Mike Pence Says Corrupt Politician Who Took Bribe To Acquit Racist President In Impeachment Was ‘Heroic’

Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday published on op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, calling on Senate Democrats to display “courage” by going against their party, and voting to acquit Donald Trump in his impeachment trial which gets underway next week. But in his essay, Pence said that Democrats should follow the example of a 19th-century senator who, historians say, was notoriously corrupt.

In his op-ed, Pence discusses the 1868 impeachment of Republican President Andrew Johnson — Abraham Lincoln’s vice president, who ascended to the White House following Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. In the essay, Pence claimed that Johnson “made clear that he would continue Lincoln’s policies.”

According to historian Brenda Wineapple, the author of The Impeachers, a 2019 book on the impeachment of Johnson, Lincoln was “open” to giving black men the vote following the Civil War. Johnson couldn’t have been more opposed to the idea.

“This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men,” Johnson reportedly said.

In 1868, Johnson became the first president to be impeached, and remained the only impeached president for 130 years, when President Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998.

Pence stated that Republicans in that era led a “stampede” to impeach Johnson. But in her interview with Slate, Wineapple called Pence’s claim “historical bulls**t.” Seven republicans voted against Johnson’s impeachment, she recounted.

It was Pence’s choice of a “heroic” Republican senator that received the most historical objections. In the op-ed, Pence cites Kansas Republican Edmund Ross, calling him “heroic” for defying his party and casting what is considered to be the deciding vote that caused Johnson’s acquittal.

Ross’ “courage” should be a lesson “for our time,” Pence said in the op-ed, encouraging Democrats to break with their party and vote to acquit Trump.

According to historians, Ross was far from a hero. According to Wineapple, “substantial” evidence suggests that Ross — whose own constituents supported Johnson’s impeachment — took a cash bribe from a behind-the-scenes political operator named Perry Fuller, in exchange for his vote to save Johnson from removal. Fuller had also backed Ross’ own run for the Senate.

According to an earlier Slate historical account by David Greenberg, Ross also expected — and received — a series of political favors from Johnson following his vote to acquit the president.

Among those favors, he forced Johnson to appoint Fuller to a government post. He also obtained jobs for his own brother and at least four more of his political cronies, from an indebted Johnson. Greenberg referred to Ross as a “scoundrel.”

Asked whether Ross should be remembered as “heroic” and a “profile in courage,” as Pence portrayed him the WSJ op-ed, Wineapple strongly disagreed.

Ross, she said, was “a weak person,” and “a profile in cowardice. He should be forgotten.”