After Lincoln

by A. J. Langguth

  The Senate’s secretary, John Forney, then read the roll as each senator swore to the same oath. Johnson’s son-in-law, David Patterson of Tennessee, duly took his turn, but when Forney called Ben Wade’s name, he was challenged by Thomas Hendricks, a Democrat from Indiana. Not only would Wade benefit from a guilty vote, but the Radicals were known to be trying to influence votes by circulating a list of the cabinet appointments Wade would make if he advanced to the presidency.

  They had even tested the loyalty of Henry Seward by promising that if he would withdraw his support for Johnson, Wade would retain him as secretary of state. As the author of the Tenure of Office veto message, Seward responded predictably: “I’ll see you damned first. The impeachment of the president is the impeachment of his cabinet.”

  The Senate debate over Wade’s role went on for two days before Hendricks dropped his objection.

  Once the Senate had approved rules for the trial, the seven managers of the House impeachment committee were admitted to the chamber. Ohio Republican John Bingham, their chairman, understood, as did Salmon Chase, that when control of their state legislature had passed lately to the Democrats, Ben Wade’s future options had diminished. If Wade failed to inherit the presidency from this trial, Ohio would not be sending him back to the Senate.

  News was no better elsewhere for Chase’s presidential hopes. Alabama had refused to ratify a constitution acceptable to Congress. Radicals had lost the governorship of Connecticut, and Michigan had rejected the vote for Negroes. An editor in Mississippi was challenging the right of the Reconstruction Acts to establish a military tribunal.

  • • •

  Among the House managers, Ben Butler was pressing to take the lead. Since throwing in his lot with the Radicals, Butler’s postwar years had been a time of drift and frustration. Meeting in 1865 with President Lincoln, he had presented himself as a replacement for Seward at the State Department, and he thought the interview had gone well. Three days later, Lincoln was shot.

  Butler conferred next with Andrew Johnson to recommend that Jefferson Davis be tried in a military court with Butler as the presiding general. Johnson ignored the idea. Two years had passed before Butler learned that all charges against Davis were being dropped.

  After a period of idling in Massachusetts at his beachfront home near Gloucester, Butler easily won a seat in Congress. Now, being chosen to lead the impeachment trial gave him an outlet for his energies. He worked around the clock for three days on his remarks for the March 20 opening.

  Butler had wanted to see Andrew Johnson forced to stand in the dock, and he complained when his fellow managers were “too weak in the knees” to oblige him. Butler did not know that only strenuous protests from Johnson’s defense team had prevented the president from showing up on his own at the Capitol.

  If Johnson’s advisers could keep him away from the Senate, they could not keep him out of the newspapers. The night before Butler was to deliver his opening address, the president granted an interview with a favorite reporter from the Cincinnati Commercial to settle old scores.

  When the subject turned to heavy drinking, Johnson claimed that Lorenzo Thomas had been a bit “elated” when he made statements that Johnson had not authorized. As for Grant, the president was coy at first, hinting at the general’s excesses without naming him. But Johnson added that during his Swing around the Circle two years earlier, he could guarantee that Thomas “didn’t drink half as much as one or two others, about whose condition nobody dares to say a word.”

  The reporter pressed him to acknowledge that he meant Grant, and Johnson allowed that the general had been in his office “so drunk that he couldn’t stand.”

  When the interview was published, Johnson claimed to have been misquoted.

  • • •

  At the Senate, visitors getting their first look at Ben Butler were disconcerted by his appearance. He was almost entirely bald, and a cocked eye gave him a devilish aspect. But Butler’s opening statement was not at all sulfurous, and he disappointed the galleries with his lawyerly restraint.

  Butler’s most provocative remark was reminding the senators that they did not have to consider statutes or common law since the case was without precedent. They were bound only by “the natural principles of equity and justice.”

  Stressing the point that Johnson had been elected president by an assassin, not by the people, Butler blamed him for a wave of murders throughout the South. He claimed that thousands of freed Negroes were being killed, along with whites who had supported the Union.

