Andrew Johnson vs. Congress, 1868
Andrew Johnson took the reigns of a nation still wounded and divided from the Civil War, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He had big shoes to fill, but in the eyes of Congress seemed to make all the wrong moves. Though he was on the side of the Union during the war, the former Tennessee governor's Reconstruction policies were seen as conciliatory to the South and in his hurry to reincorporate the former Confederate states into the union he found himself in a bitter battle with the Radical Republicans. Those same Radicals took Johnson to court, making him the first president in the history of the U.S. to be impeached. Charged with eleven high crimes and misdemeanors by the Republican congressmen, after nearly three months of tense proceedings, Johnson narrowly escaped conviction by one vote.