Benjamin Wade and a Successful Reconstruction (Maybe)
* Benjamin Wade, Senator and President Pro Tempore of the Senate, may have become the US President because of Andrew Johnson's impeachment possibly leading to a successful Reconstruction. Much depends on when Andrew Johnson is impeached. A vote expelling Johnson from office in early 1868, barely a year before his term ends, gives Wade little time to salvage Reconstruction, and Congress little incentive to work with him.
* The first impeachment effort against Johnson was in 1866. Had this succeeded, Wade has three years and not one. The worst of Johnson's actions can be overturned. Like Hamlin, Wade would have been an ideal president to carry this out. Wade was even more of a Radical, favoring not just equal rights for Blacks but the vote for women and recognition of unions.
* Earlier scholars, most notably John Kennedy's ghost writer for Profiles in Courage, Ted Sorenson, argued that impeachment would set a dangerous precedent. Certainly the charges against Johnson were minor, but they reflected very real abuses of power. An earlier charge of impeachment would have been far better, on genuine charges. Johnson was certainly no martyr. The evidence, bank accounts and receipts, points to Johnson only escaping impeachment by outright bribery. *
* Virtually every action that would have been done by Hannibal Hamlin would also have been done by Wade. (See previous entry on Hamlin.) The three likely differences would be:
* 1. The Reconstruction Amendments were aimed at rights for Blacks. But they are worded as rights for “persons.” Potentially such rights could have been extended to women as well, which Wade favored. He likely would have pushed for women's right to vote, back in the 1860’s.
* 2. Wade was not well liked by many other Republican leaders, as difficult to work with. It is unlikely he would receive their support for a term elected on his own. Only if he is extremely successful and wanted by the public for a second term would they back him. If Wade is not re elected, Grant is still the most likely next president.
* 3. Wade supported union rights. When labor struggles began on a bigger scale, especially the huge railroad strike in 1876, Wade would support that. But by that time he was very elderly, and died in 1877. It is uncertain how much of an effect he could have.
* Had Johnson been successfully impeached this would have set a badly needed precedent limiting the power of the president. Nixon likely would have been impeached earlier, and perhaps for bombing Cambodia as well as Watergate. Reagan would not have escaped impeachment for Iran-Contra, nor GW Bush for deliberately lying to go to war against Iraq. Particularly had Johnson's impeachment been earlier over his actual abuses of power, the precedent would have made it more difficult to use impeachment for such utterly frivolous and absurd cases as impeaching Clinton for lying about oral sex, or downright surreal and delusional birth certificate theories about Obama. An America with a weaker presidency is one less likely to go to wars, better for both America and the rest of the world.