Edwin Edwards: How Gambling Brought Down Louisiana's "Cajun King"

 

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Reporters covering the 1985 trial of Governor Edwin Edwards were treated to an unusual photo opportunity one day as Louisiana's chief executive arrived for the proceedings. Instead of pulling up in the governor's official car, Edwards had opted to ride a mule-drawn carriage to the courthouse. He joked to reporters that he "was looking for some mode of transportation that was indicative of the pace of the trial," which would plod on for 14 weeks.

The incident was just one of the many folksy ways Edwards endeared himself to Louisiana's citizens and annoyed those who sought to hold him to account for his widely suspected corruption. He had figured into numerous grand jury investigations, but 1985 trial on improperly awarding state contracts would be the first time he faced actual charges. Edwards responded with decided nonchalance, offering 2-1 gambling odds on his acquittal and suggesting that his health was good enough that he might just be able to endure the maximum potential prison sentence of over 250 years.

Edwards was a deft politician whose ability to present himself as a man of the people made him perhaps the most popular figure in Louisiana since Huey Long. Although his underlying flaws and corruption would begin to catch up to him later in his career, he still managed to stage an unprecedented comeback to the governor's mansion against an unlikely foe. It was only in his later years, with his political career behind him, that prosecutors were finally able to decisively pin charges against him.

From the church to the House

Edwin Washington Edwards was born on August 6, 1927, on a sharecroppers' farm in Avoyelles Parish, near the town of Marksville. His father was half-Cajun and his mother was a descendant of Louisiana's French settlers, a heritage which established Edwards' strong Creole identity at an early age.

Edwards was raised in the local Nazarene Church, which advocated for discipline, austerity, and assisting the poor, along with refraining from vices like drinking, smoking, and extramarital sex. This religious upbringing had a substantial impact on Edwards, as he would become strongly committed to supporting those in need and would frequently quote from the Bible during his political career. He was more skeptical of the church's dogmatic beliefs, and only partly influenced by its position on moral behavior; while he never partook in drinking or smoking, Edwards would later become known as a notorious gambler and womanizer.

Nevertheless, Edwards considered becoming a preacher, and did some preaching in a Protestant church in his youth. While he opted against following this career path, he ultimately decided to become a Catholic at the urging of his first wife, Elaine Schwartzenburg, whom he married in 1949.

Edwards attended Louisiana State University for one year, but left to enlist in the Navy during the closing months of World War II. He was trained as an aviation cadet but never saw combat, as Japan surrendered shortly before he was to be deployed to the Pacific. He was discharged in 1946, returned to LSU, and received his law degree in 1949.

Edwards during his brief time in the Navy (Source)

Learning from his sister that there were few French-speaking attorneys in the city of Crowley, where she had moved with her husband, Edwards opted to move to the community as well and establish a private practice. He began his political career here as well, serving on the city council from 1954 to 1962 and acting as the ad hoc city court judge during the 1950s.

In 1964, Edwards scored a major upset victory when he defeated Bill Cleveland, who had been in the Louisiana state legislature for two decades, to win a seat in the state senate. He would only serve here for one year before winning a special election as a Democrat to the House of Representatives to fill a vacancy left by Representative T. Ashton Thompson, who had died suddenly in a car accident. 

Edwards would remain in the House until 1972, and earn distinction as one of the few Southern congressmen to back the Voting Rights Act of 1965, voicing his approval for five-year extensions of the legislation in 1966 and 1970. This was particularly unusual as 80 percent of the voters in Edwards' district had cast their ballot for segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace in 1968.

Governor of Louisiana

In 1971, Edwards entered Louisiana's convoluted race for governor. At this point, the race involved a closed Democratic primary, followed by a runoff among the top Democratic contenders. The ensuing general election was little more than a formality, as the Democratic Party had solid control of the state and the Republicans had not held the governor's office since Reconstruction.

Edwards managed to win strong support among the Cajun, Creole, and Black populations in Louisiana. He placed first among 17 contenders in his party's primary, then cruised to an easy victory at the general election. When he was sworn in on May 9, 1972, Edwards became the first Catholic governor in the United States and the first with Cajun ancestry.

Returning the support he had received from the state's minorities, Edwards named several Black residents to key political posts. He was also openly supportive of many Black politicians in Louisiana, which helped to expand his base and establish a more welcoming and inclusive environment in the state.

During his first term, Edwards pledged to help the downtrodden people of his state. One of the most important changes he made to fulfill this promise was pushing for legislation that changed the severance tax on the extraction of crude oil from a flat rate of  26 cents per barrel to 12.5 percent of the market price. When oil prices soared during the energy crisis of the 1970s, the change allowed revenues to pour into the state coffers.

The income allowed Edwards to close budget deficits, reduce state income and sales tax, and completely eliminate a state property tax. In addition, it enabled the governor to direct more investments in public improvements, including education, state parks, tourism, and state hospital and welfare programs. 

Edwards also supported a constitutional convention to update Louisiana's 1921 governing document. The convention took place in 1973, with the new constitution going into effect in 1975. It gave the governor broader leeway to reorganize the executive branch, which Edwards consolidated by boiling 258 independent agencies down into a cabinet-style government. The new constitution also had the effect of changing the election process to an open primary, doing away with the clunky old system by allowing all candidates (regardless of political party) to run for office, with a runoff taking place if no candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote. 

The impetus for this change was an effort to minimize the expense of a general election campaign, something the Democratic Party in Louisiana considered to be an annoyance and a waste given the party's dominance. Ironically, it would help strengthen Republican influence in the state since it gave the GOP the opportunity to mount a stronger campaign from the outset. It would also set the stage for Edwards' unexpected return to power 16 years later.

Early scandals

Although Edwards easily won re-election in 1975, his second term was clouded by accusations of wrongdoing. Clyde Vidrine, who had served as Edwards' bodyguard and later his executive aide before being fired due to a questionable real estate deal, published a salacious book in 1977 about Edwards' conduct. Just Takin' Orders accused the governor of trading government posts for campaign contributions and described wild trips to Las Vegas, where Edwards ran up gambling debts and, on one occasion, took five women to bed in a row.

Edwards responded to the accusations with his trademark wit and charm. He joked that the campaign contributions were "illegal for them to give, but not for me to receive." He offered a few quips to the charge of infidelity, suggesting that Elaine knew it wasn't true because he was "only good for four-and-a-half times," or that Vidrine had neglected to mention a sixth woman he slept with after his aide left.

Vidrine's accusations were still enough to spark several investigations into the governor. While these inquiries didn't result in criminal charges, one did conclude that Edwards owed $5,000 in back taxes.

Vidrine also tipped off the IRS about cash Edwards received from Tongsun Park in 1971 while he was in the House. A known South Korean intelligence agent, Park had been accused of trying to bribe congressmen to pressure President Richard Nixon to reverse his decision to remove ground troops from Korea. Several congressmen would be reprimanded in the "Koreagate" scandal, and Edwards' fellow Louisiana  congressman Otto Passman was one of two who received criminal charges in the matter.

Edwards denied Vidrine's claim that Park had delivered $20,000 to him, but admitted that Elaine had received money from the agent. He claimed he knew Park as a businessman, but only became aware of the money he had paid his wife when the IRS questioned him on his revenues.

Vidrine continued to nurse a grudge against Edwards, and would later update and reissue his book after Edwards' trial in 1985. In a strange coda, the governor's former aide was gunned down outside a federal courthouse in Shreveport in December 1986, the victim of the enraged ex-husband of a woman he had been dating.

Return to office

Louisiana's constitution limited governors to two terms, so Edwards returned to private practice after leaving office in 1980. In the 1979 election, voters backed David C. Treen, the first Republican to become governor of Louisiana in more than a century.

Treen was dogged by poor economic conditions throughout his term in office. The recession of the early 1980s caused unemployment to soar, with the state's oil and gas industry being hit especially hard. The governor and legislature struggled to balance the state budget amid declining revenues. Louisiana residents waxed nostalgic about the boom times under Edwards; the former governor noticed, and announced his intention to run for a third term.

Edwards launched a lively campaign, delivering fierce attack's on Treen's administration. One campaign brochure, criticizing a reduction in human services to pay for a 33 percent tax cut, shouted, "Edwards Giveth; Treen Taketh Away!" Edwards declared his opponent "so slow it takes him an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes" and, during one debate, responded to Treen's accusation that he talked out of both sides of his mouth by saying it was so "people like you with only half a brain can understand me." Confident in his chances of being returned to office, Edwards crowed, "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy."

The Treen campaign zeroed in on suspicions of Edwards' corrupt nature. They brought up Park's gift to Elaine, and pointed out how either Edwards or his associates had been the targets of 27 grand jury investigations. Treen also noted how Edwards had been particularly lenient with his pardon power, granting 1,181 requests during the last four-and-a-half years he was in office. 

Voters were content to excuse Edwards' questionable character if it meant there was a chance to bring back the good old days. When the results came in, Edwards had trounced Treen with 62 percent of the vote.

Faced with $4 million in campaign debt, Edwards mounted a lavish victory celebration to break even. He chartered a trip to France in January 1984, charging $10,000 a person. A total of 618 people attended, including 60 from the Louisiana state legislature. During a trip to the palace at Versailles, he commented, "I've wanted all my life to be a king, and now I can be."

Edwards during his celebratory trip to Paris (Source)

There were also lingering signs of corruption within the Edwards administration. Commissioner Charles E. Roemer, the father of his future gubernatorial opponent Buddy Roemer, was implicated in scandals involving overpayments to state computer contracts and mismanagement of the state employees' hospitalization insurance program. Michael O'Keefe, a state senator and one of Edwards' strongest allies, was convicted on various corruption charges.

Then, on February 28, 1985, one of the many grand jury investigations against Edwards finally returned an indictment.

1985 corruption charges

Edwards was charged with 50 counts in total, his alleged crimes including conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, and racketeering. Prosecutors charged that he had received $1.9 million from hospitals and nursing homes while out of office in exchange for the promise that he would grant them the state permits necessary to qualify for Medicare and Medicaid payments if he was returned to office. Charged alongside the governor were his brother Marion, his nephew and real estate broker Charles David Isbel, business partners Ronald Falgout and James Wyllie, businessman Gus Mijalis, and architect Perry Segura.

The state said that the defendants had crafted an elaborate scheme to rake in funding. Isbell would secure the land for new hospitals and nursing homes, Segura would draft their plans, and Marion would send developers in need of permits to Isbell to purchase the land. Prosecutors said that some of the defendants had also established the entity Health Services Department Corporation but concealed Edwards' role in it to outsiders, then promised that Edwards would be able to use his power and influence to give preferential treatment to those who paid the corporation. Once he had returned to office, Edwards had indeed approved five of the corporation's proposed projects despite a moratorium that had been established on granting the necessary permits.

