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The First Impeachment
In 1797 land speculator Blount, serving as US senator from Tennessee, was discovered to be plotting to invade Spanish-held Louisiana and Florida with British help to facilitate the western spread of the US. Melton (law, U. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) recounts his impeachment by the House of Representatives, the first such action since the Constitution was adopted a decade earlier. He notes that because many of the framers of the Constitution took part in the proceedings, the case reveals their original intent. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
- GenresLaw
344 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 3, 2020
Saw a reference to this essay/book in recent news and thought it would be a nice historical reference to better understand impeachment. An interesting side fact about this is that it came out just as the Clinton impeachment was warming up. There's a brief mention of it in an addendum to the writer's opening preface.
My biggest takeaway from reading about the Senate impeachment of 1797-99, is how partisan even the earliest use of this power was wielded, even as Congressmen attempted to work out the role of each chamber in this process. Even as they realized the precedent they were looking to set, they still looked to how they could use this to cement their own power.
This is a legal history book, yet still reads really well. There are certainly sections of names and dates that pile on, and there is a fair amount of constitutional description here, but the story of how the Blount conspiracy built and was investigated is still very engaging.
My biggest takeaway from reading about the Senate impeachment of 1797-99, is how partisan even the earliest use of this power was wielded, even as Congressmen attempted to work out the role of each chamber in this process. Even as they realized the precedent they were looking to set, they still looked to how they could use this to cement their own power.
This is a legal history book, yet still reads really well. There are certainly sections of names and dates that pile on, and there is a fair amount of constitutional description here, but the story of how the Blount conspiracy built and was investigated is still very engaging.
January 22, 2019
Someone on either Twitter or Quora recommended this book as being really well written, so that is how it ended up on my pile. It may be well written, I don't know. It certainly was not enjoyable.
In the preface, the author says to skip to chapter 2 for the good bits. Make that page 89 (well into Chapter 2), and - even then - this is a book only a constitutional lawyer or a constitutional historian could love. I think that he is basically reading and paraphrasing the minutes. If you don't already have a really strong grasp on the history of the US, France, England and Spain in the late 1790's, (and I don't) very little is going to sink in.
In the preface, the author says to skip to chapter 2 for the good bits. Make that page 89 (well into Chapter 2), and - even then - this is a book only a constitutional lawyer or a constitutional historian could love. I think that he is basically reading and paraphrasing the minutes. If you don't already have a really strong grasp on the history of the US, France, England and Spain in the late 1790's, (and I don't) very little is going to sink in.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews