his friends and family called Mischmasch.

The poem featured the stanza: "Twas bryllyg, and the slythy toves/Did gyre and gymble in the wabe/All mimsy were the borogoves;/And the mome raths outgrabe," which would remain (though slightly tweaked) in Looking-Glass years later as both the first and final stanzas.

When he wrote Looking-Glass, Carroll returned to the basic foundation of the poem, but he added the five middle stanzas that introduced the Jabberwock. The inspiration behind the monster itself has been said to be anything from Beowulf to a local folk monster called the Sockburn Worm from the village of Croft-on-Tees, where Carroll wrote.

So where did Carroll get the name Jabberwock from? The author himself later explained it by saying "The Anglo-Saxon word 'wocer' or 'wocor' signifies 'offspring' or 'fruit'. Taking 'jabber' in its ordinary acceptation of 'excited and voluble discussion,' this would give the meaning of 'the result of much excited discussion.'"

If all that still sounds like nonsense to you-well, that's probably how he wanted it.

5. "WE REAL COOL" // GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and became "Poet Laureate" in the 1985-86 term (back when the position was properly called Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress). Despite all the accolades, Brooks might be best known to casual readers for the poem " We Real Cool," a brief, four-verse piece that depicts the lives of young people playing pool, drinking gin, and "singing sin."

Brooks was inspired to write the poem when she was walking through her neighborhood and noticed seven young boys at the local pool hall during school hours. As she said during a live reading of the poem, she wasn't so much concerned with why they weren't in school, she was more curious with "how they feel about themselves."

Apparently the answer is "real cool."

6. "THE RAVEN" // EDGAR ALLAN POE

A lot of real-life inspiration went into Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven." First, there was the fact that his wife was deathly ill with tuberculosis during the time of writing and publication. Then, the raven itself was partly inspired by one owned by Charles Dickens, who had also been inspired to include it in his own book, Barnaby Rudge. ( Rudge's raven even coaxes a character to exclaim "What was that? Him tapping at the door?" Similar to Poe's "rapping at my chamber door" raven.)

But while so many great works have backstories that are more legend than fact, Poe detailed his writing process of "The Raven" in the essay " The Philosophy of Composition." Here he revealed in meticulous detail how he came up with the tone, rhythm, and form of the poem, even going as far as to claim he decided on the refrain of "nevermore" because "the long o as the most sonorous vowel, in connection with r as the most producible consonant."

7. "THE ROAD NOT TAKEN" // ROBERT FROST

For " The Road Not Taken," poet Robert Frost found inspiration in his friend, English literary critic Edward Thomas. It was originally conceived as sort of an inside joke at Thomas's expense, a callback to the fact that Thomas would always regret whatever path the two of them would take when out walking together.

It's a very human instinct to regret or overthink our choices and wonder-often in vain-what the alternative would be like. While many people tend to think the poem is about the triumph of individuality, some argue that it's really about regret and how we either celebrate our successes or blame our misfortunes on our seemingly arbitrary choices.

When you read it like that, saying "And that has made all the difference" smacks of a bit more irony than it did back when you first read it in high school.

8. "THE NEW COLOSSUS" // EMMA LAZARUS

When Emma Lazarus wrote " The New Colossus" in 1883, it was only meant to be part of an auction to raise money for the foundation for the Statue of Liberty. It sold for $1500-not bad for a 105-word sonnet written in two days-but though it was printed in some limited-release pamphlets by the fundraising group, the poem wasn't read at the dedication of the statue in 1886.

Unfortunately, Lazarus never got to see how far and wide her words would resonate-when she died in 1887, her New York Times obituary didn't even mention the poem. It was only well after the statue had been completed that "The New Colossus" was added to its base, thanks to the urging of Lazarus's friend and admirer Georgina Schuyler. Then, slowly, "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" entered the public lexicon and became ingrained as part of America's national identity.

9. "O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!" // WALT WHITMAN

Walt Whitman witnessed the Civil War up close. Though he was already in his forties during the fighting, he volunteered at hospitals in the Washington, D.C. area-sometimes he would bring food and supplies to the soldiers, other times he just kept them company.

Seeing the schism the war had caused, Whitman began to take a genuine interest in, and found a deep respect for, the burden President Abraham Lincoln was dealing with. When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, Whitman channeled his grief into a number of poems, the most famous being " O Captain! My Captain!"

The poem was a metaphor for what the country had just been through-America itself as the ship that had just weathered a great storm, and Lincoln as the fallen captain, whose "lips are pale and still."

10. "SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY" // LORD BYRON

The story behind the lyrical poem " She Walks in Beauty" is as lovely as the verse Lord Byron weaved. In June 1814, Byron attended a London party where he first saw Anne Wilmot, his cousin's wife. She was wearing a striking black mourning dress that was adorned in spangles, and her beauty inspired Byron's poem, most famously its first four lines:
"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes."
Some have interpreted the "cloudless climes and starry skies" as a description of the famous dress that drew Byron's attention to Mrs. Wilmot.

11. "THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS" // LANGSTON HUGHES
"The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds."
He was just 19 when he published this poem, but Langston Hughes's " The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is one of his most well-known works. The idea came to him while he was traveling by train to Mexico City to visit his father-specifically, as he was crossing the Mississippi River near St. Louis, Missouri.

In the poem, the narrator speaks of rivers-how they're ancient, older than humans themselves. He also says, despite this, he knows rivers. "My soul has grown deep like the rivers." He's bathed in the Euphrates, built a hut on the Congo, looked upon the Nile, and heard the singing of the Mississippi. These rivers have important links to human history, to new societies, to African Americans, and to slavery. And all it took was a simple train ride to find the ties that bind them all together.

12. "TULIPS" // SYLVIA PLATH

" Tulips" has a simple enough backstory-it was inspired by a bouquet of flowers Sylvia Plath received while in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy. But Plath turned the event into one of her most renowned poems, beginning with the line "The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here."

Sprinkled throughout are visuals of the red tulips and the white, sanitary hospital, staffed with a never-ending army of nurses.

So much of Plath's life and work revolved around tragedy, and "Tulips" is one of the most discussed windows into her personality.

13. "OZYMANDIAS" // PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley traveled in an elite literary circle that included the likes of Lord Byron and John Keats. So what would a group of young intellectual writers do to stimulate their interest and spark their creativity? Well, they'd compete, of course.

One of Shelley's most famous poems, "Ozymandias," was likely born out of a competition between himself and writer Horace Smith (very similar to the 1816 competition between Shelley, his soon-to-be wife Mary Shelley, Byron, and physician John Polidori over who could write the best horror story-Mary's Frankenstein was the winner there). The goal was to write dueling poems on the same concept-the description of a statue of Ramses II (also known as Ozymandias) from the works of Greek historian Diodorus Siculus. Most important was the statue's inscription: "I am Osymandias, king of kings; if any would know how great I am, and where I lie, let him excel me in any of my works."

Shelley described Siculus's same statue but in decay, a boastful monument now left to rot. This would serve as a warning that no matter how powerful one may think themselves to be, we're all helpless to the scourge of time. For a political writer such as Shelley, the imagery was too perfect.

Shelley's version of "Ozymandias" appeared in The Examiner in 1818 almost a month before Smith's, which, by the rules of these arbitrary competitions, likely led to Shelley being victorious.

14. "DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT" // DYLAN THOMAS

Gabriel Hackett, Getty Images

In one of the most cherished poems about mortality, Dylan Thomas urged his dying father to fight back against the inevitability of death and immortalized the refrain "Do not go gentle into that good night." Published in 1951, the poem focuses on a son urging his father to be defiant ("Rage, rage against the dying of the light") and arguing that while all men eventually die, they don't have to do so resignedly. The poem was released shortly before Thomas's own death in 1953 at the age of 39 and is still studied in schools and referenced in popular culture.

15. "A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS" // DISPUTED

Everyone knows the poem-"'Twas the night before Christmas" and all that-but scholars can't quite agree on the author. Some say it was a poet and professor named Clement Clarke Moore, who allegedly wrote the piece for his kids before his housekeeper sent it in to New York's Troy Sentinel for publication in 1823 without his knowledge.

On the other side is Henry Livingston, Jr., whose family said they were reciting this poem 15 years before it was published in the Sentinel. Unfortunately, any proof they had was gone when their home-which allegedly contained handwritten versions of the poem that predate Moore's-burned down.

For now, it's Moore who officially gets credit for the cherished poem, but it's not without a bit of holiday controversy.

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The Day Notre Dame Students Pummeled the Ku Klux Klan

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Poetry can seem impenetrable for many readers, but the best examples usually have a simple message behind all the flowery language and symbolism. Whether they're tragic or funny, romantic or frightening, the timeless ones are always anchored in the real world-you might just have to give them a careful read to find the meaning.

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Hiram Rhodes Revels was a U.S. Senator, minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and a college administrator.

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For more on Hiram Revels, the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate, visit Biography.com.

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The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude

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The Fifteenth Amendment - The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan

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Impeachment is the process by which a legislative body formally levels charges against a high official of government.

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Impeachment in the United States is the process by which a legislature's lower house brings charges against a civil federal officer, the vice president, or the president for misconduct alleged to have been committed. Impeachment may also occur at the state level if the state or commonwealth has provisions for it under its constitution. The federal House of Representatives can impeach a party with a simple majority of the House members present or such other criteria as the House adopts in accordance with Article One, Section 2, Clause 5 of the United States Constitution. Most state legislatures can impeach state officials, including the governor, in accordance with their respective state constitution.

Most impeachments have concerned alleged crimes committed while in office, though there is no requirement for the misconduct to be an indictable crime. There have been a few cases in which officials have been impeached and subsequently convicted for crimes committed prior to taking office. There have also been cases where a former official was tried after leaving office. The impeached official may continue to serve their term until a trial yields a judgement that directs their removal from office or until they leave office through some other means. Federally, a two-thirds majority of the senators present at the trial is required for conviction under Article One, Section 3, Clause 6 of the Constitution.

The impeachment proceedings are remedial rather than punitive in nature, and the remedy is limited to removal from office. Because all officers in the federal government are confirmed in the Senate, officers appointed under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution may also be disqualified from holding any other appointed office under the United States in the future. Because the process is not punitive, a party may also be subject to criminal or civil trial, prosecution, and conviction under the law after removal from office. Also because the conviction is not a punishment, the president is constitutionally precluded from granting a pardon to impeached and convicted persons.

Article I, Section 2, Clause 5 of the United States Constitution provides:

The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Article I, Section 3, Clauses 6 and 7 provide:

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present. Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

Article II, Section 2 provides:

[The President]... shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

Article II, Section 4 provides:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The Constitution limits grounds of impeachment to "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors", but does not itself define "high crimes and misdemeanors".

Congressional materials have cautioned that the grounds for impeachment "do not all fit neatly and logically into categories" because the remedy of impeachment is intended to "reach a broad variety of conduct by officers that is both serious and incompatible with the duties of the office". Congress has identified three general types of conduct that constitute grounds for impeachment, although these categories should not be understood as exhaustive:

1. improperly exceeding or abusing the powers of the office;

2. behavior incompatible with the function and purpose of the office; and

3. misusing the office for an improper purpose or for personal gain.

"High crimes and misdemeanors", in the legal and common parlance of England in the 17th and 18th centuries, is corrupt activity by those who have special duties that are not shared with common persons. Toward the end of the 18th century, "High crimes and misdemeanors" acquired a more technical meaning. As Blackstone says in his Commentaries: The first and principal high misdemeanor...was mal-administration of such high offices as are in public trust and employment.

The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" was a common phrase when the U.S. Constitution was written and did not require any stringent or difficult criteria for determining guilt, but meant the opposite. The crimes are called "high crimes" because they are carried out by a person in a position of public authority, or by misusing the position of public authority they have been given. It does not mean that the crimes themselves are unusual or "higher" types of crime. The phrase was historically used to cover a very broad range of crimes. In 1974 the Senate's Judiciary Committee's stated that "'High Crimes and Misdemeanors' has traditionally been considered a ' term of art', like such other constitutional phrases as 'levying war' and 'due process.'

Several commentators have suggested that Congress alone may decide for itself what constitutes a "high Crime or Misdemeanor", especially since the Supreme Court decided in Nixon v. United States that it did not have the authority to determine whether the Senate properly "tried" a defendant. In 1970, then- House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford defined the criterion as he saw it: "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history."

Of the 21 impeachments voted by the House:

No official has been charged with treason

Three officials have been charged with bribery

The remaining charges against all the other officials fall under the category of "high Crimes and Misdemeanors".

The standard of proof required for impeachment and conviction is also left to the discretion of individual representatives and senators, respectively. Defendants have argued that impeachment trials are in the nature of criminal proceedings, with convictions carrying grave consequences for the accused, and that therefore proof beyond a reasonable doubt should be the applicable standard. House Managers have argued that a lower standard would be appropriate to better serve the purpose of defending the community against abuse of power, since the defendant does not risk forfeiture of life, liberty, or property, for which the reasonable doubt standard was set.

In drawing up articles of impeachment, the House has placed little emphasis on criminal conduct. Less than one-third of the articles that the House have adopted have explicitly charged the violation of a criminal statute or used the word "criminal" or "crime" to describe the conduct alleged. Officials have been impeached and removed for drunkenness, biased decision-making, or inducing parties to enter financial transactions, none of which is specifically criminal. Two of the articles against President Andrew Johnson were based on rude speech that reflected badly on the office: President Johnson had made "harangues" criticizing the Congress and questioning its legislative authority, refusing to follow laws, and diverting funds allocated in an army appropriations act, each of which brought the presidency "into contempt, ridicule, and disgrace". A number of individuals have been impeached for behavior incompatible with the nature of the office they hold. Some impeachments have addressed, at least in part, conduct before the individuals assumed their positions: for example, Article IV against Judge Thomas Porteous related to false statements to the FBI and Senate in connection with his nomination and confirmation to the court.

Conversely, not all criminal conduct is impeachable: in 1974, the Judiciary Committee rejected an article of impeachment against President Nixon alleging that he committed tax fraud, primarily because that "related to the President's private conduct, not to an abuse of his authority as President".

Who can be impeached

The Constitution gives Congress the authority to impeach and remove "The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States" upon a determination that such officers have engaged in treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. The Constitution does not articulate who qualifies as a "civil officer of the United States".

Federal judges are subject to impeachment. In fact, 15 of 20 officers impeached, and all eight officers removed after Senate trial, have been judges. The most recent impeachment effort against a Supreme Court justice that resulted in a House of Representatives investigation was against Associate Justice William O. Douglas. In 1970, Representative Gerald R. Ford (R-MI), who was then House minority leader, called for the House to impeach Douglas. However, a House investigation led by Congressman Emanuel Celler (D-NY) determined that Ford's allegations were baseless. According to Professor Joshua E. Kastenberg at the University of New Mexico, School of Law, Ford and Nixon sought to force Douglas off the Court in order to cement the " Southern strategy" as well as to provide cover for the invasion of Cambodia.

Within the executive branch, any presidentially appointed "principal officer", including a head of an agency such as a Secretary, Administrator, or Commissioner, is a "civil officer of the United States" subject to impeachment. At the opposite end of the spectrum, lesser functionaries, such as federal civil service employees, do not exercise "significant authority", and are not appointed by the president or an agency head. These employees do not appear to be subject to impeachment, though that may be a matter of allocation of House floor debate time by the Speaker, rather than a matter of law.

The Senate has concluded that members of Congress (representatives and senators) are not "civil officers" for purposes of impeachment. As a practical matter, expulsion is effected by the simpler procedures of Article I, Section 5, which provides "Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members... Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member." ( see List of United States senators expelled or censured and List of United States representatives expelled, censured, or reprimanded). This allows each House to expel its own members without involving the other chamber. In 1797, the House of Representatives impeached Senator William Blount of Tennessee. The Senate expelled Senator Blount under Article I, Section 5, on the same day. However, the impeachment proceeding remained pending (expulsion only removes the individual from office, but conviction after impeachment may also bar the individual from holding future office, so the question of further punishment remained to be decided). After four days of debate, the Senate concluded that a Senator is not a "civil officer of the United States" for purposes of the Impeachment clause, and dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The House has not impeached a Member of Congress since.