Edwards during his 1985 trial (Source)

Prosecutors charged that Edwards' gambling habits had motivated the crimes, since he had racked up $2 million in debts at Las Vegas casinos. Edwards admitted that he had been a partner in Health Services Development Corporation and that he had made about $2 million in the venture, but claimed that this had been the result of shrewd business practices rather than corruption. Several newspapers and state officials had called for him to resign in response to the indictment, but Edwards said he would only do so if he was found guilty.

During the trial, state witnesses testified to the group's business dealings. Health Services Development Corporation had made about $10 million through dealings with 16 corporations, including five that prosecutors defined as shell corporations defined only by their state permit. Kathryn Lichtenberg, a New Orleans lawyer who had formerly worked for Wyllie, said he had boasted that there would be a "gravy train" once Edwards was returned to office. 

Prosecutors also brought in casino executives, who confirmed Edwards' severe gambling debt and the suspicious way he paid it off. After being returned to office, Edwards had summoned the executives to the governor's mansion and handed over suitcases stuffed with cash to pay down what he owed. The state also showed how Edwards had gambled under multiple names to try to hide his losses, and had never declared the gambling losses on his taxes despite incurring them between 1982 and 1984.

Edwards testified in his own defense, reiterating his claim that he had earned money honestly rather than by exerting influence. The defense team also managed to undermine the prosecution's claim that Edwards' role in the corporation was a conflict of interest due to the possibility that he might return to office, noting how he was fully ensconced in the private sector when the alleged crimes occurred.

Deliberating the matter, the jury wound up deadlocked for six days. Eleven jurors favored acquittal while one considered Edwards to be guilty. The judge eventually declared a mistrial, and acquitted three defendants for lack of evidence.

The matter went to a second trial, where the defense opted not to present arguments due to the belief that the state had not shown sufficient evidence of guilt. Edwards was acquitted on May 11, 1986. Appearing before supporters on the courthouse steps after the decision, he accused the prosecution of being politically motivated and boasted that "this courthouse is a citadel of justice, not a cesspool of Republican politics."

Nevertheless, Edwards' reputation had been badly tarnished. A poll taken two weeks after the indictment showed that just one in three respondents supported the governor, and political analysts opined that Edwards was unlikely to run for a fourth term even if he emerged triumphant from the trial. A cloud of suspicion still hung around the governor; he had been under investigation for potentially illegal ties with oil companies at the time of his indictment, and was later scrutinized for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries' purchase of land owned by people who contributed to Edwards' campaign.

Edwards' third term was also proving not to be the miracle cure voters might have expected. Edwards was facing the same challenges that had dogged Treen. With the plunge in oil prices severely constraining the funds that had been available during his first two terms, Edwards was forced to implement new taxes, substantially reduce state departments, and cut several programs to make up a $700 million budget deficit. His popularity took an immediate hit. 

The administration suffered another black eye with the 1984 World's Fair in New Orleans. The event had attracted only 7 million guests, 4 million fewer than expected, and was forced to declare bankruptcy. Edwards backed a decision to bail out the World's Fair with $65 million in state funds to keep it solvent.

During the first round of the gubernatorial primary in 1987, Edwards faced a stiff challenge from Rep. Buddy Roemer, who accused Edwards of trying to turn Louisiana into a "banana republic." When the results came in, Roemer had earned 33 percent of the vote to Edwards' 28 percent. Certain that he wouldn't emerge as the victor, Edwards decided to drop out of the race.

Challenge from a grand wizard

Roemer was saddled with unpopularity from the start of his term. Under the primary rules, Edwards' withdrawal as the candidate receiving the second most votes made Roemer the winner by default, despite having the support of only one-third of the electorate. 

Roemer's rise had been driven in part by Edwards' falling star and in part by his promotion of several reform measures, including investing more in educational spending, getting tough on polluters, cutting taxes and reducing wasteful spending, confronting crime, and cleaning up corruption in state politics. However, his progress on these promises was decidedly slow as he faced ongoing fiscal crises as well as stiff opposition in the state legislature. His foes also accused him of being arrogant, antisocial, and inaccessible, as he tended to prefer working in private to the boisterous gladhanding favored by Edwards.

As the 1991 election approached, Roemer made the shortsighted decision to switch his allegiance to the Republican Party. He wound up being contested by Rep. Clyde Holloway, who rallied Louisiana's fundamentalist Christian wing to challenge Roemer's pro-choice stance. The state GOP convention ultimately endorsed Holloway despite Roemer's attempt to get the gathering canceled. Roemer had also failed to notice an upswell of support for an unlikely challenger.

David Duke during his 1991 gubernatorial campaign (Source)

David Duke's youth had been defined by his vocal and unabashed support for white supremacy. He had espoused his love of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis during his time as a student at Louisiana State University, joined the Ku Klux Klan, and become the grand wizard of a similar organization - Knights of the Ku Klux Klan - which he had established to try to cloak his cause in a more legitimate facade.

Duke ran for office several times during the 1970s and 1980s, though the odds of his victory were so slim that several supporters denounced them as little more than attempts to bilk gullible racists out of their money. Yet he won a surprise victory in 1989 when he was elected as a Republican to the Louisiana state legislature from the New Orleans suburb of Metamie. He served a single term, where his signature achievements were authoring a bill to limit affirmative action in Louisiana and leading opposition to Roemer's proposed reform of the state tax system.

By this time, Duke was trying to cast himself as a reformed and respectable man, a born-again Christian whose radical days were behind him. Nevertheless, many of his political positions were thinly rebranded versions of the racist views he had trumpeted as a Klansman. He fiercely criticized affirmative action and social welfare programs, raising the specter of minorities being placed in jobs they were not qualified for or lazily benefiting from the tax dollars of hard-working citizens. Despite the promise of self-reform, critics pointed out how he continued to sell anti-Semitic literature out of his state legislator's office.

Duke's arguments nevertheless resonated with many white voters in Louisiana. When he mounted a race for the U.S. Senate in 1990 as an unendorsed Republican, he performed surprisingly well against Bennett Johnston, the Democratic incumbent who had first been elected in 1972. Johnston won the race with just 53.9 percent of the vote, while Duke earned a majority of the white vote.

As the 1991 gubernatorial election approached, Roemer was unconcerned by potential challenges from both Edwards and Duke. He had already bested Edwards once despite his strong presence in the state, and figured that Duke's unsavory past would fail to make him a strong contender. Early polls showed that 35 percent of the electorate supported Roemer while 25 percent favored Edwards and only 15 percent planned to vote for Duke. By the eve of the October 19 primary, Edwards and Roemer were neck and neck in the polls (31 percent to 30 percent) while Duke trailed at 20 percent.

The primary results were a major shock. Edwards had been the top candidate with 523,096 votes, but voters had also turned out in force for Duke. He was barely 30,000 votes behind the former governor, earning 491,342 ballots in total. Roemer had fallen about 80,000 short of Edwards, knocking him out of the race.

Showdown with Duke

The runoff now came down to Edwards and Duke, and the Louisiana governor's election soon gained international attention. Many onlookers were disgusted by the implications of the race. Barely two decades after the civil rights movement had endured bloodshed and terrorism to topple segregation and advance equal rights reforms, a former grand wizard of the KKK now had a fighting chance to be the top elected official in a Deep South state.

The Democrats mounted a massive campaign against Duke, zeroing in on his long record of hatred and bigotry. The effort attracted a groundswell of support from business owners fearful that tourists would boycott Louisiana if Duke were to be elected, as well as civil rights groups and local newspapers. National GOP leaders, including President George H.W. Bush, also denounced Duke and disavowed his connection with their party. One anti-Duke advertisement featured a World War II veteran in full military uniform, declaring, "I joined the Army in 1944 to fight the Nazis. And I'm going to fight the Nazis in this election." 

Faced with such an unsavory alternative, Edwards' former opponents publicly backed him. Treen and Roemer encouraged voters to cast their ballots for the former governor. Edwards concentrated on appealing to the voters who had backed Roemer in the first primary vote; like Duke, he promised that he had reformed himself. "I don't want to live the rest of my life with a legacy of bad marks I had eight years ago, six years ago," he said.

For many voters, the choice between a Klansman and an ex-governor who had been tried for corruption was an easy one to make, if not exactly palatable. The attitude was reflected in bumper stickers reading "Vote For the Crook. It's Important" and "Vote for the Lizard, Not the Wizard." Edwards got in on the fun, delivering the bawdy remark that he and Duke were "both wizards under the sheets."

Duke's campaign suffered some additional blows in the last days of the campaign. In a fiery debate between Edwards and Duke on Tim Russert's Meet the Press, Duke was unable to answer questions about Louisiana's top industries or how much of the population lived below the poverty line. On November 5, 11 days before the election, Duke campaign staffer Bob Hawks quit and publicly charged that Duke's conversion to Christianity was a hoax.

When the runoff election was held, Duke still managed to win 671,009 votes, including the majority of the white and GOP vote. Yet the overall result was a landslide victory for Edwards. He had pulled 61 percent of the vote, or 1.06 million ballots, to win an unprecedented fourth term as Louisiana governor. 

Fourth term and riverboat gambling scandal

Following his previous rocky time in office, Edwards enjoyed more success in his fourth term. He managed to balance the state budget and oversee modest increases in state funding for public programs in health, education, and welfare, as well as funding for a new arena in New Orleans and investments in existing sports facilities. Edwards also remarried during this term; following his 1989 divorce from Elaine, with whom he had four children, he tied the knot with Candy Picou, a nurse nearly four decades younger than him.

Seeking to diversify the state's revenues, Edwards also worked to bring casino and riverboat gambling to Louisiana. The state struck a deal with Harrah's to establish a casino in the heart of New Orleans, although this venture nearly collapsed when Harrah's declared bankruptcy in 1995; Edwards' successor, Governor Murphy Foster, subsequently renegotiated the contract and the casino opened in 1999. Riverboat gambling had already proved to be a successful tourist attraction and source of income in neighboring Mississippi, and Louisiana established the Riverboat Gaming Commission to grant licenses for similar ventures. 

This process would prove to be Edwards' undoing, although his reckoning would not come until several years after he left office in 1996. The Riverboat Gaming Commission considered 43 applications for 15 available licenses, and all of them had ultimately gone to Edwards' political backers. When investigators looked into the matter, they soon charged Edwards and several associates with a scheme similar to the one the governor had been accused of years earlier: accepting payments in exchange for preferential treatment.

Similar to the 1985 case, Edwards was accused of partnering with others in a moneymaking scheme that rewarded those who paid the price. Prosecutors also accused his son Stephen, former Edwards aide Andrew Martin, Baton Rouge businessman Bobby Johnson, and cattleman Cecil Brown of partaking in the shakedown. 

