This Day In American History: Feb. 24

Feb. 24, 2017 is the 55th day of the year, with 310 remaining. The moon today is waning, with illumination at 5 percent and decreasing every day until the new moon on Feb. 26.

President Andrew Johnson Is Impeached

The year 1868 was unkind to the 17th president of the United States. The House of Representatives voted 11 articles of impeachment against President Johnson, with presiding over his trial led by the then-chief justice of the Supreme Court and held the following March. Johnson was eventually accused of having broken the law. Congress cited the president's disregard for the Tenure of Office Act, which Johnson believed to be unconstitutional.

The Tenure of Office Act restricted the power of the president to remove office-holders without the approval of the Senate, and Johnson had ascended to office following the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, emerging as a continuation of Lincoln's post-Civil War efforts. Nevertheless, the Tenure of Office Act was ultimately repealed, and a Supreme Court ruling on a related case in 1926 declared that the Tenure of Office Act was, indeed, unconstitutional — just as Johnson had claimed. Johnson was the first president in American history to be impeached.

President Barack Obama Addresses Congress

President Obama began his joint session of Congress with the affirmation that he had arrived to "speak frankly and directly to the men and women who sent us..." before addressing concerns surrounding the state of the American economy at the time. He spoke on the cost of health care and expenditure, denouncing delays in reform, and of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a stimulus package enacted by the 111th U.S. Congress and signed into law that same month.

Obama discussed the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2008, which allowed the government to purchase toxic assets and equity from financial institutions in order to strengthen its financial sector. TARP — originally authorizing $700 billion in expenditures before a reduction to $475 billion — played a role in the government's measures to address the subprime mortgage crisis.

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