GROESBECK, WILLIAM SLOCOMB
Thrust into the national spotlight by the IMPEACHMENT trial of President ANDREW JOHNSON in 1868, defense attorney William Slocomb Groesbeck won wide renown for his stirring defense of the president. Prior to the trial, Groesbeck was known chiefly for his law practice in Ohio and for a single term in Congress.
His friendship with Johnson led to his lastminute substitution on the president’s defense
team. Delivered while he was ill, Groesbeck’s closing argument is remembered for its brilliance and passion.
Groesbeck was born July 24, 1815, in Schenectady, New York, and studied law at Miami
University, in Ohio. After graduating in 1834, he began practicing at the age of 19 in Cincinnati.
As a liberal Republican, he served in Congress
from 1857 to 1859, but then lost his bid for
reelection. He remained active in party politics
as a leader of the Union Democrats, served as a
delegate at the fruitless peace convention in
1861 that sought to prevent the Civil War, and
150 GRISWOLD V. CONNECTICUT
WEST’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 2nd Editionwon election as a senator in the Ohio state legis-
lature in 1862.
Groesbeck befriended Johnson during the
war and became a natural choice for defending
Johnson during his 1868 impeachment trial.
Johnson trusted and respected the younger man.
He had even briefly considered ousting treasury
secretary Hugh McCulloch and giving McCul-
loch’s job to Groesbeck.When the distinguished
lawyer JEREMIAH SULLIVAN BLACK resigned
from Johnson’s impeachment defense team
amid scandal, Johnson turned to Groesbeck.
Like the rest of Johnson’s defense team,
Groesbeck served without a fee. The task facing
the attorneys was immense. After assuming the
presidency in 1865 following Abraham Lincoln’s
assassination, Johnson had embarked on a mod-
erate, slow-paced policy of reform. The bitter
politics of the Reconstruction era, however, had
sapped both his popularity and his power. Rad-
ical Republicans in Congress overruled his poli-
cies and, in 1867, with the stage set for a
dramatic confrontation, they established the
TENURE OF OFFICE ACT (14 Stat. 430) over his
VETO. This law severely limited executive power.
It required the president to ask the Senate for
permission before removing any federal official
whose appointment the Senate had approved,
and it also provided that presidential cabinet
members would serve one month past the expi-
ration of the president’s term.
In August 1867, Johnson rejected the author-
ity of the act when he requested the removal of
Secretary of War EDWIN M. STANTON, on the
ground that Stanton had secretly conspired with
Johnson’s political enemies. Stanton refused to
step down, so Johnson removed him from office
and replaced him with ULYSSES S. GRANT.The
Radical Republicans swiftly sought revenge.
Three days later, the House of Representatives
voted to impeach Johnson, making him the first
president in U.S. history to stand trial on
impeachment charges. The U.S. Senate then
adopted 11 ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT, the
most serious of which was violation of the
Tenure of Office Act.
Groesbeck played a key role in trial prepara-
tion. Like his colleagues, he advised Johnson not
to appear at trial—a recommendation the presi-
dent followed. Groesbeck remained silent in the
Senate until all the evidence had been presented,
and on April 25 he delivered the second closing
argument. (Because there was no precedent for
an impeachment trial of a president, the Senate
allowed several defense attorneys to present
closing arguments.)
Groesbeck’s speech was a masterpiece of
simplicity and eloquence. He noted that there
had only been five impeachment trials since the
organization of the government, and urged the
Senate to leave political judgments to the citi-
zenry.Despite suffering from an illness, he deftly
countered each of the 11 charges.
When Groesbeck addressed the Tenure of
Office Act, he turned the tables on the Senate.
He argued that the Senate had always had the
power to deal with Stanton’s dismissal and
replacement without resorting to impeachment.
What Johnson had done, argued Groesbeck, was
simply to remove a member of the cabinet who
had been unfriendly to him, both personally and
politically. Johnson had made an ad interim
(temporary) appointment to last for a single
day, an appointment the Senate could have ter-
minated whenever it saw fit. The Senate, argued
Groesbeck, possessed the power to control the
situation all along. Surely, in light of this, John-