At the trial, one key witness was Edward J. DeBartolo, Jr., the former owner of the San Francisco 49ers. DeBartolo said that he had visited Edwards in the governor's mansion one night before the commission's final meeting, and that Edwards had slid him a piece of paper with the figure $400,000 on it. "This has to be taken care of by next week or there's going to be a serious problem with your license," he declared. Edwards had also demanded a 1 percent stake in the profits from DeBartolo's casino.

DeBartolo testified that he had subsequently met Edwards in San Francisco to turn over a suitcase full of money. Asking how Edwards planned to get the suitcase past scrutiny at the airport, Edwards showed him a hidden money belt he intended to use to smuggle the cash back home.

The payoff had ultimately not been worth it for DeBartolo. Once his misdeed was discovered, he was convicted of failing to report a felony, sentenced to two years of probation, and fined $1 million. He had also been ordered to relinquish his casino license and turn over control of the 49ers to his sister.

Other witnesses described similar arrangements through Edwards' associates. Robert Guidry, a Louisiana businessman, described leaving large sums of cash in trash receptables for Edwards or his associates to collect. Guidry said he had struck an agreement in which he would pay Martin $100,000 a month in exchange for the approval of a riverboat gambling license. Like DeBartolo, the conduct had gotten him in trouble with the authorities; in 1998, he had pleaded guilty to an extortion charge for paying a total of $1.5 million to the Edwardses and Martin.

The defense argued that the state's case was too flimsy to stand, saying it was based on secret recordings, misinterpreted conversations, and testimony from people who were trying to give evidence in exchange for reducing the punishment for their own crimes. Edwards remained unflappable, quipping to reporters that he could cover any punishment with time served if the judge considered all the time he had spent before grand juries and trials. 

The jury found all defendants guilty on May 9, 2000. Edwards was convicted of 17 counts of racketeering, extortion, and conspiracy. 

Sentencing in the case did not take place until January 8, 2001. All five defendants were ordered to split a forfeiture of $1.8 million to give up any gains they had realized from the scheme. The judge ordered Stephen to spend seven years behind bars and pay a $60,000 fine. The other defendants were ordered to pay $50,000 fines. Martin was given a prison sentence of five years and eight months, while Brown received a five-and-a-half year term and Johnson received four months.

The stiffest punishment was reserved for Edwards. The ex-governor was given a hefty $250,000 fine and ordered to spend 10 years in prison. He began serving his time in 2002.

Many observers, even those who had previously criticized Edwards, felt this penalty was excessive. Treen became one of Edwards' staunchest advocates, pushing for his early release until he passed away in 2009. Those calling for a presidential pardon for Edwards included former President George H.W. Bush.

Later life

Despite the calls for leniency, Edwards served the bulk of his term. He was released from prison in January 2011.

One surprising result of his imprisonment was a new relationship. Edwards divorced Picou in 2004 and wound up striking up a pen pal relationship with Trina Grimes Scott, a woman 51 years his junior. Six months after he was freed, Edwards and Grimes were married. He joked that he would have gone to prison a happy man if he had known he would find new love as a result, saying, "As you know, they sent me to prison for life. But I came back with a wife." 

Edwards and Trina Grimes Scott on the couple's wedding day (Source)

Edwards remained a fairly popular figure in Louisiana, despite the stain of corruption. In the fall of 2011, he was the grand marshal of the International Rice Festival in Crowley. A year later, he was crowned king of the Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade in Baton Rouge. 

Edwards' new marriage to a much younger wife briefly earned the couple a spot in the national limelight, as they were featured on the short-lived A&E series The Governor's Wife in 2013. That same year, Edwards became a father again at the age of 85 as Trina gave birth to a son.

In 2014, Edwards made one last bid for elected office when he ran for a seat in the House of Representatives. The bid was widely viewed as quixotic given his age, his scandalous history, and the shift in the state's political climate that had granted the Republican Party more solid control of its political offices. Although Edwards secured the Democratic nomination, he was trounced in the general election when GOP candidate Garrett Graves came away with 62 percent of the vote. 

Edwards died of respiratory failure in Gonzales, Louisiana, on July 12, 2021.

Sources

National Governors Association, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, Louisiana Secretary of State's Office, Acadian Museum, "Louisiana Governor Says His Wife Was Given $10,000 by South Korean" in the New York Times on Oct. 26 1976, "Ex-Aide Testifies Edwards Given Cash by Park" in the Washington Post on Jan. 24 1977, "The Healer Returneth" in The New Republic on Oct. 31 1983, "618 Louisianans Go to Paris for 'Biggest Single Fund-Raiser'" in the New York Times on Jan. 30 1984, "Gov. Edwards Today Reviewed..." in the UPI on Mar. 1 1985, "Louisiana Governor Going to Trial" in the Christian Science Monitor on Sep. 16 1985, "Louisiana Governor's Trial Hears Co-Defendant Saw a 'Gravy Train'" in the New York Times on Oct. 4 1985, "Ten Grand Juries Investigate Edwards" in UPI on May 10 1986, "Louisiana's Governor Acquitted in 2d Trial on Fraud Charges" in the New York Times on May 11 1986, "DeBartolo: Edwards Got $400K" on CBS on March 27 2000, "Ex-Edwards Friend Clyde Vidrine Slain" in The Town Talk on Dec. 17 1986, "Louisiana Governor's Mixed Legacy" in The Oklahoman on Mar. 9 1995, "Casino Operator Details Alleged Kickback Scheme in Louisiana Trial" in the Las Vegas Sun on Jan. 31 2000, "Former La. Governor Sentenced to 10 Years" in the Las Vegas Sun on Jan. 9 2001, "J. Bennett Johnston: The Rappahannock Resident Who Defeated White Supremacist David Duke" in the Rappahannock News on Sep. 11 2017, "Edwin Edwards, Flamboyant Louisiana Governor, is Dead at 93" in the New York Times on Jul. 12 2021, "Edwin Edwards Has Died" in Avoyelles Today on Jul. 12 2021, "Former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards Has Died" on 4WWL on July 12 2021, "Populist Edwin Edwards, a 'Cajun King,' Loved His Louisiana" in the Associated Press on Jul. 12 2021, "Edwin Edwards Dies; Knew Power and Prison" in Biz New Orleans on Jul. 12 2021, "The Epic Lives of Edwin W. Edwards" in Bayou Brief on Jul. 18 2021, Louisiana: A History edited by Bennet H. Wall and John C. Rodrigue, Louisiana and Its People by Sue Eaton and Manie Culbertson, Louisiana Almanac, 2006-2007 Edition edited by Milburn Calhoun and Jeanne Frois, The Rise of David Duke by Tyler Bridges, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right by Jeffrey Kaplan, Wizards: David Duke, America's Wildest Election, and the Rise of the Far Right by Brian Fairbanks, Reforming New Orleans: The Contentious Politics of Change in the Big Easy by Peter F. Burns and Matthew O. Thomas, How the South Joined the Gambling Nation: The Politics of State Policy Innovation by Michael Nelson and John Lyman Mason

Andrew Johnson: The First Test of Presidential Impeachment

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The first suggestions that Andrew Johnson should be impeached were raised less than a week into his term as Vice President. On the morning of March 4, 1865, when he was to be sworn into office alongside President Abraham Lincoln, Johnson was suffering from typhoid fever. Meeting his his predecessor, Hannibal Hamlin, he drank a few whiskeys to try to combat the illness.

He apparently had a few too many. By the time Johnson was to give a brief address to the Senate, he was considerably drunk. Slurring his words, he delivered a rambling, incoherent, and overlong address boasting about his humble beginnings and his ultimate triumph over the Southern aristocrats who had looked down on him. At one point, Hamlin even pulled on Johnson's coattails in a futile effort to make him stop talking. After he finally wrapped up the address and took the oath of office, Johnson became so confused with his duty of swearing in the new senators that he turned the task over to a clerk.

The spectacle was all the more embarrassing because it came shortly before Lincoln's stately second inaugural address, which has endured as one of the great speeches of the Civil War. Senators were horrified by Johnson's performance; Senator Zachariah Chandler, a Republican from Michigan, recorded in his diary, "I was never so mortified in my life, had I been able to find a hole I would have dropped through it out of sight." Johnson was ridiculed in the press, with one article labeling him a "drunken clown."

Although Johnson showed no other signs of alcoholism beyond this public display, the speech led to rumors that he was a dipsomaniac. These gained further traction when Johnson, still suffering from typhoid fever, left the Senate for a few days. When he returned on March 11, there were suggestions that he had gone on a chaotic drinking spree. Some Republicans drafted a resolution calling for him to resign, and there was talk of impeachment as a way to remove him from the second highest office in the land.

Lincoln urged his colleagues to be calm, saying his Vice President was still getting accustomed to the job. "It has been a severe lesson for Andy, but I do not think he will do it again," he said.

Just a month later, Lincoln's reassurance would be put to the test as Johnson became President of the United States. Unfortunately, a rift between Johnson and the liberal wing of the Republican Party would quickly deepen, culminating in the first impeachment trial to affect a President of the United States.

Early life

Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on December 29, 1808. His father died when he was three years old, and seven years later he was apprenticed to a tailor named James Selby. After working for Selby for five years, Johnson abruptly abandoned the apprenticeship after a neighbor threatened to sue him and his brother, William, for throwing pieces of wood at her house.

Running away to South Carolina, Johnson worked for another tailor for two years. Here he fell in love with a girl and asked her to marry him, but her family objected to the pairing. Dejected, Johnson returned to Raleigh and asked Selby to take him back in. Although Selby had posted notices offering a reward for Johnson's return, he now refused the young man's request.

A notice posted by Selby seeking the return of Andrew Johnson and his brother (Source)

Johnson subsequently moved to Greenville, Tennessee, with his mother and stepmother. Assisted by his wife Eliza, whom he married in 1827, he began a self-education effort. He had also learned enough about the tailoring business to start his own business.

Before long, Johnson had entered politics. He was elected a town alderman in 1829, and as mayor of Greenville in 1834. He joined the state militia around the same time, winning the nickname of "Colonel Johnson" after achieving this rank. Johnson served in the Tennessee house of representatives from 1835 to 1837 and again from 1839 to 1841, when he was elected to the state senate. During his political career, he helped write a new state constitution that eliminated the property-owning requirement to vote or hold office.

Running as a Democrat in 1842, Johnson was elected to the first of five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. In this chamber, he came out against a number of spending initiatives including increases to soldiers' pay, accepting funds to start the Smithsonian Institution, infrastructure projects in the nation's capital, and funding to aid the victims and families of a cannon explosion on the USS Princeton that had killed eight people, including two Cabinet officials. Johnson was also opposed to plantation rule and protective tariffs. However, he did express support for the public funding of education.