  During the next five days of prosecution testimony in an unseasonably hot chamber, the number of spectators declined until by Saturday, April 4, fewer than fifty House members were on hand. Butler had become increasingly aggressive, an approach that now seemed to offend some listeners.

  At one point, he praised the Constitution for offering the people a lawful way to change leaders, while in the kingdoms of Europe, a monarch who “becomes a buffoon, or a jester or a tyrant can only be displaced through revolution, bloodshed and civil war.”

  But under Andrew Johnson, he added, violence was rife here at home. Butler picked up from his desk a bloodstained shirt and waved it before the chamber. The shirt, he claimed, had belonged to a Northerner from Ohio who had been denounced in Mississippi as a carpetbagger and killed by Johnson supporters.

  Butler’s theatrics could not substitute for the absence of the trial’s star witness. The impeachment managers worried that if they brought Edwin Stanton to the Capitol, Lorenzo Thomas would rush to the War Department and change the locks.

  • • •

  On their side, the president’s team had suffered a damaging loss when Henry Stanbery took ill midway through the proceedings and had to withdraw. Stanbery had resigned from the cabinet to lead the defense, and no one enjoyed Johnson’s confidence more than his former attorney general.

  He was replaced by William Evarts, who had been recommended by Henry Seward for his quick wit. Seward had hesitated to defend Johnson publicly to avoid complicating his negotiations with Stevens and Butler over the Alaska appropriation. But Seward joined with Thurlow Weed in raising eleven thousand dollars in New York for the president’s defense fund.

  And when Seward happened to encounter William Fessenden, Seward chided him as being “too good a lawyer” not to see the weakness of the case for impeachment. Fessenden responded with an anecdote: The majority feeling in the Senate, he said, was like “that of the jury that said they couldn’t find the prisoner guilty of the crime he was indicted for, but they would like, if they could, to convict him of ‘general cussedness.’ ”

  Evarts intended to ignore Johnson’s cussedness and elevate his motives beyond mere pique and a spiteful flouting of Congress. The defense intended to show that the president was protecting the powers of his office against an unconstitutional assault. By that interpretation, Johnson had removed Stanton simply to test the Tenure Act in the courts.

  Defense lawyers wanted to buttress that argument by calling on General William Sherman and Gideon Welles, and Chase ruled that they could be heard. Sherman was permitted to report that Johnson had said to him about the Tenure Act, “If we can bring the case to court, it would not stand half an hour.” But in party-line votes, the Radicals blocked most other supporting testimony.

  Being hectored by the Radicals nettled Chase, but he hoped they were creating a backlash that would damage their cause. As the days rolled on, Evarts also took to challenging Butler on every procedural point, with no purpose but to slow the trial and underscore its absurdity.

  One leading instigator of impeachment had been largely sidelined. As the certainty of conviction became murky, Charles Sumner tried to prevent Chase from casting tie-breaking votes. Sumner contended that since Chase was not a senator, he had no authority to vote on any issue. A majority ruled, however, that their chamber now constituted a court, not simply another Senate session, and Sumner’s motion was defeated.

  Thaddeus St
evens also was taking little part in the day-to-day proceedings despite being one of the seven House managers. A Philadelphia journalist reported that Stevens kept his eyes shut for long intervals and that his dry voice suggested “the rattle in the throat of a dying man.” Then he would rouse himself to wave “majestically toward some one of his colleagues and make a scarcely audible suggestion.” A New York World reporter likened him to a ghost haunting the courtroom. Even as mundane a gesture as Stevens ordering crackers and tea appeared to astonish the galleries.

  Stevens was even sicker than anyone knew. It took immense effort for him simply to leave his rooms for the Capitol, and one morning he had not recognized his own servant.

  But when his turn came on April 27, Stevens managed to rise and stand at the speaker’s desk. He began his remarks by promising to be brief since experience had taught him that “nothing is as prolix as ignorance.”

  Soon, however, Stevens asked for permission to sit. Then, after half an hour, his voice became too weak to be heard, and he passed his pages to Ben Butler to finish reading.