The constitutional text is silent on whether an officer can be tried after the officer resigns or his/her term ends. However, when the issue has arisen, the House has been willing to impeach after resignation, and the Senate has been willing to try the official after resignation. As noted, in 1797, the Senate continued impeachment proceedings against William Blount even after he had been expelled from office, dismissing the proceedings only after determining that a Senator is not a "civil officer of the United States." In 1876, William W. Belknap was impeached by the House of Representatives hours after resigning as United States Secretary of War. The Senate held by a 37-29 vote that it had jurisdiction to try Belknap notwithstanding his resignation, but ultimately acquitted him after trial. The permissibility of trying a former official was a major issue in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, which commenced 20 days after Trump's term in office expired, although Trump's impeachment itself occurred while he was President. By a 55-45 vote, the Senate rejected a motion asserting that the trial was unconstitutional.

The Constitution does not limit the number of times an individual may be impeached. As of 2022, Donald Trump is the only federal officer to have been impeached more than once.

At the federal level, the impeachment process is a three-step procedure.

First, the Congress investigates. This investigation typically begins in the House Judiciary Committee, but may begin elsewhere. For example, the Nixon impeachment inquiry began in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The facts that led to impeachment of Bill Clinton were first discovered in the course of an investigation by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. This step was skipped during the second impeachment of Donald Trump.

Second, the House of Representatives must pass, by a simple majority of those present and voting, articles of impeachment, which constitute the formal allegation or allegations. Upon passage, the defendant has been "impeached".

Third, the Senate tries the accused. In the case of the impeachment of a president, the chief justice of the United States presides over the proceedings. For the impeachment of any other official, the Constitution is silent on who shall preside, suggesting that this role falls to the Senate's usual presiding officer, the president of the Senate, who is also the vice president of the United States. Conviction in the Senate requires the concurrence of a two-thirds supermajority of those present. The result of conviction is removal from office and (optionally, in a separate vote) disqualification from holding any federal office in the future, which requires a concurrence of only a majority of senators present.

A number of rules have been adopted by the House and Senate and are honored by tradition.

Jefferson's Manual, which is integral to the Rules of the House of Representatives, states that impeachment is set in motion by charges made on the floor, charges proffered by a memorial, a member's resolution referred to a committee, a message from the president, or from facts developed and reported by an investigating committee of the House. It further states that a proposition to impeach is a question of high privilege in the House and at once supersedes business otherwise in order under the rules governing the order of business.

The House Practice: A Guide to the Rules, Precedents and Procedures of the House is a reference source for information on the rules and selected precedents governing the House procedure, prepared by the House Parliamentarian. The manual has a chapter on the House's rules, procedures, and precedent for impeachment.

In 1974, as part of the preliminary investigation in the Nixon impeachment inquiry, the staff of the Impeachment Inquiry of the House Judiciary Committee prepared a report, Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment. The primary focus of the Report is the definition of the term "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" and the relationship to criminality, which the Report traces through history from English roots, through the debates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and the history of the impeachments before 1974.

The 1974 report has been expanded and revised on several occasions by the Congressional Research Service, and the current version Impeachment and Removal dates from October 2015. While this document is only staff recommendation, as a practical matter, today it is probably the single most influential definition of "high Crimes and Misdemeanors".

The Senate has formal Rules and Procedures of Practice in the Senate When Sitting on Impeachment Trials.

Calls for impeachment, and Congressional power to investigate

While the actual impeachment of a federal public official is rare, demands for impeachment, especially of presidents, are common, going back to the administration of George Washington in the mid-1790s.

While almost all of them were abandoned as soon as they were introduced, several did have their intended effect. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas both resigned in response to the threat of impeachment hearings, and most famously, President Richard Nixon resigned from office after the House Judiciary Committee had already reported articles of impeachment to the floor.

In advance of the formal resolution by the full House to authorize proceedings, committee chairmen have the same power for impeachment as for any other issue within the jurisdiction of the committee: to investigate, subpoena witnesses, and prepare a preliminary report of findings. For example:

In 1970, House minority leader Gerald R. Ford attempted to initiate impeachment proceedings against Associate Justice William O. Douglas; the attempt included a 90-minute speech on the House floor. The House did not vote to initiate proceedings.

In 1973, the Senate Watergate hearings (with testimony from John Dean, and the revelation of the White House tapes by Alexander Butterfield) were held in May and June 1973, and the House Judiciary Committee authorized Chairman Rodino to commence an investigation, with subpoena power, on October 30, 1973. The full House voted to initiate impeachment proceedings on February 6, 1974, that is, after nine months of formal investigations by various Congressional committees.

Other examples are discussed in the article on Impeachment investigations of United States federal officials.

Targets of congressional investigations have challenged the power of Congress to investigate before a formal resolution commences impeachment proceedings. For example, President Buchanan wrote to the committee investigating his administration:

I do, therefore,... solemnly protest against these proceedings of the House of Representatives, because they are in violation of the rights of the coordinate executive branch of the Government, and subversive of its constitutional independence; because they are calculated to foster a band of interested parasites and informers, ever ready, for their own advantage, to swear before ex parte committees to pretended private conversations between the President and themselves, incapable, from their nature, of being disproved; thus furnishing material for harassing him, degrading him in the eyes of the country...

He maintained that the House of Representatives possessed no general powers to investigate him, except when sitting as an impeaching body.

When the Supreme Court has considered similar issues, it held that the power to secure "needed information... has long been treated as an attribute of the power to legislate.... [The power to investigate is deeply rooted in the nation's history:] It was so regarded in the British Parliament and in the colonial Legislatures before the American Revolution, and a like view has prevailed and been carried into effect in both houses of Congress and in most of the state Legislatures." The Supreme Court also held, "There can be no doubt as to the power of Congress, by itself or through its committees, to investigate matters and conditions relating to contemplated legislation."

The Supreme Court considered the power of the Congress to investigate, and to subpoena executive branch officials, in a pair of cases arising out of alleged corruption in the administration of President Warren G. Harding. In the first, McGrain v. Daugherty, the Court considered a subpoena issued to the brother of Attorney General Harry Daugherty for bank records relevant to the Senate's investigation into the Department of Justice. Concluding that the subpoena was valid, the Court explained that Congress's "power of inquiry... is an essential and appropriate auxiliary to the legislative function", as "[a] legislative body cannot legislate wisely or effectively in the absence of information respecting the conditions which the legislation is intended to affect or change." The Supreme Court held that it was irrelevant that the Senate's authorizing resolution lacked an "avow[al] that legislative action was had in view" because, said the Court, "the subject to be investigated was... [p]lainly [a] subject... on which legislation could be had" and such legislation "would be materially aided by the information which the investigation was calculated to elicit." Although "[a]n express avowal" of the Senate's legislative objective "would have been better", the Court admonished that "the presumption should be indulged that [legislation] was the real object."

Two years later, in Sinclair v. United States, the Court considered investigation of private parties involved with officials under potential investigation for public corruption. In Sinclair, Harry F. Sinclair, the president of an oil company, appealed his conviction for refusing to answer a Senate committee's questions regarding his company's allegedly fraudulent lease on federal oil reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming. The Court, acknowledging individuals' "right to be exempt from all unauthorized, arbitrary or unreasonable inquiries and disclosures in respect of their personal and private affairs", nonetheless explained that because "[i]t was a matter of concern to the United States, ... the transaction purporting to lease to [Sinclair's company] the lands within the reserve cannot be said to be merely or principally... personal." The Court also dismissed the suggestion that the Senate was impermissibly conducting a criminal investigation. "It may be conceded that Congress is without authority to compel disclosures for the purpose of aiding the prosecution of pending suits," explained the Court, "but the authority of that body, directly or through its committees, to require pertinent disclosures in aid of its own constitutional power is not abridged because the information sought to be elicited may also be of use in such suits."

