Hans Trefousse, historian of Civil War, Reconstruction
NEW YORK - Sometimes the least prepossessing American presidents are the most enduringly interesting. That is certainly the case for Andrew Johnson. His impeachment trial of 1868 was in the news again in the late 1990s, during the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.
It is also the case for Rutherford B. Hayes, who won the disputed election of 1876 despite having lost the popular vote, an event that resonated during the 2000 presidential contest.
Hans L. Trefousse was known for his well-received books about both men. A specialist in Civil War and Reconstruction-era history, he died Jan. 8 at his home on Staten Island, his son, Roger, said. He was 88.
His books include “Impeachment of a President: Andrew Johnson, the Blacks, and Reconstruction’’; “Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian,’’ about the congressman who led the impeachment effort; and “Rutherford B. Hayes.’’
At his death, Dr. Trefousse was distinguished professor emeritus of history at Brooklyn College, where he taught full time from 1950 until 1998. He also taught at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Hans Louis Trefousse was born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt. His family left Germany in the mid-1930s and settled on Staten Island. Dr. Trefousse received a bachelor’s degree from the City College of New York and master’s and doctoral degrees in history from Columbia.
Serving in Army intelligence in World War II, Dr. Trefousse interrogated German prisoners of war. In addition to his fluency in German, he had a means of persuading them to reveal vital information.
“We used to tell the prisoners that we had two internment camps, one in Florida and the other in Siberia,’’ Dr. Trefousse told the Brooklyn College alumni magazine last year. “I would hang a sign around the neck of a prisoner that said Russia and send him out into the yard. He would ask a guard what the sign meant. Nine times out of 10 the prisoner came right back in and told us everything we wanted to know.’’
Dr. Trefousse’s wife, the former Rashelle Friedlander, died in 1999. He leaves his son.
In an interview with CNN in 1998, after the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment against Clinton, Dr. Trefousse offered a lesson from the past.
“If you judge by the Johnson impeachment, you would see that if you impeach for reasons that are not the real reasons, you really can’t win,’’ he said. “It seems to me the real reason today is not the perjury or Monica Lewinsky, but rather the differences between the Republican right and the president and the dislike of many of the Republicans for the president. So I think the outcome would be very similar to the one in 1868.’’
And so it was. In May 1868, the Senate acquitted Johnson. It did the same with Clinton in February 1999.