  Stevens had said he would discuss the charges “in no mean spirit of malignity.” Yet he concluded by demanding that if the president would not execute the laws passed by Congress, “let him resign the office which was thrust upon him by a horrible convulsion and retire to his village obscurity.”

  • • •

  On Monday, May 11, the senators met in executive session to assess their progress. Outside the chamber, reporters, groups of partisans, and even the House managers were poised to question any senator who excused himself to step outside. The president’s observers included Perry Fuller with his extensive Indian contacts and Charles Woolley, a Cincinnati lawyer for a cartel called the Whiskey Ring, liquor distillers who bribed tax collectors to overlook their profits.

  Thurlow Weed had met with Woolley and the New York lobbyist Sam Ward to raise money for bribing any senator who would vote for acquittal. For public consumption, Weed protested that the funds were designated only for paying the president’s lawyers.

  But Weed no longer dominated New York politics. His influence had been overtaken by agents from Tammany Hall, led by William M. Tweed, and the politics of Weed’s latest paper, the New York Commercial Advertiser, were the opposite of Ben Wade’s. Weed advocated delaying the vote for Negroes and strict separation of the races. His columns satirized feminists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and he advised workingmen against strikes or agitating for an eight-hour day.

  • • •

  The Radicals were engaged in their own campaign of inducements and intimidation, and Ben Butler was receiving discarded documents from Executive Mansion trash from Negro servants more loyal to their cause than to their employer. With no apparent irony, Butler also was offering a bribe to expose bribery. He promised a hundred thousand dollars to any member of the president’s team who would reveal the payoffs.

  Three Republicans had declared outright that they were voting for acquittal—James Grimes of Iowa was the first, followed by Lyman Trumbull of Illinois and, no surprise to Charles Sumner, William Fessenden. When Sumner had complained to a friend about “senators calling themselves Republicans who are Johnsonite in sentiments,” he identified Fessenden as the worst offender. The Maine senator “has opposed every measure by which this country has been saved,” Sumner concluded. It would have been better “had he openly joined the enemy several years ago.”

  Four other votes looked lost for conviction. Joseph Fowler of Tennessee had called for impeachment, but during the trial he had begun sitting with the Democrats. George Edmunds of Vermont would vote to convict only on the relatively minor first three articles of impeachment but not on the crucial eleventh. John Sherman of Ohio also declared himself against the eleventh article, and John Henderson of Missouri seemed dubious about it.

  Tallying up the prospects, Radicals left the Capitol that night anxious and gloomy. They needed thirty-six votes to convict Johnson, and their most optimistic projections left them short. Throughout the night, they sought out the wavering senators to bolster their resolve, paying particular attention to Frederick Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, Waitman Willey of West Virginia, and Henry Anthony of Rhode Island.

  But they did find it possible to influence some of the senators leaning toward Johnson. Henderson of Missouri said that, after all, he might be able to vote to convict on article eleven. Or he could resign from the Senate and let his governor appoint a more reliable anti-Johnson vote. Resigning might simplify life for the forty-two-year-old Henderson. He had just announced his engagement to the daughter of a leading New York Democrat.

  In the end, however, he decided to stay in the Senate and vote for acquittal.

  When Frelinghuysen, Anthony, and Willey were cajoled back into the anti-Johnson camp, estimates of the balloting stood at thirty-five to eighteen. One vote would determine Andrew Johnson’s fate, and it might be cast by Edmund Ross, a forty-two-year-old newcomer from Kansas who was refusing to reveal his decision.

  After a day and night of growing tension, the vote scheduled for May 12 was postponed. Radical Jacob Howard had fallen ill, and his allies got the vote delayed until May 16.

  Both sides might have preferred a further delay, but the calendar was inexorable. In four days, the Republican National Convention would open in Chicago. To meet the deadline, Howard would have to be brought to the Capitol on a stretcher. Two days earlier, James Grimes had suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, and he, too, would be carried onto the Senate floor.