The Supreme Court reached similar conclusions in a number of other cases. In Barenblatt v. United States, the Court permitted Congress to punish contempt, when a person refused to answer questions while testifying under subpoena by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The Court explained that although "Congress may not constitutionally require an individual to disclose his ... private affairs except in relation to ... a valid legislative purpose", such a purpose was present. Congress's "wide power to legislate in the field of Communist activity... and to conduct appropriate investigations in aid thereof[] is hardly debatable," said the Court, and "[s]o long as Congress acts in pursuance of its constitutional power, the Judiciary lacks authority to intervene on the basis of the motives which spurred the exercise of that power."

Presidents have often been the subjects of Congress's legislative investigations. For example, in 1832, the House vested a select committee with subpoena power "to inquire whether an attempt was made by the late Secretary of War... [to] fraudulently [award]... a contract for supplying rations" to Native Americans and to "further... inquire whether the President... had any knowledge of such attempted fraud, and whether he disapproved or approved of the same." In the 1990s, first the House and Senate Banking Committees and then a Senate special committee investigated President and Mrs. Clinton's involvement in the Whitewater land deal and related matters. The Senate had an enabling resolution; the House did not.

The Supreme Court has also explained that Congress has not only the power, but the duty, to investigate so it can inform the public of the operations of government:

It is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees. It is meant to be the eyes and the voice, and to embody the wisdom and will of its constituents. Unless Congress have and use every means of acquainting itself with the acts and the disposition of the administrative agents of the government, the country must be helpless to learn how it is being served; and unless Congress both scrutinize these things and sift them by every form of discussion, the country must remain in embarrassing, crippling ignorance of the very affairs which it is most important that it should understand and direct. The informing function of Congress should be preferred even to its legislative function.

Impeachment proceedings may be requested by a member of the House of Representatives on his or her own initiative, either by presenting a list of the charges under oath or by asking for referral to the appropriate committee. The impeachment process may be requested by non-members. For example, when the Judicial Conference of the United States suggests a federal judge be impeached, a charge of actions constituting grounds for impeachment may come from a special prosecutor, the president, or state or territorial legislature, grand jury, or by petition. An impeachment proceeding formally begins with a resolution adopted by the full House of Representatives, which typically includes a referral to a House committee.

The type of impeachment resolution determines the committee to which it is referred. A resolution impeaching a particular individual is typically referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. A resolution to authorize an investigation regarding impeachable conduct is referred to the House Committee on Rules, and then to the Judiciary Committee. The House Committee on the Judiciary, by majority vote, will determine whether grounds for impeachment exist (this vote is not law and is not required, US Constitution and US law).

Where the Committee finds grounds for impeachment, it will set forth specific allegations of misconduct in one or more articles of impeachment. The Impeachment Resolution, or Articles of Impeachment, are then reported to the full House with the committee's recommendations.

The House debates the resolution and may at the conclusion consider the resolution as a whole or vote on each article of impeachment individually. A simple majority of those present and voting is required for each article for the resolution as a whole to pass. If the House votes to impeach, managers (typically referred to as "House managers", with a "lead House manager") are selected to present the case to the Senate. Recently, managers have been selected by resolution, while historically the House would occasionally elect the managers or pass a resolution allowing the appointment of managers at the discretion of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. These managers are roughly the equivalent of the prosecution or district attorney in a standard criminal trial. Also, the House will adopt a resolution in order to notify the Senate of its action. After receiving the notice, the Senate will adopt an order notifying the House that it is ready to receive the managers. The House managers then appear before the bar of the Senate and exhibit the articles of impeachment. After the reading of the charges, the managers return and make a verbal report to the House.

Senate rules call for an impeachment trial to begin at 1 pm on the day after articles of impeachment are delivered to the Senate, except for Sundays. There is no timeframe requirement for when the managers must actually deliver the articles of impeachment to the Senate. On the set date, senators are sworn in for the impeachment trial.

The proceedings take the form of a trial, with the Senate having the right to call witnesses and each side having the right to perform cross-examinations. The House members, who are given the collective title of managers during the trial, present the prosecution case, and the impeached official has the right to mount a defense with his or her own attorneys as well. Senators must also take an oath or affirmation that they will perform their duties honestly and with due diligence. After hearing the charges, the Senate usually deliberates in private. The Constitution requires a two-thirds supermajority to convict a person being impeached. The Senate enters judgment on its decision, whether that be to convict or acquit, and a copy of the judgment is filed with the Secretary of State.

Upon conviction in the Senate, the official is automatically removed from office and may by a separate vote also be barred from holding future office. The Senate trial is not an actual criminal proceeding and more closely resembles a civil service termination appeal in terms of the contemplated deprivation. Therefore, the removed official may still be liable to criminal prosecution under a subsequent criminal proceeding. The president may not grant a pardon in the impeachment case, but may in any resulting federal criminal case (unless it is the president who is convicted and thus loses the pardon power). However, whether the president can self-pardon for criminal offenses is an open question, which has never been reviewed by a court.[failed verification - see discussion]

Beginning in the 1980s with Harry E. Claiborne, the Senate began using "Impeachment Trial Committees" pursuant to Senate Rule XI. These committees presided over the evidentiary phase of the trials, hearing the evidence and supervising the examination and cross-examination of witnesses. The committees would then compile the evidentiary record and present it to the Senate; all senators would then have the opportunity to review the evidence before the chamber voted to convict or acquit. The purpose of the committees was to streamline impeachment trials, which otherwise would have taken up a great deal of the chamber's time. Defendants challenged the use of these committees, claiming them to be a violation of their fair trial rights as this did not meet the constitutional requirement for their cases to be "tried by the Senate". Several impeached judges, including District Court Judge Walter Nixon, sought court intervention in their impeachment proceedings on these grounds. In Nixon v. United States (1993), the Supreme Court determined that the federal judiciary could not review such proceedings, as matters related to impeachment trials are political questions and could not be resolved in the courts.

In the case of impeachment of the president, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides over the trial. During the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, some Senate Republicans argued that the Chief Justice was required to preside, even though Trump was no longer the President when the trial began. However, by a 55-45 vote, the Senate rejected a motion asserting that the trial was unconstitutional. The trial was presided over by President pro tempore Patrick Leahy.

The Constitution is silent about who would preside in the case of the impeachment of a vice president. It is doubtful the vice president would be permitted to preside over their own trial.[citation needed ] As president of the Senate, the vice president would preside over other impeachments. If the vice president did not preside over an impeachment (of anyone besides the president), the duties would fall to the president pro tempore of the Senate.

To convict an accused, "the concurrence of two thirds of the [senators] present" for at least one article is required. If there is no single charge commanding a "guilty" vote from two-thirds of the senators present, the defendant is acquitted and no punishment is imposed.

Conviction immediately removes the defendant from office. Following the vote on conviction, the Senate may by a separate vote also bar the individual from holding future federal office, elected or appointed. As the threshold for disqualification is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, the Senate has taken the position that disqualification votes only require a simple majority rather than a two-thirds supermajority. The Senate has used disqualification sparingly, as only three individuals have been disqualified from holding future office.

Conviction does not extend to further punishment, for example, loss of pension. After conviction by the Senate, "the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law"[This quote needs a citation ] in the regular federal or state courts. However, the Former Presidents Act of 1958, which provides a pension and other benefits, does not extend to presidents who were removed from office following an impeachment conviction. Because of an amendment to that law in 2013, a former president who has been removed from office due to impeachment and conviction is still guaranteed lifetime Secret Service protection.

In the United Kingdom, impeachment was a procedure whereby a member of the House of Commons could accuse someone of a crime. If the Commons voted for the impeachment, a trial would then be held in the House of Lords. Unlike a bill of attainder, a law declaring a person guilty of a crime, impeachments did not require royal assent, so they could be used to remove troublesome officers of the Crown even if the monarch was trying to protect them.