These stances hint at Johnson's deep-seated hatred for the wealthy elite. He despised any organizations or people he saw as aristocratic, including military academies and future Confederate president Jefferson Davis, whom he said was part of the "illegitimate, swaggering, bastard, scrub aristocracy."

A depiction of Andrew Johnson in 1842, the year he was first elected to the House of Representatives (Source)

Some racist remarks are attributed to Johnson around this time. In 1844, he tacitly supported slavery by declaring that a black man was "inferior to the white man in point of intellect, better calculated in physical structure to undergo drudgery and hardship." His business was also successful enough that he bought a few slaves of his own. He proclaimed himself to be equally critical of both abolitionist and the most virulent pro-slavery plantation owners, saying both were driving the country toward war instead of reconciliation.

When it looked like a gerrymandering effort would threaten his seat in the House, Johnson ran for governor of Tennessee and was elected in 1852. His signature accomplishment during his time in office was the establishment of the first state law supporting public education through taxation. Although he won re-election against Know-Nothing candidate Meredith P. Gentry in 1856, he soon left the governor's office when the state legislature named him to the U.S. Senate.

During his time in the state house of representatives, Johnson had proposed a homestead bill to help Tennessee's poor residents acquire land to cultivate. He made a similar proposal in the Senate, advocating a bill to provide 160-acre plots. Although this bill passed in 1860, it was vetoed by President James Buchanan. Johnson would persist, pushing through the homestead bill in 1862.

Civil War

The long simmering tensions between the North and South finally came to a head in the election of 1860. Fearing that Lincoln would destroy the slave-based economy of the Southern states, many political figures below the Mason-Dixon Line threatened that secession would follow if the Republican candidate was elected President. Johnson sought to strike a balance, throwing his support behind Southern Democratic candidate John C. Breckinridge. He also opposed secession and urged Tennessee to remain in the Union if Lincoln came to office.

Breckinridge swept the Southern states, but came far short of Lincoln's electoral total. As calls for secession increased, Johnson continued to advocate for unity. On December 18, just two days before South Carolina became the first state to break away, Johnson pleaded, "Let us exclaim that the Union, the Federal Union, must be preserved!"

The attack on Fort Sumter prompted more states to secede. Johnson traveled throughout Tennessee, making public appearances urging the state to remain loyal to the Union. It was a risky move; despite Johnson's status as an elected official, his stance on secession had become quite unpopular. Across the state, he was burned and shot in effigy. In one instance, Johnson's train was stopped by an angry mob out to lynch the senator; he was reportedly saved only at the intervention of Jefferson Davis. At one appearance, he responded to an angry and hostile crowd by calmly taking a pistol out of his pocket, placing it on the pulpit where it could be quickly taken up at the first sign of trouble, and continuing his address.

Johnson's efforts were for naught. Tennessee voted to secede on June 8, 1861, becoming the last state to leave the Union. Although elected officials typically withdrew from Congress after the secession of their state, Johnson was the only senator from the South to keep his seat. This show of support for the Union made him a popular figure in the North, but he was forced to live in Washington, D.C., to avoid being arrested in Tennessee. Although Eliza continued to live in Greeneville for a time, she too eventually moved to the nation's capital.

The exile was fairly short-lived. After Union troops captured Nashville on March 4, 1862, Lincoln named Johnson to be the state's military governor and awarded him the rank of brigadier general. Resigning from the Senate to take on this duty, Johnson returned to Tennessee to find that the Confederacy had branded him an "enemy alien," subsequently confiscating and selling his property.

Johnson was faced with considerable challenges in his role as military governor of Tennessee. He seized the Bank of Tennessee and records left behind by the fleeing Confederate government, reorganized the Nashville city government, and silenced secessionist newspapers. The Confederacy continued to hold portions of the state and made frequent raids into Union-held territory. In 1863, he was embarrassed when a civil election named a conservative pro-slavery candidate to succeed him. On Lincoln's orders, Johnson ignored the result. He also issued a requirement that Tennessee residents needed to take a loyalty oath to the Union in order to vote, and even then would have to wait six months before casting a ballot.

While governor, Johnson showed more sympathy to the idea of emancipating slaves. But he considered this to be more of a military measure, one which would help end the war by taking valuable resources from the aristocratic plantation owners who had encouraged the war. "Treason must be made odious and traitors punished," he declared at one point. At Lincoln's urging, he worked to incorporate black soldiers into Tennessee regiments to defend against Confederate raids, although these troops never received enough arms or support to become a reliable force.

With the presidential election of 1864 looking to be a particularly close one, the Republicans chose Johnson as a compromise candidate for Vice President to replace Hannibal Hamlin. During the campaign, Johnson also continued to show some resentment for the aristocrats. At one stop in Logansport, Indiana, he noted how his Democratic opponents had laughed him off as a "boorish tailor." Johnson said he took it as a compliment, since it showed how he had risen from humble roots to a successful political career. He held the principle that "if a man does not disgrace his profession, it never disgraces him." In one address, he cited certain plantation owners by name and suggested that the nation would be improved if their land was broken up into smaller plots worked by "loyal, industrious farmers."

Johnson also demonstrated more support for the idea of ending slavery. "Before the rebellion, I was for sustaining the Government with slavery; now I am for sustaining the government without slavery, without regard to a particular institution," he declared in an address at Louisville, Kentucky on October 13, 1864. "Institutions must be subordinate, and the Government must be supreme." In same address, says he supports "the elevation of each and every man, white and black, according to his talent and industry."

Eleven days later, Johnson emancipated Tennessee's slaves. This action, again taken at Lincoln's urging, was essentially a voluntary one; since Tennessee had come under control of the Union at the time the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued, it was not considered to be in rebellion and its slaves had not been freed by the order. Johnson seemed particularly happy with emancipaction; on the same day he approved the action, he told a black audience in Nashville, "I will indeed be your Moses, and lead you through the Red Sea of war and bondage to a fairer future of liberty and peace."

Johnson even wanted to delay his inauguration until April so he could oversee the emancipation process in Tennessee, but Lincoln insisted that he be sworn in on schedule. Historians have noted that it was fortunate that Johnson agreed to take office when he did. If the office of Vice President was vacant at the time Lincoln was assassinated, the presidential succession may have been thrown into limbo.

Accession to President

On the evening of April 14, 1865, Johnson was woken and informed that Lincoln had been shot. The President lingered through the night before passing away the next morning. After scarcely a month as Vice President, Johnson was given the oath of office by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and became the 17th President of the United States.

An illustration showing Johnson being sworn in as President (Source)

It soon emerged that John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin, was one of several conspirators aiming to kill a number of high-ranking Union officials in a coordinated assault. Johnson himself had been one of the targets; George Atzerodt had registered at his hotel and, after drinking plenty of alcohol, got cold feet and left without attempting to assassinate Johnson. Atzerodt was arrested soon after, and was one of four conspirators hanged for their role in the plot.

Shortly before his attack on Lincoln, Booth learned of Atzerodt's failure and made a last-ditch effort to frame Johnson as being part of the plot. He left a card for the Vice President with the message, "Don't wish to disturb you. Are you still at home? J. Wilkes Booth." However, this card was instead picked up by Johnson's secretary, who had met Booth after one of his performances and mistakenly thought the card was for him.

Although the process of the disbanding and surrender of Rebel armies was ongoing at the time of Lincoln's death, the Confederacy had essentially ceased to exist. Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia five days before Lincoln was shot, and Jefferson Davis would be captured by Union troops about a month later. Johnson was enraged by the conspirators' attack on the Union government, and for a time seemed bent on revenge. He considered pursuing treason charges against the former Confederate military and political leaders, and was only dissuaded at the urging of Ulysses S. Grant.

This pugnacious attitude helped convince the Radical Republicans that Johnson would be a helpful ally in the postwar Reconstruction era. This political faction would be defined by their pursuit of full emancipation and civil rights for ex-slaves. They had been somewhat disappointed by Lincoln's support of gentler forms of repatriation and occasional hindrance of larger reforms. For example, he opted not to sign the Wade-Davis Bill to enforce Reconstruction efforts with federal troops and readmit Southern states only after they agreed to protect the rights of freedmen; instead, he killed the 1864 legislation with a pocket veto.

Senator Ben Wade, a Radical Republican from Ohio and a co-sponsor of the Wade-Davis Bill, declared to the new President, "Johnson, we have faith in you. By the gods, there will be no trouble now in running this government." Such feelings would be short-lived.

Falling out with the Radicals

On May 29, 1865, Johnson issued two proclamations outlining his plans for Reconstruction. The first issued a pardon and a promise of amnesty for any ex-Confederates who were willing to take an oath of loyalty to the Union and pledge to support the emancipation of slaves in the South. He also named William W. Holden as the provisional governor of North Carolina and directed him to amend the state constitution. Similar proclamations were made for other Confederate states, but made no request for a change in voting rules. This meant that black men were still excluded from the ballot box.

In one area, Johnson seemed keen to levy some punishment on the former Confederates. The wealthiest landowners in the South, namely those with estates worth $20,000 or more, would be required to seek individual pardons. It seemed clear that Johnson was relishing the opportunity to have the high and mighty aristocrats groveling before him for forgiveness. Even with this condition, Johnson still agreed to return the land of most plantation owners who made an appeal and grant them a pardon.

Most notably, Johnson failed to intercede when the South made blatant efforts to return Confederate officials to power. The Confederate vice president, along with four generals and five colonels from the Confederate army, were all elected to Congress after the war. Johnson also took no actions when Southern governments began imposing stringent "black codes" to strip the civil rights of black citizens. These included vagrancy laws to have idle black residents arrested and put to work; in short, a de facto form of slavery.

There were signs that whatever support Johnson may have had for emancipation and equality had cooled. He told one group of African-Americans, "The time may soon come when you shall be gathered together in a clime and country suited to you, should it be found that the two races cannot get along together." His private secretary, William G. Moore, recorded that Johnson displayed a "morbid distress and feeling against negroes." In a December 1867 message to Congress, he would remark that "negroes have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people" and were more likely to "relapse into barbarism."

Some historians have suggested that Johnson was not trying to impede the progress of ex-slaves so much as he was trying to keep any Reconstruction efforts within the boundaries set by the Constitution. In his veto of the Civil Rights Act, he said it "contains provisions which I can not approve consistently with my sense of duty to the whole people and my obligations to the Constitution of the United States." When he vetoed a bill to extend the mission of the Freedmen's Bureau, which was assisting former slaves displaced in the wake of emancipation, Johnson reasoned that it was federal encroachment on a state issue and an improper use of the military during peacetime; he also argued that it would hinder ex-slaves from being able to sustain themselves, and said there were no similar provisions for poor white men who had been harmed by the war.