  • • •

  With a verdict definitely set for May 16, crowds again converged on the Capitol. As Salmon Chase put on his robe, he assured himself that his conduct had been impartial. Although he still favored acquittal, Chase expected that Johnson would be forced from office, and he was braced for administering the oath of office to a man he loathed.

  But how long Ben Wade would serve as president was unclear. The relevant statute could be interpreted to mean that he might serve until the normal installation of a president on the following March 4. Or only until a special election was held within the thirty-four days before the first Wednesday in December.

  The initial roll call concerned the eleventh article of impeachment, the comprehensive article considered most likely to remove Johnson. Lesser articles would be dealt with later since the vote on them was unlikely to be different. Anticipation in the chamber had been growing steadily during the roll. With every Democrat committed to acquittal, attention continued to focus on the Republican who could supply the thirty-sixth guilty vote.

  The difference between the conservative Republicans in Congress and the Radicals had come down to this: Both factions wanted to uphold the powers of the legislative branch against overreaching by the chief executive. But how should a proper balance be struck?

  Johnson’s vetoes had deeply angered Illinois senator Lyman Trumbull, who had drafted substantial portions of the Reconstruction Acts. But like other conservatives, Trumbull worried that if Johnson were convicted, “no future president will be safe who happens to differ with a majority of the House and two thirds of the Senate.”

  In that case, Trumbull asked, “What has become of the checks and balances of the Constitution?”

  Trumbull’s misgivings more than outweighed his personal antagonism toward Johnson. But the Radicals had no doubt about the threat—real and potential—that Johnson posed for the country and for the Republican Party. When they compared his current actions against possible future harm to the Constitution, they had no doubt which was the greater danger.

  For many days, the Radicals had been resigned to losing Turnbull; Fessenden of Maine; Henderson of Missouri; Joseph Fowler of Tennessee; and James Grimes of Iowa. Peter Van Winkle of West Virginia would be called upon after Ross, but the House managers held no hope for him. The verdict would depend on Edmund Ross.

  Chief Justice Chase addressed him: “Mr. Senator Ross, how say you? Is the respondent, Andrew Johns
on, president of the United States, guilty or not guilty of a ‘high’ misdemeanor, as charged in this article?”

  • • •

  In a Senate of bustling energy, Edmund Gibson Ross had been easy to overlook. Born so tiny that his mother could cover his face with a teacup, Edmund had grown up in the Midwest, left high school before graduating, and seemed content to marry Fanny Lathrop, a girl from his Congregational church, and live out his life working for a newspaper in Sandusky, Ohio.

  Edmund Ross

  But a cholera epidemic uprooted his family and sent them to healthier surroundings in Milwaukee, and by 1859, the lure of expanding opportunities in Kansas had drawn Ross and his brother William to found the Kansas State Record in Topeka. An ardent abolitionist, Ross sold the paper three years later to answer President Lincoln’s call for volunteers in the Union army. Major Ross survived but only after two horses had been shot out from under him in October 1864, at what became known as Missouri’s Battle of Little Blue River.

  When his superior officer, Colonel Samuel Crawford, was elected governor of Kansas, he sent a note to Ross asking him to come to Topeka. Senator James Lane had voted against overriding Andrew Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights Bill, and when he committed suicide soon afterward, his family blamed the outpouring of abuse from his constituents.

  Crawford intended to appoint Ross to the seat. The governor told him, “We need a man with backbone in the Senate.”

  • • •

  Up until the minute that Chief Justice Chase called his name, Ross had refused to divulge his decision, but clues abounded. Ross had endorsed Lincoln’s policies toward the South and saw Johnson as carrying them out. Even though he had not declared himself, his mail from Kansas had been as vituperative as any Senator Lane had received.

  How high the stakes had become was demonstrated by an offer of twenty thousand dollars to William Ross if he would reveal how his brother would vote. When Ross persisted in his silence, Ben Butler was quoted—accurately or not—as exclaiming, “There is a bushel of money! How much does the damned scoundrel want?”