The monarch, however, was above the law and could not be impeached, or indeed judged guilty of any crime. When King Charles I was tried before the Rump Parliament of the New Model Army in 1649 he denied that they had any right to legally indict him, their king, whose power was given by God and the laws of the country, saying: "no earthly power can justly call me (who is your King) in question as a delinquent... no learned lawyer will affirm that an impeachment can lie against the King." While the House of Commons pronounced him guilty and ordered his execution anyway, the jurisdictional issue tainted the proceedings.

With this example in mind, the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention chose to include an impeachment procedure in Article II, Section4 of the Constitution which could be applied to any government official; they explicitly mentioned the president to ensure there would be no ambiguity. Opinions differed, however, as to the reasons Congress should be able to initiate an impeachment. Initial drafts listed only treason and bribery, but George Mason favored impeachment for "maladministration" (incompetence). James Madison argued that impeachment should only be for criminal behavior, arguing that a maladministration standard would effectively mean that the president would serve at the pleasure of the Senate. Thus the delegates adopted a compromise version allowing impeachment by the House for "treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors" and conviction by the Senate only with the concurrence of two-thirds of the senators present.

The House has approved articles of impeachment 21 times for 20 federal officers. Of these:

Of the 21 impeachments by the House, eight defendants were convicted and removed from office, four cases did not come to trial because the individuals had left office and the Senate did not pursue the case, and nine ended in acquittal. To date, every convicted official was a federal judge. Of the eight to have been convicted and removed, three were disqualified from ever holding federal office again by the Senate. One of the remaining five is former congressman Alcee Hastings (D-Florida), who was convicted and removed from office as a federal judge in 1989, but was not barred from holding federal office, only to be elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1992, a seat he held until his death on April 6, 2021.

No president impeached by the House has been convicted by the Senate. In two cases, a Senate majority voted to convict an impeached president, but the vote fell short of the required two-thirds majority and therefore the impeached president was not convicted. The two instances where this happened were the Senate trial of Andrew Johnson in 1868 (where Johnson escaped conviction by one vote), and the second Senate trial of Donald Trump in 2021, where Trump missed conviction by 10 votes.

The following table lists federal officials who were impeached. Blue highlight indicates presidents of the United States.

#

Date of impeachment

Accused

Office

Accusations

Result[Note 1]

1

July 7, 1797

William Blount

United States Senator ( Tennessee)

Conspiring to assist Britain in capturing Spanish territory

2

March 2, 1803

John Pickering

Judge ( District of New Hampshire)

Drunkenness and unlawful rulings

3

March 12, 1804

Samuel Chase

Associate Justice ( Supreme Court of the United States)

Political bias and arbitrary rulings, promoting a partisan political agenda on the bench[53]

Acquitted on March 1, 1805[49][52]

4

April 24, 1830

James H. Peck

Judge ( District of Missouri)

5

May 6, 1862

West Hughes Humphreys

Judge ( Eastern, Middle, and Western Districts of Tennessee)

Supporting the Confederacy

6

February 24, 1868

Andrew Johnson

President of the United States

Violating the Tenure of Office Act. The Supreme Court would later state in dicta that the (by then repealed) Tenure of Office Act had been unconstitutional.[55]

Acquitted on May 26, 1868; 35-19 in favor of conviction, falling one vote short of two-thirds.[49][51]

8

March 2, 1876

William W. Belknap

United States Secretary of War (resigned just before impeachment vote)

Graft, corruption

Resigned on March 2, 1876; acquitted on August 1, 1876[49][51]

9

December 13, 1904

Charles Swayne

Judge ( Northern District of Florida)

Failure to live in his district, abuse of power[57]

10

July 11, 1912

Robert W. Archbald

Associate Justice (( United States Commerce Court)
Judge Third Circuit Court of Appeals)

Improper acceptance of gifts from litigants and attorneys

12

February 24, 1933

Harold Louderback

Judge ( Northern District of California)

Corruption

13

March 2, 1936

Halsted L. Ritter

Judge ( Southern District of Florida)

Champerty, corruption, tax evasion, practicing law while a judge

17

December 19, 1998

Bill Clinton

President of the United States

Acquitted on February 12, 1999: 45-55 on perjury and 50-50 on obstruction of justice[49][59]

20

December 18, 2019

Donald Trump

President of the United States

Abuse of power and obstruction of Congress

Acquitted on February 5, 2020: 48-52 on abuse of power and 47-53 on obstruction of Congress

21

January 13, 2021

Incitement of insurrection

Acquitted on February 13, 2021: 57-43 in favor of conviction on incitement of insurrection, falling 10 votes short of two-thirds.

The House of Representatives has initiated impeachment proceedings 63 times since 1789.[citation needed ]

An impeachment process against Richard Nixon was commenced, but not completed, as he resigned from office before the full House voted on the articles of impeachment. To date, no president or vice president has been removed from office by impeachment and conviction.

Below is an incomplete list of impeachment investigations that did not lead to formal charges passing the House. Blue highlight indicates President of the United States.

Year of investigation

Accused

Office

Accusations

Result[Note 1]

1826

John C. Calhoun

Vice president of the United States

Profiting from a contract during tenure as United States secretary of war

Calhoun requested the impeachment investigation himself, in hopes of clearing his name from allegations he profited from a contract during his tenure as United States secretary of war. Investigation lasted only weeks, and found Calhoun innocent of wrongdoing[65][66]

1860

James Buchanan

President of the United States

Corruption

The Covode committee was established March 5, 1860, and submitted its final report on June 16, 1860. The committee found that Buchanan had not done anything to warrant impeachment, but that his was the most corrupt administration since the adoption of the US Constitution in 1789.[67][68]

1867

Andrew Johnson

President of the United States

High crimes and misdemeanors

On January 7, 1867, the House of Representatives voted to launch an impeachment inquiry into Johnson run by the House Committee on the Judiciary.[69] On November November 25, 1867, the committee, voted 5-4 to recommend impeachment proceedings. On December 7, 1867, the full House rejected recommendation by a 108-56 vote.[70][71][72] Johnson would later, separately, be impeached in 1868.

1953

William O. Douglas

Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

Brief stay of execution for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Referred to Judiciary Committee (Jun. 18, 1953); committee voted to end the investigation (Jul 7, 1953).

1970

Failure to recuse on obscenity cases while at the same time having articles published in Evergreen Review and Avant-Garde magazines; conflict of paid board positions with two non-profits

Referred to a special subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee (Apr. 21, 1970); subcommittee voted to end the investigation (Dec. 3, 1970).

1973-1974

Richard Nixon

President of the United States

Obstruction of justice, Abuse of Power, Contempt of Congress

There have been several unsuccessful attempts to initiate impeachment proceedings against presidents, including John Tyler (impeachment defeated in the House, 83-127), George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

State legislatures can impeach state officials, including governors, in every state except Oregon. The court for the trial of impeachments may differ somewhat from the federal model-in New York, for instance, the Assembly (lower house) impeaches, and the State Senate tries the case, but the members of the seven-judge New York State Court of Appeals (the state's highest, constitutional court) sit with the senators as jurors as well. Impeachment and removal of governors has happened occasionally throughout the history of the United States, usually for corruption charges. At least eleven U.S. state governors have faced an impeachment trial; a twelfth, Governor Lee Cruce of Oklahoma, escaped impeachment by one vote in 1912. Several others, most recently Missouri's Eric Greitens, have resigned rather than face impeachment, when events seemed to make it inevitable. The most recent impeachment of a state governor occurred on January 14, 2009, when the Illinois House of Representatives voted 117-1 to impeach Rod Blagojevich on corruption charges; he was subsequently removed from office and barred from holding future office by the Illinois Senate on January 29. He was the eighth U.S. state governor to be removed from office.

The procedure for impeachment, or removal, of local officials varies widely. For instance, in New York a mayor is removed directly by the governor "upon being heard" on charges-the law makes no further specification of what charges are necessary or what the governor must find in order to remove a mayor.

In 2018, the entire Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia was impeached, something that has been often threatened, but had never happened before.

