Impeachment in the Thirteen Colonies

Legislative bodies in several of the Thirteen Colonies belonging to England that later formed the original states of the United States held impeachments to remove officeholders and bring other penalties. Impeachment was a process carried over from England. Unlike in modern America but similarly to the practice of impeachment in England, in at least some of the colonies, impeachment was a process that could also be used to try non-officeholders and give criminal penalties. However, in practice, the colonies primarily limited their impeachments to officeholders and punishment to removal from office. Most charges in impeachments were related to misconduct in office. Impeachments in the colonies used a similar bifurcated process to the contemporary English and modern American practice of an impeachment vote followed by an impeachment trial. Like both the English impeachment practice and modern United States federal impeachment practice, the charges would be brought by a colonial legislature's lower chamber and tried in its upper chamber.

In England itself, after falling out of fashion by the mid-15th century, impeachment began to be used again by the Parliament of England in the early 17th century. Likewise, in 1635, the Thirteen Colonies saw what has come to be considered its first impeachment action when the Colony of Virginia moved to initiate the removal of its governor, John Harvey.

The American colonies developed their own distinctive processes of impeachment. Colonial impeachments were largely limited to officeholders and misconduct that had been committed in office. Colonial impeachments inspired most of the colonies to include impeachment initial state constitutions. When the United States Constitution was authored to create a federal government, a clause was included allowing for federal impeachments.