An 1866 political cartoon depicts Johnson using a veto to boot the Freedmen's Bureau (Source)

Johnson agreed with the Radical Republicans on some issues. In particular, he thought that some individual rebels should be punished and that new state governments established in the South should meet certain conditions before the states were formally reabsorbed into the Union. However, he also thought that some of the proposed Reconstruction programs would benefit landowners more than freedmen.

The Radical Republicans were less than pleased at Johnson's acquiescence to the status quo in the South. The former Confederate states were quick to return ex-Confederates to power, some before they had even received a pardon. The political faction was also appalled when, in the summer of 1865, Johnson ordered the Freedmen's Bureau to return abandoned plantation lands to their former owners. In several cases, these lands had already been divided up and distributed to former slaves. While Johnson had originally been welcomed as a leader who would deal firmly with the rebellious states, he was now praised among Southern Democrats as a President who would protect them against the Republican agenda and preserve white supremacy in the region.

At the end of the year, Johnson declared that the work of Reconstruction was complete. The Radical Republican resistance mobilized quickly. Led by Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, they refused to recognize members of Congress sent by states who had seceded from the Union. They also created a Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which began working on the Fourteenth Amendment to prevent Southern states from getting a numerical advantage in Congress by excluding black residents from the population count if they weren't allowed to vote.

In a President's Day message in 1866, Johnson complained that the committee was concentrating the government power accompanying Reconstruction into a tiny fringe group. He also said this approach would make the more moderate and conservative Republicans less likely to support his administration.

Radical Republicans passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 in the spring, targeting the black codes in the South and granting citizenship to anyone born in the United States. Johnson vetoed the legislation, saying it was "made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race." In the first instance of Congress overriding a veto on a major piece of legislation, and by a margin of a single vote in the Senate, Congress overrode the veto to enact the bill. During his time in office, 15 of Johnson's 29 vetoes would be overturned, the most of any U.S. President. These bills included statehood for Nebraska and voting rights of black residents of Washington, D.C.

The most noticeable split between Johnson and the Radical Republicans occurred after he opposed ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Although he was distrusted by both Democrats and Republicans, the President tried to rally moderate members of both parties in a separate Union Party before the 1866 elections. During a "swing around the circle" campaign to rally support for this effort, he frequently traded insults with hecklers and made embarrassing statements; in one, he suggested that divine intervention had removed Lincoln from office so he could ascend to the White House. After this disastrous campaign, Republicans easily won majorities in both houses of Congress.

Once the new Congress was sworn in, they quickly passed the Reconstruction Act. This legislation divided the former Confederate states into five military districts and installed new governments to oversee the process of bringing the South back into the Union. Johnson vetoed the bill, but the Radical Republican majority easily overturned it.

Another bill passed over the President's veto was the Tenure of Office Act, which made it illegal for the President to dismiss any appointees who had been approved by the Senate without first getting Senate approval. This bill was essentially an effort to head off any effort Johnson might make to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Lincoln appointee who was allied with the Radical Republicans, and replace him with someone who would guide the military element of Reconstruction in a way that was more in line with Johnson's views. Stanton had already undermined Johnson to some extent, telling Grant he could still continue to impose martial law in the South as needed even after Johnson declared the war officially over, raising the question of whether martial law was still legal. Stanton also vowed to stay in office, saying he considered Johnson to be a man "led by bad passions and the counsel of unscrupulous and dangerous men."

Dismissal of Stanton

Edwin Stanton (Source)

In January 1867, Republican Representative James Ashley of Ohio made the first formal move toward impeaching the President by proposing an inquiry into Johnson's official conduct. He made a number of allegations against Johnson, including suggestions that he had had a role in Lincoln's assassination and that he had sold pardons to former rebels, but offered no proof for these accusations. In June, the House Judiciary Committee voted 5-4 against approving any articles of impeachment.

However, the Republican attitudes toward Johnson soon hardened. During a congressional recess in August, Johnson took the opportunity to remove some of the more vigorous Reconstruction commanders from their posts. He also asked for Stanton to step down, declaring that "public considerations of a high character constrain me to say, that your resignation as Secretary of War will be accepted." Stanton shot back, "Public considerations of a high character, which alone have induced me to continue at the head of this department, constrain me not to resign." Johnson responded by suspending Stanton and appointing Grant as an interim war secretary in the hopes that he would be more aligned with his views.

In November 1867, the Judiciary Committee reversed itself and approved an impeachment resolution in a 5-4 vote. Representative John Churchill of New York said several matters in recent months had swayed him, including Johnson's statements denouncing Reconstruction efforts, his veto of a third Reconstruction bill, his dismissal of military officers overseeing Reconstruction, and his suspension of Stanton. The majority report made a number of criticisms of the President, saying his lenient attitude toward former rebels was helping to stoke violent incidents in the South, such as a race riot in New Orleans that killed scores of black men demanding the right to vote.

But the report was fairly general in its denunciations. Representative Thomas Williams, the Pennsylvania Republican who chaired the Judiciary Committee, said he did not think impeachment was possible under the circumstances of Johnson's alleged misdeeds as well as the constraints of the Constitution. Although 57 Republicans favored the impeachment resolution in a vote before the full House, 68 joined with 38 Democratic colleagues to oppose it. Another 22 congressmen did not vote on the measure.

On January 11, 1868, the Senate made a move to return Stanton to his post. In a 35-6 decision, they voted to restore him as Secretary of War. Grant did not protest the decision, and soon became embroiled in a battle with Johnson over the question of whether he had supported the President's effort to unseat Stanton. Grant charged that Johnson had sought his help in violating the Tenure of Office Act. This brought on another impeachment effort, led by Stevens, but the Committee on Reconstruction tabled this measure in a 6-3 vote.

Johnson was still itching to get Stanton out of his Cabinet. He offered to name the renowned Civil War general William T. Sherman as an interim War Secretary, but Sherman declined. On February 21, he settled on Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas, an opponent of Stanton. Johnson issued one letter appointing Thomas as the interim Secretary of War and a second informing Stanton that he had been removed from office.

Instead of leaving, Stanton ordered Thomas arrested for illegally taking office. He quickly found support from the Republicans in Congress. A Senate resolution, passed in a 29-6 vote, stated that Johnson's action was beyond his power.

Once Thomas was released on bail, he too firmly held that he held the legal right to the office. For a time, the country essentially had two Secretaries of War. Many veterans and militiamen vowed to uphold the legitimacy of one man or the other, sparking fears that the squabble might lead to violence.

A political cartoon showing Stanton preparing to attack Johnson and Lorenzo Thomas, using a cannon labeled "Congress" and the Tenure of Office Act as a rammer. (Source)

The attempted removal of Stanton proved to be enough to get an impeachment effort off the ground. Some in Congress sided with Johnson, accusing the Radical Republicans of overstepping their authority and inflaming sectional divides, but the majority held that Johnson had been the one to exceed the power of his office. On February 24, the House of Representatives voted 126-47 to pursue impeachment. The confrontation with Stanton was the inciting issue, although Stevens suggested that Johnson had also bribed Grant by offering to pay any fine levied against him for violating the Tenure of Office Act by serving as Secretary of War.

There were some suggestions that impeachment was unnecessary. Johnson had no hope of capturing the GOP's presidential nomination, which Republicans expected would go to Grant, so the President had just over a year left in office. "Why hang a man who is bent on hanging himself?" Horace Greeley asked in the New York Tribune. For the Radical Republicans, however, a greater issue was at stake. Johnson could easily wreak havoc on the Reconstruction efforts in his final year in office; by removing him, they would remove that threat.

Impeachment

On March 2, the House of Representatives approved the first article of impeachment against Johnson. Two more articles were passed the next day. Ultimately, the House would seek to remove Johnson based on 11 offenses. It was the first time a President had been impeached. The Constitution states that impeachment can take place if an official is found guilty of "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors;" it would fall to the Senate to decide whether Johnson's behavior was enough to convict him on any of the charges and remove him from office.

Nine of the articles of impeachment were essentially different ways of accusing Johnson of violating the Tenure of Office Act. The tenth listed a number of inflammatory comments Johnson had made about Congress, charging that the remarks "brought the high office of the President of the United States into contempt, ridicule, and disgrace." The final article was a general summary of the charges against Johnson.

There were enough Republicans in the Senate to convict Johnson on any one of these articles of impeachment and remove him from office. But there was also a certain degree of reticence among the GOP senators. The office of Vice President had been vacant since Johnson was sworn in; as president pro tem of the Senate, Benjamin Wade would be next in line to be President if Johnson was removed. Some Republicans were less than enthusiastic about this possible accession, since they saw Wade as being too liberal on Reconstruction issues to prevail in the upcoming presidential election; others disagreed with Wade's economic policies, which included support for high tariffs.

Chief Justice Salmon Chase, who had sworn Johnson in just a few years earlier, would now oversee the impeachment trial in the Senate. Johnson did not attend personally, but spoke to the press on several occasions to offer remarks on the proceedings. Representative Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, a former Civil War general, led the prosecution. Attorney General Henry Stanbery resigned to lead Johnson's defense team,which included three other lawyers who volunteered their services.

An illustration of an impeachment hearing for Johnson (Source)

Butler called 25 witnesses during the trial. The crux of his argument was that Johnson had acquiesced to the Tenure of Office Act by initially following it, but then knowingly violated it by removing Stanton from office. He also blamed Johnson for the unrest in the South, saying his lenient attitude toward former Confederates had emboldened white racists into making violent attacks on black residents and others.

However, Butler also made a number of missteps over the five days of presenting his case. One passage earned a good deal of criticism by telling the senators that they were "bound by no law, either statute or common," but were rather "a law unto yourselves, bound only by natural principles of equity and justice." The prospect of a trial to decide the fate of the President was so exciting that public admission to the galleries was by ticket only, but the testimony soon became tedious. One press account declared the fourth day of Butler's prosecution to be "intensely dull, stupid, and uninteresting."

An admission ticket to the impeachment trial for Johnson (Source)

Johnson's attorneys figured that the nine Democrats and three pro-Johnson Republicans in the Senate would vote for acquittal. In order to deprive the vote of the two-thirds majority necessary to convict Johnson, they would need to convince seven Republicans to vote against impeachment. The defense called 16 witnesses to support its case.

The defense focused on the validity of the Tenure of Office Act. Johnson's lawyers argued that the President had no obligation to retain Stanton since he wasn't Johnson's own appointee. Ben Curtis, a former Supreme Court justice and one of Johnson's defenders, pointed out how the bill initially didn't extend to Cabinet officers. The defense also suggested that Johnson may have simply misinterpreted the law, and that he had the right to test the constitutionality of the Tenure of Office Act and have the matter heard before the Supreme Court. Thomas, they reasoned, had simply been appointed to keep the War Department staffed in the interim. The defense also suggested that the impeachment effort against Johnson wasn't motivated by any serious "high crimes and misdemeanors," but rather by the rancorous relationship between the President and Congress.