Date

Accused

Office

Result

1804

William W. Irvin

Associate Judge, Fairfield County, Ohio, Court of Common Pleas

Removed

1832

Theophilus W. Smith

Associate Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

Acquitted[80]

John Winter Robinson

Secretary of State of Kansas

Removed on June 12, 1862[82]

George S. Hillyer

State auditor of Kansas

Removed on June 16, 1862[82]

1901

David M. Furches

Chief Justice, North Carolina Supreme Court

Acquitted[85]

Robert M. Douglas

Associate Justice, North Carolina Supreme Court

Acquitted[85]

August 13, 1913[86]

William Sulzer

Governor of New York

Removed on October 17, 1913[87]

January 21, 1929

Henry S. Johnston

Governor of Oklahoma

Removed

April 6, 1929[89]

Huey P. Long

Governor of Louisiana

Acquitted

May 1958[90]

Raulston Schoolfield

Judge, Hamilton County, Tennessee Criminal Court

Removed on July 11, 1958[91]

March 14, 1984[92]

Paul L. Douglas

Nebraska Attorney General

February 6, 1988[94]

Evan Mecham

Governor of Arizona

Removed on April 4, 1988[95]

March 30, 1989[96]

A. James Manchin

State treasurer of West Virginia

Resigned on July 9, 1989, before trial started[97]

January 25, 1991[98]

Ward "Butch" Burnette

Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture

Resigned on February 6, 1991, before trial started[99]

May 24, 1994[100]

Rolf Larsen

Associate Justice, Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Removed on October 4, 1994, and declared ineligible to hold public office in Pennsylvania[101]

October 6, 1994[102]

Judith Moriarty

Secretary of State of Missouri

November 11, 2004[104]

Kathy Augustine

Nevada State Controller

Censured on December 4, 2004, not removed from office[105]

April 11, 2006[106]

David Hergert

Member of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents

Removed by the Nebraska Supreme Court on July 7, 2006[107]

January 8, 2009
(first vote) [108]

Rod Blagojevich

Governor of Illinois

95th General Assembly ended

January 14, 2009
(second vote) [109]

February 11, 2013[111]

Benigno Fitial

Governor of the Northern Mariana Islands

Resigned on February 20, 2013

Robin Davis

Associate Justices, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia

Retired on August 13, 2018.[113] Despite her retirement, the West Virginia Senate refused to dismiss the articles of impeachment and scheduled trial for October 29, 2018 although the trial is currently[when? ] delayed by court order.[114]

Allen Loughry

Resigned on November 12, 2018.[115][116] Possible trial before the West Virginia Senate delayed by court order.[114]

Beth Walker

Reprimanded and censured on October 2, 2018, not removed from office.[117]

Margaret Workman

Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia

Trial before the West Virginia Senate delayed by court order after originally being scheduled for October 15, 2018.[118][119] Workman continued to serve the rest of her term, and retired when it expired on December 31, 2020.[120]

At least five state governors have been impeached and removed from office:

William Sulzer, Democratic Governor of New York; false report, perjury, and suborning perjury; convicted and removed October 1913.

James E. Ferguson, Democratic Governor of Texas, was impeached for misapplication of public funds and embezzlement. In July 1917, Ferguson was convicted and removed from office.

Jack C. Walton, Democratic Governor of Oklahoma, was impeached for a variety of crimes including illegal collection of campaign funds, padding the public payroll, suspension of habeas corpus, excessive use of the pardon power, and general incompetence. In November 1923, Walton was convicted and removed from office.

Evan Mecham, Republican Governor of Arizona, was impeached for obstruction of justice and misusing government funds and removed from office in April 1988.

Rod Blagojevich, Democratic Governor of Illinois, was impeached for abuse of power and corruption, including an attempt to sell the appointment to the United States Senate seat vacated by the resignation of Barack Obama. He was removed from office in January 2009.

Stephen B. Presser, Essays on Article I: Impeachment Presser, Stephen B. "Essays on Article I: Impeachment". The Heritage Guide to the Constitution. Heritage Foundation.

1. "Removed and disqualified" indicates that following conviction the Senate voted to disqualify the individual from holding further federal office pursuant to Article I, Section3 of the United States Constitution, which provides, in pertinent part, that "[j]udgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States."

2. ^ During the impeachment trial of Senator Blount, it was argued that the House of Representatives did not have the power to impeach members of either House of Congress; though the Senate never explicitly ruled on this argument, the House has never again impeached a member of Congress. The Constitution allows either House to expel one of its members by a two-thirds vote, which the Senate had done to Blount on the same day the House impeached him (but before the Senate heard the case).

3. Judge Nixon later challenged the validity of his removal from office on procedural grounds; the challenge was ultimately rejected as ^ nonjusticiable by the Supreme Court in Nixon v. United States.

This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Government.

1. Cole, J. P.; Garvey, T. (October 29, 2015). "Report No. R44260, Impeachment and Removal" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. pp. 15-16. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 19, 2019. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. An earlier version from 2005 is at https://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/98-806.pdf Archived July 24, 2019, at the Wayback Machine.

2. ^ Staff of the Impeachment Inquiry, Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment, 93rd Conf. 2nd Sess. (Feb. 1974), 1974 Impeachment Inquiry Report

3. ^ Roland, Jon (January 19, 1999). "Meaning of High Crimes and Misdemeanors". Constitution Society. Archived from the original on January 3, 2012.

4. See ^ Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, in Impeachment-Selected Materials, Committee on the Judiciary, 93d Cong., Impeachment-Selected Material 692 (Comm. Print 1973).

5. Senate Journal, 5th Cong., 3rd Sess., December 17, 1798 to January 10, 1799.

6. ^ "U.S. Senate: Impeachment". www.senate.gov. Archived from the original on December 2, 2010.

7. ^ Buckner F. Milton (1998). The First Impeachment. Mercer University Press. ISBN 9780865545977. Archived from the original on January 14, 2021.

8. ^ Thomas Berry (2021). "Late Impeachment: An In-Depth Account of the Belknap Trial, by Thomas Berry (Part One)".

9. ^ David Morgan (January 26, 2021). "Senate Republicans unite behind failed effort to challenge Trump impeachment trial". Reuters.

10. Impeachment and Removal Archived November 15, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, Congressional Research Service, October 29, 2015

11. ^ "U.S. Senate: Constitution of the United States". U.S. Senate. March 4, 1789. Archived from the original on February 10, 2014.

12. Parliamentarian of the House, U.S. House of Representatives, ^ The House Practice: A Guide to the Rules, Precedents and Procedures of the House, at https://www.govinfo.gov/collection/house-practice Archived December 21, 2019, at the Wayback Machine. Each Congress adopts its own rules, available at https://rules.house.gov/rules-resources Archived December 23, 2019, at the Wayback Machine

13. ^ "Rules and Procedures of Practice in the Senate When Sitting on Impeachment Trials" (PDF). Senate Manual Containing the Standing Rules, Orders, Laws and Resolutions Affecting the Business of the United States Senate. United States Senate. August 16, 1986. Section 100-126, 105th Congress, pp. 177-185. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 19, 2019.

14. ^ Clark, Richard C. (July 22, 2008). "McFadden's Attempts to Abolish the Federal Reserve System". Scribd. Archived from the original on March 2, 2010. Though a Republican, he moved to impeach President Herbert Hoover in 1932 and introduced a resolution to bring conspiracy charges against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.

15. Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress, ^ Role of Vice-President Designate Gerald R. Ford in the Attempt to Impeach Associate Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas Archived February 19, 2019, at the Wayback Machine.

16. ^ United States v. Rumely, 345 U.S. 41, 43 (1953), quoting Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics, 303.

17. ^ Senators sworn in for Trump impeachment trial

18. ^ David Morgan (January 26, 2021). "Senate Republicans unite behind failed effort to challenge Trump impeachment trial". Reuters.

19. Steve Vladeck (January 14, 2021). "Why Trump Can Be Convicted Even as an Ex-President". The New York Times.

20. ^ Cai, Weiyi; Lai, K. K. Rebecca; Parlapiano, Alicia; White, Jeremy; Buchanan, Larry (December 18, 2019). "Live House Vote: The Impeachment of Donald J. Trump". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on December 19, 2019.