In the midst of the proceedings, Johnson consulted with his supporters and decided to blunt the impeachment effort by naming a compromise candidate as War Secretary. On April 21, he offered the position to General John Schofield, a Civil War commander who had been helping to oversee the Reconstruction efforts. Another Johnson lawyer, William M. Evarts, promised that Johnson would cease his efforts to impede the Radical Republicans' policies on Reconstruction if he was acquitted.

The Senate took their first vote, on Article XI, on May 16. This was the catch-all summary of Johnson's misdeeds, and the tally was 35-19 in favor of conviction. It was one short of the two-thirds majority necessary to convict; the defense had been successful in swaying seven Republicans to their side. One GOP representative, James Grimes of Iowa, summed up his opposition by saying, "I cannot agree to destroy the harmonious workings of the Constitution for the sake of getting rid of an unacceptable President."

Ten days later, the Senate voted on the first and third articles of impeachment to see if any of the opposing Republicans had been swayed by the prosecution's arguments on the Tenure of Office Act. Both votes failed to convict Johnson in the same 35-19 split. As it appeared that the divide would not change on any of the remaining eight articles, no further votes were taken.

The narrow margin of the acquittal raised suspicions that bribery had been employed to convince just enough senators to vote against conviction. Butler set up an impromptu committee to investigate the matter, interviewing dozens of witnesses and confiscating correspondence and bank records. The committee seemed particularly interested in Edmund Ross, a moderate Republican who had cast the deciding vote against conviction, but the committee ultimately finished its work without presenting any evidence of bribery.

End of term and later life

Following Johnson's acquittal, Stanton stepped down so Schofield could continue working as an undisputed Secretary of War. Johnson continued to spar with the Radical Republicans, vetoing bills related to Reconstruction and earning condemnation for his failure to provide federal protection for black residents and white Unionists who were subject to violent attacks in the South.

Although Johnson harbored no expectations that the Republicans would support him as their presidential pick for the 1868 ticket, he did believe that the Democrats were likely to choose him. Instead, they selected Governor Horatio Seymour of New York. A disappointed Johnson endorsed to be his successor. Grant was chosen as the Republican nominee and easily won the election.

The Tenure of Office Act was sidelined during Grant's presidency, with Congress giving him the ability to fire Cabinet appointees and lower level officials without Senate approval. The act was repealed in 1887, during the presidency of Grover Cleveland. The Tenure of Office Act was referenced several decades later when the Supreme Court took up the case of Myers v. United States. In a 6-3 decision in 1926, the justices ruled that President Wilson had the authority to remove a postmaster from office without Senate approval and that the Tenure of Office Act had been unconstitutional.

Returning to Tennessee, Johnson was soon vying to return to politics. Running as a Democrat, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Senate in 1869 and the House of Representatives in 1872. He was successful in his next bid for Senate, in January 1875, becoming the only President so far to return to serve in this chamber.

Lincoln's other Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin, was also a member of this Senate, along with several of the same people who had tried to oust him from the White House seven years earlier. After taking the oath of office, Johnson denied rumors that he would try to fulfill any sort of vendetta against these senators. "I have no enemies to punish nor friends to reward," he declared.

Johnson's time in the Senate was short-lived. He served only from the start of his term on March 5 to the end of a special session on March 24. On July 31, at the age of 66, he died of a stroke near Elizabethton, Tennessee.

Sources: The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, The National Governors Association, "Andrew Johnson, 16th Vice President" at Senate.gov, Andrew Johnson National Historic Site (National Parks Service), "The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson" at Senate.gov, Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson by David O. Stewart, The Presidents of the United States by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey, The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson by Chester G. Hearn, Andrew Johnson by Kate Havelin, The American Presidency, edited by Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer, Reconstruction: A Historical Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic edited by Richard Zuczek

Marion Barry: up in smoke

(Source)

The first brush Marion Barry Jr. had with the law was a dispute over a parking violation in 1969. After spotting two police officers ticketing vehicles, Barry said to one of them, "If you put a ticket on my car...I'll kill you." When the officer called Barry's bluff, he tore the ticket up and threw the pieces into the policeman's face. In the ensuing scuffle, he struck the other officer in the face and tore his shirt. Barry, charged with assault, could have been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Instead, his case ended with a hung jury and two co-defendants were acquitted.

Barry would get in hot water for much more serious charges over the years, none more sensational than a 1990 incident in which he was caught on videotape smoking crack cocaine. Nevertheless, he became such a popular local figure in Washington, D.C. that both his supporters and detractors referred to him as the "Mayor for Life." Going from the son of an impoverished black family in the South to a leadership role in the nation's capital proved to be an inspiring story for many of his constituents, even as Barry's transgressions continued to checker his record well into the 21st century.

The third of 10 children in a family of sharecroppers, Barry was born on March 6, 1936 in Itta Benna, Mississippi. After his father died when Barry was four years old, his mother moved the family to Memphis and eventually married a butcher. Barry worked several jobs in his youth to support the family including selling newspapers, picking cotton, inspecting soda bottles, and bagging groceries. He graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in 1954, successfully becoming an Eagle Scout before doing so.

As the civil rights movement heated up, Barry joined the cause at a local level. He was the president of the student chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People at LeMoyne-Owen College, and was nearly expelled for criticizing a member of the college's board of trustees for a racially insensitive remark. Graduating with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1958, Barry went on to earn a master's degree in the subject at Fisk University two years later.

Since there was no NAACP chapter at this school, Barry formed one. He became a more noticeable civil rights figure, helping to organize lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville and participating in voter registration drives in several Southern states. He continued to pursue his studies, working for a year as a teaching assistant at the University of Kansas before transferring to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. There, he founded a newspaper on civil rights issues entitled the Knoxville Crusader and learned that he was barred from tutoring white students.

This discrimination likely influenced the decision which would prove to be a major turning point in Barry's life. Although he was only a few credits short from receiving a doctorate in chemistry, Barry quit his studies. He had been part of a group of black student leaders who met to form what would become the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1965, Barry moved to Washington, D.C. to begin full-time work as the organization's first national chairman.

By the time of Barry's arrival, "white flight" to the suburbs had transformed the city to one with a majority black population. Despite this demographic shift, whites continued to dominate city positions. This authority was rather restricted, however, given that the status of the city gave its residents rather limited representation. The District of Columbia had not even been allowed to vote in presidential elections prior to the 1964 election. It would not receive its own school board until 1968, and its representation in Congress was limited to a nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives, a position not created until 1970.

"Home rule" for residents of Washington, D.C. became a major part of Barry's civil rights efforts in the capital. He organized the Free D.C. Movement and frequently wore a dashiki during his speeches. In January of 1966, he organized a one-day boycott of the city's transit system to protest a proposed fare hike. In 1967, he was successful in winning millions of dollars in federal grants to support jobs programs for poor blacks in the city. Two years later, he resigned from SNCC to turn his attention to this issue, founding an organization called Pride Inc. to find work for inner city youth.

Barry was elected to a string of municipal entities in the early 1970s, starting in February of 1970. He earned a spot on the Model Police Precinct, a board set up to improve relations between the police department and the people of Washington, D.C. He resigned a year later to run for the city's school board, defeating chairwoman Anita F. Allen for an at-large seat. He served until 1974, when he was elected to the City Council. At this point, he resigned from Pride Inc. to begin a full-time government career.

The City Council itself was a creation of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973. Though a mayor-commissioner and nine councilors had been responsible for managing the city since 1967, these positions were appointed by the President. The new legislation allowed the city to elect its own mayor and City Council in 1974, but Congress still had overarching authority in the district. Its members reviewed all of the Council's decisions, reserving the right to veto them, and retained the ability to set the city's budget and taxes.

In his first term, Barry worked to get a pay raise for the D.C. Metro Police and was instrumental in defeating a 1 percent gross receipts tax on city business. He was also an early supporter of gay and lesbian rights. Having built a base of support among numerous different groups and interests, he easily won re-election in 1976.

A year later, Barry was nearly killed in an incident that would help bolster his respect among the city's residents. On March 9, 1977, a dozen members of the Hanafi Muslims (a breakaway entity from the militant black group Nation of Islam) took almost 150 people hostage when they seized three buildings in the nation's capital. The group took over a Muslim religious center, the headquarters of a Jewish organization, and the District Building. They demanded that seven men convicted of murdering seven relatives of siege leader Hamaas Abdul Khaalis be presented for judgment before the Hanafi group. The hostage takers also demanded the destruction of all copies of "Mohammed, Messenger of God," a movie they considered sacrilegious to Islam.

Barry was on the fifth floor of the District Building, which functioned as the District of Columbia's city hall, when the gunmen took over the building. He heard two shots, which killed a radio journalist named Maurice Williams and injured a security guard who later died in the hospital of a heart attack. There was a third blast, and Barry realized he had been hit in the chest. One witness suggested that Barry had been a target; he said that when one gunman learned that he had shot Barry, he commented, "Oh good, we did get who we wanted to get."

Barry stumbled into the City Council chambers, where he was assisted by other people who had taken shelter in the room. He was later evacuated by firefighters who used an extension ladder to take him out through the window. Doctors found that a shotgun pellet had lodged less than an inch from Barry's heart, presumably after losing some of its speed in a ricochet. The slug was surgically removed, and Barry returned to work a week later.

When Barry ran for mayor in 1978, he received support from a variety of sources including the police, firefighters, young white professionals, and retirees. He was an early supporter of gay rights, working to prevent discrimination in housing and hiring, and he won acclaim among Hispanic voters by advocating for bilingual and adult education. The editorial board of the Washington Post named him as their choice for mayor. Though he won only 35 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, it was enough to defeat City Council chairman Sterling Tucker and Walter E. Washington, the city's first elected mayor. In the strongly Democratic city, Barry easily won the general election by defeating Arthur A. Fletcher, a Republican who had served in both the Nixon and Ford Administrations.

Barry took the oath of office on January 2, 1979, in a strongly symbolic ceremony. He was sworn in by Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice appointed to the Supreme Court. The Post would describe Barry as a "national symbol for self-governance for urban blacks," noting that he secured jobs for black citizens in middle and upper level positions that had been traditionally dominated by whites. He also appointed a number of women to these positions.

Though there were certain racial issues in the District of Columbia—a 1991 study reported that 42 percent of the city's black men between the ages of 18 and 35 were in jail, on probation or parole, or wanted by the police—the city was burdened by numerous other problems as well. Washington, D.C. had little in the way of tax base to rely on. There were few heavy industries, most government employees commuted from suburbs in Maryland or Virginia, and many of the federal buildings and other structures were tax-exempt. Unlike urban areas elsewhere in the United States, the city could not rely on contributions from a state for assistance. The fire department was so strapped that it could only respond to one two-alarm call at a time.

In his first term, Barry completed an audit of the city's budget and trimmed the payroll by 10 percent. Most of the cuts were through attrition, but there were also deep cuts to the city's police force; about 1,500 people working for the D.C. Metro Police lost their jobs.

Barry led an effort to encourage hotel and business development in the downtown area, personally working with developers to help get their building permits approved. The mayor also strove to help the populace as a whole, championing programs that provided summer jobs to the city's youth, helped middle class families purchase a home, and offered food assistance to seniors.

Although Barry could point to some successes in his first term, other problems worsened or remained unresolved. Drug use, homelessness, and unemployment were on the rise. The crime rate increased, and critics pointed to Barry's gutting of the police department as the cause of the problem. In advance of the 1982 election, Barry abandoned the fiscal restraint he had shown in his first term and poured more money into public programs, including $180 million for elderly assistance and job programs. He easily won the Democratic primary and general election, and these victories were repeated in 1986. Though he won more support among the city's more affluent districts in the 1978 election, this trend reversed itself in subsequent contests as he was lionized among poorer voters.

In his second and third terms, Barry was heavily criticized as he seemingly abandoned his earlier commitment to financial responsibility. A 1990 report noted that one out of every 13 citizens in the District of Columbia was employed by the city, and enemies charged that the mayor awarded jobs based on patronage rather than skill. Carl T. Rowan, Jr., a former FBI agent, complained eight years later that the D.C. bureaucracy was "a source of jobs for people whose main qualification was their eligibility to vote for Barry." When Barry's second wife, Mary Treadwell, was sent to prison for embezzling from Pride Inc., he secured her a city job when she was freed.

Over the course of these three terms, 11 city officials appointed by Barry would be involved in scandals. Ivanhoe Donaldson, a former deputy mayor, was convicted in December of 1985 of embezzling $190,000 in city funds during Barry's first and second terms.

When Barry traveled to California to attend the 1987 Super Bowl, he was heavily criticized for not returning to the District of Columbia to oversee emergency management after the city was pounded by two blizzards in a row. These junkets were not uncommon; he met with heads of state in Africa in his first term, was a regular presence at prize fights in Las Vegas, and led a delegation to the Virgin Islands in 1988. Many questioned why Barry was heading to the Caribbean to assist the local government with with overhauling their personnel system, pointing out that Washington, D.C.'s swollen payroll and debt hardly made it a model for this reform.

There were also persistent rumors that the mayor was a philanderer and drug user. The Post said that attractive women were "omnipresent" in Barry's company, and he had been married three times and divorced twice by his third term (he would ultimately be married four times). When he suffered chest pains in September of 1983, he blamed it on a hiatal hernia; a physician not associated his his opinion opined that he had suffered a drug overdose, although this report would not be made public for another six years. A similar incident occurred in January of 1987. A federal grand jury called Barry to testify in January of 1984 during an investigation into the alleged sale of cocaine to the mayor and other D.C. officials. Barry was also in a number of accidents with his municipal vehicle and was rumored to have taken cocaine at a lavish "100 days in office" party, sexually harassed a model, visited a topless club where cocaine was being sold.

The drug rumors would gain steam later in Barry's third term. In June of 1987, he publicly denied a television news report alleging that he used cocaine with a former city employee. An attempted sting operation to purchase drugs from a former city employee named Charles Lewis at a hotel room in December of 1988 was called off when police learned that Barry was present; trace of cocaine were later found in the room. A week later, U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens announced that the incident would be investigated further. Barry apologized for his "bad judgment" in visiting Lewis, but insisted that he had not taken drugs. In January of 1989, Lewis also claimed that he had never used drugs with the mayor.

Lewis changed his story later in the year. In April, he was convicted of four counts of drug possession in the Virgin Islands; a month later, he was indicted on 16 counts of drug possession and perjury in the United States. He accepted a plea bargain in November, pleading to two counts of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and claiming that he had purchased crack cocaine for Barry in 1988 and used drugs with the mayor on the Virgin Islands trip.

The event which would offer undeniable proof of Barry's drug use had its roots in 1985, when Barry met an unemployed model named Hazel Diane "Rasheeda" Moore. She would later claim that they engaged in a two-year affair. Moore was also the beneficiary of $180,000 in city funds over the course of three years, with the money going toward an "image consciousness" campaign aimed at city youth.

On January 18, 1990, Moore invited Barry to visit her at the Vista International Hotel in the northwestern part of the city. Unbeknownst to Barry, Moore was collaborating with the FBI and a surveillance camera was hidden in the room. The tape captured the mayor fondling Moore's breast and leg and inquiring about drugs. She provided him with a crack pipe, and Barry took two deep drags. FBI agents and D.C. police officers stormed the room, placing Barry under arrest.

"Bitch set me up," Barry grumbled as he was placed in custody. "I shouldn't have come up here. Goddamn bitch."

The FBI surveillance footage showing Barry smoking crack cocaine (Source)

The arrest occurred just three days before an event where Barry was scheduled to announce that he would be running for a fourth term as mayor. Some of his advisers had privately suggested to him that he would be better off if he quietly left politics and accepted a university teaching job. He faced more of an uphill battle, due to his past controversies and the possibility that he would face a more powerful challenger. There were rumors that civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who had recently moved from Chicago to Washington, D.C., would run for mayor; polls showed that he would easily defeat Barry in a mayoral race. 

Barry had been criticized for his remarks in a Los Angeles Times article, published on January 7, in which he was reported as saying, "Jesse don't wanna run nothing but his mouth. Besides, he'd be the laughingstock of America. He'd be run outta town if he ran against me." The article also said that Barry had boasted of his sexual prowess, threatened to punitive action against Jewish constituents who did not support him, and led schoolchildren in anti-drug pledges while denouncing rumors of his drug use as a "racist conspiracy."

There were suspicions that the government was using "selective prosecution" to target black leaders, an argument that gained a good deal of traction among Barry's supporters. They pointed out how the popular Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell had been expelled from the House of Representatives in 1967 for contempt of court, even though a House committee recommended that he be allowed to take his seat. "If they had accused Barry of stealing millions, creating a slush fund, awarding corrupt contracts, that would be one thing," said Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP. "But a personal habit that is bad, dangerous, lethal, that makes him a bad role model? There are 4 million people out there doing it. If there are 4 million, why did they pick out one and stick on his case for eight years?"

Barry's critics accused his supporters of trying to whitewash the crime. Some said that since prosecutors lacked the resources to go after every single offender, it made sense to arrest people whose behavior had compromised a position of public trust. Stephens said Barry's behavior was particularly egregious because he had been held up as a role model for black youth. In a column entitled "Don't Judge Black Politicians by Marion Barry," Mona Charen said there was no indication of racism or selective prosecution in Barry's case, since most of the politicians who had been ousted in recent years had been white. She denounced Barry as a hypocrite, adulterer, and lousy mayor who would be judged on these qualities rather than his race. "Most blacks do not use drugs, do not commit crimes, and do not philander," Charen concluded. "They work hard, pay taxes, and wash the car on weekends. It is no reflection on them that the mayor of Washington self-destructed. And it is no reflection on them that febrile leaders like Ben Hooks imply otherwise."

Three days after his arrest, Barry admitted that he had been wrestling with an addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs. He spent seven weeks at rehab in Florida and South Carolina before returning to Washington, D.C. During the jury selection for his June trial, he announced that he would not seek re-election. Sharon Pratt Kelly, who was working as vice president of public policy for the D.C. utility PEPCO and had been an active member of the Democratic National Committee, was later elected to succeed him.

Barry faced 12 drug possession charges, with one stemming from the hotel sting and the remainder from past instances in which witnesses said he had used cocaine. He had also been charged with three felony counts of perjury, which charged that he had given false testimony before the federal grand jury.

The trial lasted for two months. Lewis, who had started cooperating with prosecutors in exchange for a reduced sentence, claimed that he and Barry had used cocaine as far back as the 1986 trip to the Virgin Islands. Moore said she had agreed to help in the sting operation against Barry after a religious conversion and because she was worried about the mayor's health. The defense sought to discredit Moore as an unreliable crack cocaine addict, though they also argued that Barry's actions on the tape suggested that he had gone to the hotel in search of sex rather than drugs. Moore admitted that she had lied to a federal grand jury, since she had told the jurors—and the agents setting up the sting—that she had last taken cocaine in April of 1989; in fact, she had taken it in early January, even as she prepared for the sting.

In one dramatic moment on June 28, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan arrived at the court with about a dozen followers. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, declaring that their presence would prove disruptive to the trial and intimidating to the jury, declared Farrakhan to be persona non grata in the courtroom. Farrakhan complained that Barry's trial "demonstrates the wickedness of the United States government and the lengths to which this government will go when it targets a black leader to be discredited."

In their closing arguments, prosecutors said it was ludicrous to claim that Barry was the victim in a racist conspiracy. Ten witnesses had attested to the mayor's cocaine use, they said, and the only conspiracy was one of "silence and deceit" to ignore or tacitly accept his behavior. "Mr. Barry is asking you to shut your eyes, cover your ears, to close your mind," said U.S. Attorney Richard Roberts. "Really, he's asking you to insult your intelligence by forgetting the facts."

The defense admitted that Barry used cocaine occasionally, but denied that he used the drug as frequently as the prosecution alleged. If that were true, they contended, he could have easily been arrested much earlier in a more conventional method than a sting operation. In an autobiography published shortly before his death, Barry offered a similar opinion. "They desperately tried to paint my cocaine use into something much more than it ever was," he said. "I had never used cocaine as much as they tried to say I had."

The jury, which included 10 black members and two white members, mulled over the charges for eight days. Five days into these deliberations, Barry announced that he would run an independent campaign for an at-large position on the City Council.

On August 10, the jury found Barry guilty of one count of drug possession. Surprisingly, it was not related to the January sting where his drug use had been caught on camera; in fact, the jury had acquitted him on that charge. Rather, the jurors agreed that the prosecution had proved that Barry used cocaine with Alabama businesswoman and Democratic political consultant Doris Crenshaw at the Mayflower Hotel in November of 1989. The jury could not reach a verdict on the remaining 10 drug charges or perjury charges, leading to a mistrial on those counts. It was a small victory for Barry; if he had been found guilty of perjury, the felony conviction would have barred him from holding any elected office.

Before his sentencing, Barry acknowledged that he was a drug addict and said he was "deeply sorry for his actions." He asked for a light sentence of probation or community service. The prosecution sought the maximum punishment of one year in prison, saying Barry was not sorry for his actions but rather upset that he had been caught. Stephens said that Barry had admitted to prosecutors that he used cocaine on at least a dozen occasions. Prosecutors also argued that he had "seriously impugned the integrity" of the mayor's office, especially since he had urged the city's youth to not use drugs.