21. ^ Erskine, Daniel H. (2008). "The Trial of Queen Caroline and the Impeachment of President Clinton: Law As a Weapon for Political Reform". Washington University Global Studies Law Review. 7 (1). ISSN 1546-6981. Archived from the original on July 29, 2017.

22. ()

23. ^ Erskine, Daniel H (2008). "The Trial of Queen Caroline and the Impeachment of President Clinton: Law As a Weapon for Political Reform". Washington University Global Studies Law Review. Washington University in St. Louis. 7 (1). Archived from the original on March 27, 2019.

24. ^ "Full text of "Watergate Hearings Before the House Committee on the Judiciary"". archive.org.

25. ^

26. Blackmar, Frank (1912). Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History. Standard Publishing Co. p. 598.

27. News & Observer: NC's dark impeachment history Archived July 21, 2017, at the Wayback Machine by Rob Christensen

28. O'Dell, Larry. "^ WALTON, JOHN CALLOWAY (1881-1949) Archived December 16, 2014, at the Wayback Machine", Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture Archived April 16, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved July 2, 2013.

29. ^ Watkins, Ronald J. (1990). High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Term and Trials of Former Governor Evan Mecham. New York: William Morrow & Co. ISBN 978-0-688-09051-7.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Impeachment in the United States - Wikipedia

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Impeachment in the United States is the process by which a legislature's lower house brings charges against a civil federal officer, the vice president, or the president for misconduct alleged to have been committed. Impeachment may also occur at the state level if the state or commonwealth has provisions for it under its constitution.

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On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. The amendment grants citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" which included former slaves who had just been freed after the Civil War.

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The fourteenth amendment to the US Constitution was approved on July 9, 1868 amid the Reconstruction period. It, alongside the thirteenth and fifteenth revisions are by and large known as the Reconstruction changes. There was a worry that with the expansion of representation in Southern states once the three-fifths trade off was no more in actuality would make Southern states all the more capable.

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The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 laid out the process for readmitting Southern states into the Union.

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reconstruction era civil war history list reconstruction acts results purpose

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civil war american reconstruction era timeline facts goal summary goals achievements accomplishments rights military rule

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Reconstruction Era Civil War Reconstruction Acts Civil War

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Reconstruction Era Civil War History List Reconstruction Acts Results Purpose, Civil War American Reconstruction Era Timeline Facts Goal Summary Goals Achievements Accomplishments Rights Military Rule

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The Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27–30, enacted April 9,1866, was the first United States federal law to define citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law.

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In Congress, the most influential Radical Republicans were U.S. Senator Charles Sumner and U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens. They led the call for a war that would end slavery.

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Radical Republican, during and after the American Civil War, a member of the Republican Party committed to emancipation of the slaves and later to the equal treatment and enfranchisement of the freed blacks.

The Republican Party at its formation during the 1850s was a coalition of Northern altruists, industrialists, former Whigs, practical politicians, etc. While not publicly committed to abolition of slavery prior to the Civil War, the party nonetheless attracted the most zealous antislavery advocates. While Pres. Abraham Lincoln declared restoration of the Union to be his aim during the Civil War, the antislavery advocates in Congress pressed for emancipation as a stated war aim as well.

In December 1861, frustrated at the poor showing of the Union Army and the lack of progress toward emancipation, the Radicals formed the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. They agitated for the dismissal of Gen. George B. McClellan, and they favoured the enlistment of black troops. Angry at Lincoln for his reluctance to move toward speedy abolition, they broke with him completely over Reconstruction policy.

As certain areas of the South fell under Federal military control in the course of the war, Lincoln embarked upon a process of lenient Reconstruction under presidential control. Only the most prominent Confederates were excluded from participating in the restored state governments under Lincoln's plan, and just 10 percent of a state's 1860 electorate was required to take a loyalty oath before Lincoln would recognize the state government they established as lawful. The Radicals countered Lincoln's "Ten Percent Plan" in 1864 with the Wade-Davis Bill, which required a majority of the electorate to take the loyalty oath and excluded far more former Confederates from participation in the restored governments. Lincoln pocket vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill, which angered the Radicals and launched them on a short-lived drive to deny Lincoln renomination.

After Lincoln's assassination, the Radicals at first welcomed Andrew Johnson as president. But Johnson quickly indicated his intention to pursue Lincoln's lenient Reconstruction policies. The Radicals turned on him, formed the Joint Committee on Reconstruction (the so-called Joint Committee of Fifteen, made up nine members of the House and six senators, with only three Democrats among them) to ensure congressional rather than presidential control of Reconstruction, and passed a number of measures for the protection of Southern blacks over Johnson's veto.

Johnson attempted to break the Radicals' power by uniting all moderates and by going on an extensive speaking tour during the 1866 congressional elections. But the strategy failed, and the Radicals won a resounding victory. They then showed their displeasure with Johnson by passing the Tenure of Office Act (over Johnson's veto), restricting the president's ability to remove civil officers. When Johnson proceeded to remove Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in violation of the Tenure of Office Act, the House of Representatives voted to impeach him, and the Senate failed by just one vote to remove him from office.

The Radical Republicans' most important measures were contained in the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and 1868, which placed the Southern states under military government and required universal manhood suffrage. Despite the Radical program, however, white control over Southern state governments was gradually restored. Such terrorist organizations as the Ku Klux Klan and Knights of the White Camelia were successful in frightening African Americans away from the polls, and zeal for continued military occupation of the South waned in the North. By 1877 Reconstruction was at an end.

Radical Republicans never really existed as a cohesive group. They were united only by their common commitment to emancipation and racial justice. On other issues-such as hard/soft money, labour reform, and protectionism-they were often divided. Radical leaders included Henry Winter Davis, Thaddeus Stevens, Benjamin Butler, and George Sewall Boutwell in the House and Charles Sumner, Benjamin Wade, and Zachariah Chandler in the Senate.

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Radical Republican | Definition, Beliefs, & Leaders

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Radical Republican, during and after the American Civil War, a member of the Republican Party committed to emancipation of the slaves and later to the equal treatment and enfranchisement of the freed blacks. Learn more about the beliefs and history of the Radical Republicans in this article.

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The Black Codes were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866 in the United States after the American Civil War with the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans' freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt.

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Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. Johnson became president as he was vice president at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

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Today we are talking about Andrew Johnson. Johnson was vice president under Abraham Lincoln, and became president in 1865 after Lincoln was killed.

His name sounds like that of an earlier president, Andrew Jackson, and also like a later president, Lyndon Johnson.

But Andrew Johnson served in the years just after the Civil War. You can remember Johnson this way: He was the first U.S. president to be impeached.
Early life
Andrew Johnson grew up in a poor family in the southern state of North Carolina.

As a child, Johnson had little formal education. Instead, he trained to be a tailor.

When he was a young man, Johnson moved to Tennessee, another southern state. He opened a tailoring business, where he made, repaired and sold clothing.

When he was 18 years old, he married. His wife, Eliza McCardle, was only 16. They went on to have five children together.

Eliza McCardle Johnson did not come from a wealthy family, either. But she was better educated than her husband, and she helped him develop his reading and writing skills.

She also supported his gift for public speaking. Johnson's speeches were especially popular with workers in their community. They liked his criticism of the state's wealthy planters.

The workers also liked his politics. At the time, Johnson supported measures that permitted slavery to expand across the country. He was clear in his speeches that he did not support equality between whites and African-Americans, whether enslaved or free.

In time, Johnson held many political offices: mayor, Tennessee's governor, state legislator, and member of the U.S. House of Representatives. When the Civil War began, he was a member of the U.S. Senate.

Although he was a Southerner, he did not believe the Southern states had a right to withdraw from the Union. When the other Southern senators resigned from the U.S. Congress, Johnson stayed.

As a result, most Southerners considered him a traitor. But most Northerners considered him a hero.
Election of 1864
By 1864, the American Civil War was three years old. The conflict was becoming increasingly fierce and bloody. That year, the states that remained in the Union held their presidential election.

The president, Abraham Lincoln, wanted to win re-election and continue directing the Union's war effort. But he was not sure that voters in the opposition Democratic Party would support him.