On October 26, Barry was sentenced to six months in federal prison and one year of probation. He was also ordered to pay a $5,000 fine as well as the cost of his incarceration, with additional drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Jackson told Barry that he had "given aid, comfort, and encouragement to the drug culture" and set a bad example for the citizens of Washington, D.C. Although Barry told the judge that he was "truly remorseful," he continued to make claims of racial prejudice when talking to the press. "I understand that there are different standards for different people, and that's the American injustice system," he said after his sentencing.

In November, Barry experienced his first electoral loss when he finished third in the City Council race with only 20 percent of the vote. After his appeals were exhausted, he began his sentence at a minimum security facility in Virginia in October of 1991. He again claimed to be the victim of a "racist plot," accusing prosecutors of pursuing him while ignoring the malfeasance of white government officials. Barry was required to spend the entire six-month period behind bars, since sentences of under a year were not eligible for early release. Two months into his sentence, he was transferred to a medium security penitentiary in Pennsylvania after another inmate reported seeing a female visitor giving Barry fellatio in the prison's family reception room.

The drug conviction failed to put a dent in Barry's popularity. When he was released in April 1992, he was chauffeured home in a limousine and accompanied by six busloads of supporters. He immediately sought a Council seat to represent Ward 8, the poorest district in Washington, D.C. and the only one he had carried in the 1990 race. He won the Democratic primary with three times as many votes as incumbent Wilhelmina Rolark and was successful in the general election as well.

In May of 1994, Barry announced that he would seek a fourth term as mayor. "I'm in recovery and so is my city," he declared. He faced a three-way contest in the Democratic primary. Kelly had tried to reduce the city's debt, lobby the federal government for a higher budget, and reign in bureaucracy by eliminating about 6,000 jobs; she was not about to give up the office without an attempt at re-election. Councilor John Ray also entered the primary. Barry managed to defeat both of his opponents, earning 47 percent in the vote. Ray earned 37 percent of the vote, Kelly only 13 percent.

While the Democratic primary win typically guaranteed a victory in the general election in D.C., the Republicans had plenty of past scandals to use against Barry. The GOP chose Carol Schwartz, a city councilor who had unsuccessfully contested Barry in the 1986 election, for their candidate. Schwartz had run a hard campaign against Barry in that year, accusing him of incompetence and corruption during his first two terms; in the 1994 election, she could criticize him for his drug conviction as well. She suggested that Barry's cocaine use had played a part in the District of Columbia's increasing homicide rate.

Schwartz managed to keep the general election from becoming a runaway, but she only managed to take 42 percent of the vote. Barry came away with 56 percent. Despite the many charges of mismanagement and the infamous video of his drug use and arrest, he had been elected to a fourth term.

Washington, D.C. continued to be a city beset by serious problems. Several city agencies had been placed into receivership due to their appalling conditions. One judge described the conditions in a home for juvenile delinquents as "unacceptable for a civilized country." In a nursing home run by the city, some patients were found to have bedsores so severe that limbs needed to be amputated. The high rates of murder, high school dropouts, and infant mortality had not dropped significantly since Barry's first term, and the city was also dealing with high levels of crack cocaine addiction and AIDS infections.

Upon taking office in 1995, Barry appealed to Congress for a bailout to help shore up the city's finances and remedy its widespread problems. Instead, Congress established a financial control board to take over budgetary management from the local government amid allegations of extensive mismanagement and graft. Barry would feud with the board for the remainder of his term, decrying the loss of local level management as a "rape of democracy." He accused Congress, which had swung to the control of the Republican Party after the 1994 election, of trying to limit the home rule allowances which had been won two decades before.

In July of 1997, Congress passed a reform act which stripped Barry of much of his remaining power. Oversight of nine major departments was transferred to the financial control board, leaving only the parks and libraries under Barry's watch. He was essentially a mayor in name only. Barry announced in May of 1998 that he would not seek a fifth term, and he left office in January of 1999.

Barry left a polarizing legacy. He pointed to the revitalization of downtown areas as his signature achievement, including a decision to locate government offices in an area hard-hit by the 1968 race riots to help turn the neighborhood around. Supporters saw him as someone who had risen to success on his own initiative, who was committed to helping the city's youth and poor. Many thought that the frequent criticism directed at the mayor was part of a widespread effort to discredit him and roll back the power achieved by black residents of the District of Columbia. Critics said Barry had done more to harm the city then help it through persistent graft, moral bankruptcy, poor fiscal management, and his inability to stem crime or improve the schools.

Although Barry's fourth term as mayor would be his last, he was not out of politics for good. After working for a few years as an investment banker, he announced that he would run for City Council in March of 2002. However, he abandoned the bid after police found traces of cocaine and marijuana in his illegally parked car. Barry said he had been framed, and no charges were filed. Two years later, he was again elected to the Council from Ward 8. He would hold the position until his death.

A number of troubles continued to plague Barry in his later years. He was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of assault after a female janitor at the Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport accused him of exposing himself to her in an airport bathroom in 2000. Barry pleaded guilty to the charge and received a sentence of community service, and was later ordered to pay $35,000 when the woman filed a lawsuit against him.

At a court-ordered screening in 2005, Barry tested positive for cocaine and marijuana. Marion Christopher Barry, his son by his third wife Effi Barry, was convicted of drug possession six years later and received a suspended sentence. Polly Harris, Effi's mother, publicly blamed Barry for his son's drug use.

An audit discovered that Barry had failed to file federal or local income taxes for 1999, 2000, or 2004. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges in October of 2005, and was sentenced to three years' probation in March of 2006. The punishment came without a fine, allowing Barry to start paying back $195,000 in missed federal taxes and $54,000 in D.C. taxes plus penalties. When he also failed to file his taxes in 2005 and 2007, Barry reached an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service to settle the accounts; he blamed poor health for missing the deadlines.

Even in the midst of these incidents, Barry continued to enjoy widespread support. In 2005, he joined local businesses and volunteers in starting a program to distribute 2,000 turkeys for the holidays. A year later, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators awarded him the Nation Builder Award, recognizing his work as a civil rights activist and politician.

However, Barry would also face some embarrassments in his later years on the City Council. He was arrested in July of 2009 after he was accused of stalking Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, who was described as an occasional girlfriend. Though the charges were dropped, Barry was censured, stripped of a committee chairmanship, and removed from another committee a year later after councilors learned that he had awarded $15,000 to Watts-Brighthaupt as a "personal service" contract. Since Watts-Brighthaupt owed him money, she had simply repaid him from the same funds which Barry had assigned in his capacity as a councilor. A similar incident occurred in September of 2013, when Barry was found to have accepted cash payments from city contractors; he was again censured and stripped of a chairmanship.

Like his first brush with the law, Barry's final controversy involved parking tickets. He was involved in a car accident in August of 2014 after driving on the wrong side of the road. After this smash-up, it was revealed that he had $2,800 in unpaid moving violation fines and parking violations. He promptly paid the outstanding sum to the city.

In June of 2014, Barry published an autobiography entitled "Mayor for Life: The Incredible Story of Marion Barry Jr." He said that there were many who "judge me but don't really know me," arguing that he had completed a number of professional accomplishments in his life. "I always felt like I was two different people in politics; one as a personally religious man who was quiet with a lot of doubts and frustrations; and the other as the politician who had to be brave and courageous, while representing the desires of the people," he wrote. "I seemed to be brave enough to take on anything for the people. But deep down inside, I hurt like anybody else."

By this point, Barry had been suffering from a number of health problems. He had survived a bout with prostate cancer, received a kidney transplant in 2009, and suffered from diabetes. On November 23, 2014, he died of hypertensive cardiovascular disease.

Sources: Council of the District of Columbia, "Black Muslims Terrorize U.S. Capital; Reporter Killed, Many Hostages Held" in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune on Mar. 9 1977, "Bullet Stopped Short of Heart" in the Spokane Daily Chronicle on Mar. 10 1977, "Tale of Hanafi Moslem Terror is Related" in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune on Mar. 13 1977, "D.C. Coalition Leads 'Back to Cities' Move" in the Milwaukee Journal on Dec. 6 1978, "D.C. Mayor Denies Drug Involvement" in the Pittsburgh Press on Dec. 28 1988, "Marion Barry Keeps D.C. Guessing" in the Los Angeles Times on Jan. 7 1990, "Marion Barry Plans to Enter Race in Full Stride: 'I'll Win'" in the Free Lance-Star on Jan. 16 1990, "D.C. Mayor Arrested in Drug 'Sting,' Agents Say" in the Ocala Star-Banner on Jan. 19 1990, "Events in Marion Barry's Career" in the Star-News on Jan. 20 1990, "Don't Judge Black Politicians by Marion Barry" in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News on Feb. 5 1990, "Blacks Claim Barry Singled Out" in the Spokesman-Review on Jun. 9 1990, "Jurors View Videotape of Barry Drug Arrest" in the Washington Post on Jun. 29 1990, "Pained and Shamed, Barry Says" in the Pittsburgh Press on Aug. 3 1990, "Mayor Barry Guilty of Cocaine Charge" in the New Straits Times on Aug. 12 1990, "Marion Barry Seeks Probation" in the Argus-Press on Oct. 26 1990, "Barry Gets 6-Month Prison Term for Cocaine Possession" in the Boca Raton News on Oct. 27 1990, "Marion Barry Begins 6-Month Prison Term" in the News-Journal on Oct. 26 1991, "Ex-Mayor Marion Barry Trying to Make a Comeback" in the Star-News on May 22 1994, "Barry's Tenure Was a Roller Coaster Ride" in the Washington Post on May 22 1998, "Schwartz Launches Third Bid for Mayor" in the Washington Post on June 18 1998, "Tax Charges Net Marion Barry 3 Years' Probation" in the Free Lance-Star on Mar. 10 2006, "Some Things You Never Forget" in the Washington Post on Mar. 12 2007, "Barry Again Fails to File Tax Forms" in the Washington Post on Jan. 29 2009, "From the Archives: The Charmed Life of Marion Barry" in the Washingtonian on Feb. 19 2014, "Marion Barry Dies at 78" in the Washington Post on Nov. 23 2014, "Marion Barry, Washington's 'Mayor For Life,' Even After Prison, Dies at 78" in the New York Times on Nov. 23 2014, Mayor for Life: The Incredible Story of Marion Barry, Jr. by Marion Barry Jr., Democratic Destiny and the District of Columbia: Federal Politics and Public Policy by Ronald Walters and Toni-Michelle C. Travis, African-Americans and Criminal Justice: An Encyclopedia by Delores D. Jones-Brown and Beverly D. Frazier and Marvie Brooks