So he turned to Andrew Johnson to be his choice for vice president.

Johnson was a pro-slavery Democrat. Lincoln was an anti-slavery Republican. In the U.S. tradition, presidential candidates do not usually choose someone from a different party to serve as vice president.

But in this case, Lincoln's Republicans did. They called the Lincoln-Johnson partnership the National Union Party.

Political leaders hoped Johnson would appeal to Democrats who supported the war effort, to workers and to small farmers. The plan - along with several military successes for the Union - helped carry the National Union Party to victory.

The swearing-in ceremony the following March, however, suggested some of the difficulties ahead. Johnson was sick. To feel better, he had a lot of alcoholic drinks the night before the ceremony. The next morning, he drank some more.

When Johnson stood to give his speech, he appeared unsteady. He talked about his poor family and his simple beginnings. Then he spoke angrily about wealthy Southern planters who had withdrawn from the Union. He became increasingly confused.

Other people in the crowd wrote later that they felt embarrassed by Johnson's behavior. And some Republicans began calling already for his resignation - or even impeachment.

Those critics could not have predicted that in a few weeks, Johnson would be the president.
Presidency
A few very important events happened in the weeks after Lincoln and Johnson were sworn-in.

In April, Lincoln was shot and killed. Johnson took office as the new president.

The following month, the Civil War officially ended. The Confederate States of America was no more.

And that December, a majority of states approved the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment ended slavery across the country.

President Johnson, therefore, guided the process of re-uniting the North and South, and supervised the transition of many African-Americans from slavery to freedom. That period in U.S. history is called Reconstruction.

Members of Congress from the Northern states had been thinking for a long time about how to carry out Reconstruction. The most extreme lawmakers, the Radical Republicans, wanted to punish former Confederate officials and extend political and civil rights to African-Americans.

Johnson had different ideas. In the first months of his presidency, before Congress had met, Johnson pardoned many former Confederate officials.

He also let Southerners rebuild their state governments as they wished. Those governments quickly passed laws called Black Codes.

Black Codes restricted the freedom and rights of African-Americans. They permitted white land owners to control African-Americans' labor, much as they had when the workers were slaves. The laws were enforced by all-white police and militia.

Radical Republicans in Congress - as well as African-Americans - objected strongly to the Black Codes. When Congress finally did meet, Republican lawmakers voted for a measure to help and protect formerly enslaved people.

But Johnson vetoed the measure. He said the bill would give the federal government too much power.

Johnson's veto was one move in a political war between the president and many Republicans.

In time, lawmakers got the upper hand. The Republican Congress soon took control of Reconstruction. Against Johnson's wishes, they succeeded in passing several major pieces of legislation.

One was the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It recognized that everyone born in the United States - including African-Americans, although not Native Americans - was a citizen.

Another was the extension of the Freedman's Bureau Act, the measure that Johnson had earlier vetoed. For two more years, the federal government was authorized to help people displaced by the Civil War.

Finally, lawmakers passed a measure barring the president from dismissing any top officials without the approval of Congress.

President Johnson ignored the measure. When he believed the secretary of war did not treat him respectfully, the president ordered that man's dismissal.

In answer, members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Johnson. In other words, they charged him with a crime. It was the first time in U.S. history that a president has been impeached.

​But "impeached" does not always mean removed from office. The case moves to the Senate. There, senators act as a jury. They decide whether the president is guilty. Two-thirds of the Senate must agree to convict the president.

In the case of Andrew Johnson, 54 senators considered his case. For him to be removed from office, 36 would need to find him guilty. But only 35 did. His position was saved by a single vote.
Legacy
Although Johnson survived impeachment, he was not nominated as a candidate for president in the next election. Instead, he returned to his home in Tennessee, then competed for a seat back in Congress.

On the third try, he succeeded. Johnson is the first and only - so far - former president to serve as a senator.

He did not stay in the position long, however. A few months after returning to Congress, Johnson died suddenly after suffering a stroke. He was 66 years old.

Today historians have mixed feelings about his presidency. Johnson's supporters approve of his limits on the federal government and belief in a firm separation of powers among Congress, the president and Supreme Court.

But most historians believe Johnson's Reconstruction policies were extremely damaging. They did not help re-unite the North and South. And they extended the suffering of African-Americans and the country's history of racial oppression.

I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.
Kelly Jean Kelly wrote this story for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. [Editor's note: The original story mistakenly said that 20 senators had to find Johnson guilty for him to be removed from office, but only 19 did. In fact, a majority at that time would have been 36 senators. Only 35 found Johnson guilty.]
Listening Quiz

See how well you understand the story by taking this listening quiz. Play each short video, then choose the best answer.

Words in This Story

impeached - adj. charged a public official with a crime while in office

formal - adj. received in a school

tailor - n. a person who makes clothes

ticket - n. a list of the candidates supported by a political party in an election

unsteady - adj. not standing or moving in a steady and balanced way

embarrassed - adj. made uncomfortable by foolish behavior

transition - n. a change from one state or condition to another

convict - v. to prove that someone is guilty of a crime in a court of law

stroke - n. a serious illness caused when a blood vessel in your brain suddenly breaks or is blocked

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Today we are talking about Andrew Johnson. Johnson was vice president under Abraham Lincoln, and became president in 1865 after Lincoln was killed. His name sounds like that of an earlier president, Andrew Jackson, and also like a later president, Lyndon Johnson. But Andrew Johnson served in the years just after the Civil War.

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The Freedmen's Bureau, formally known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, was established in 1865 by Congress to help millions of former black slaves and poor whites in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War.

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Under slavery, most marriages had been informal, as slaveholders refused to acknowledge slave marriages and they were not legally recognized, although planters often presided over marriage ceremonies for their slaves. After the war, the Freedmen's Bureau performed numerous marriages for freed couples who asked for it.

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Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

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First Christian Church Pomona (Disciples of Christ)

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Two weeks ago I saw the movie "Selma". A month ago, I saw an exhibit on the 13th amendment at the Huntington Library. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate in 1864, then by the House in 1865. It was ratified by the required number of states on Dec. 6, 1865.

I learned at the exhibit that the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified by Kentucky in 1976. I also learned that the state of Mississippi began the process to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment in 1995 and the process was completed in 2013. It was an important action for these states to take: to recognize the folly of the past and make good on a core value expressed in the statement "all men (sic) are created equal".

It is also a reminder to those of us living today that the legacy of slavery still lives as a dividing wall that must be dismantled brick by brick, stone by stone. Paul wrote of a dividing wall, "the hostility between us", in his letter to the Corinthians. Paul claimed that Christ has broken it down, "for he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one." Paul was writing about Gentiles and Jews, but his proclamation is true today for those of us living in the midst of racial divides that continue.

Paul was writing to people who experienced the divide, calling them to live into the unity that Christ provides us. It is not an easy unity. It is a unity that requires those of us who live with the legacy of white privilege recognize those who live with the legacy of slavery.

The fact that some Southern states did not ratify the Thirteenth Amendment until recently should be food for thought. It should teach those of us reticent to learn that race matters still. No one is color blind. This is the world as it is.

Paul's exhortation reminds us that as Christians, we have a ministry to live into the world as God intends it to be. This work is difficult, risky work. And while we have come a long way since Selma, we must never tire of the work to which Christ calls us: remove the dividing walls with his help and by his grace - brick by brick, stone by stone, conversation by conversation.

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Julie's Jar: Selma and the 13th Amendment by Pastor Julie

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Two weeks ago I saw the movie "Selma". A month ago, I saw an exhibit on the 13th amendment at the Huntington Library. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate in 1864, then by the House in 1865.

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Lincoln's blueprint for Reconstruction included the Ten-Percent Plan,which specified that a southern state could be readmitted into the Union once 10 percent of its voters swore an oath of allegiance to the Union.

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A slide describing the ten percent plan.

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The Reconstruction era was the period from 1863 or 1865 to 1877.

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newspaper article about the reconstruction era.

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Oct 1, 2019 - newspaper article about the reconstruction era.