After the war, Cooper served as one of Johnson’s personal secretaries in the White House before being sworn in as a congressman from Tennessee. Cooper’s fierce dedication to Johnson surfaced on the House floor when a Pennsylvania Radical referred to the president as a “usurper.” Cooper artfully called his colleague a liar, which prompted the accusation that Cooper had assisted Johnson as “the paid confidential agent of the usurper, and knew all the secrets of the usurpation.”
Cooper sought the president’s advice on political matters: whether he should run for governor of Tennessee, and how he possibly could win reelection to Congress after 5,000 blacks registered to vote in his district. After imploring Johnson to appoint him to a position that would take him out of Tennessee politics, Cooper pleaded, “Write to me! Tell me what to do!”
When Cooper lost his reelection bid, he signed on again to be Johnson’s aide, arriving in Washington City in the early autumn of 1867, as the battle over Reconstruction raged. Cooper shared the president’s combative instincts. “The more boldly you fight it out,” he advised Johnson, “the better for the country.” The president’s opponents, he warned, “intend to destroy you, if they can. They will hesitate at nothing.” Cooper pledged himself to the president’s service:
I would forego all personal and private considerations if in your estimation I can be of any service in aiding you in the great struggle for the preservation of the Government.
Back in Washington City, Cooper told Navy Secretary Welles that he would serve “as a companion and friend to the president.” Welles applauded the development. “The President needs such a friend,” he wrote in his diary, “and it is to be regretted, if Cooper is such, that he was not invited earlier.” Johnson welcomed this familiar partisan during his time of many troubles. Cooper bubbled excitedly about the experience in a letter to his father, citing the “universal approval given of my course since I have been in close proximity with the President” and the “good effect” he was having. Cooper lauded the “quiet and self-reliant courage with which the President now meets all threats or charges,” concluding, “It is a good thing that I am with him.”
The president soon determined that the loyal Cooper could be even more useful at the Treasury Department. Johnson never quite trusted his treasury secretary, Hugh McCulloch, a holdover from Lincoln’s time. Periodically questioning McCulloch’s loyalty, he considered replacing the Indiana banker but never did. Instead, he decided to appoint Cooper, his home-state acolyte, to the second position in the department. When the Senate refused to confirm Cooper for the job, Johnson left him there on an “interim” basis. Cooper’s “interim” posting would endure until the last day Johnson was in office.
From his perch at Treasury, Johnson’s “companion and friend” became the hub for schemes to influence Republican senators to vote for acquittal. The polished Southern gentleman engaged in hard-nosed bargaining with rascals and senators (groups that could overlap), acting as an unsung coordinator of the president’s most practical defense measures.
Cooper’s first opportunity to play this role came from Kansas and its rugged political culture.
Shortly after the House sent its impeachment articles to the Senate, several Kansans began to explore the crudest methods of influencing senators’ votes. The outlines of the scheme are unmistakable, though accounts of it include a forest of half-truths and undisclosed facts.
As a special agent for the Post Office Department, James Legate had a large geographic responsibility—Kansas and the New Mexico Territory. Despite those official duties, the Kansan was ordered to Washington City by the commissioner of Indian affairs, Nathaniel Taylor, a powerful patronage appointee. Taylor, formerly a congressman from President Johnson’s home region of East Tennessee, was close to the president. While in Washington, Legate performed no duties for the Post Office. Instead, he spent his time negotiating over bribes for the impeachment vote. When his leave was about to expire, it was extended upon the request of Thomas Ewing, Jr., an influential lawyer, and Senator Edmund Ross of Kansas. These powerful men took a surprising interest in a mere postal agent from Kansas. Did Taylor arrange Legate’s official leave—and did Senator Ross arrange its extension—for the sole purpose of working out bribes for impeachment votes? The available records are silent on this point.
Postal agent, and bribery conspirator, James Legate of Kansas. (The Kansas State Historical Society)
Shortly after Legate arrived in Washington City, Commissioner Taylor summoned him to discuss the case before the Senate. Impeachment, the commissioner explained, “was rather a question of brute force than otherwise; [and] if the President had brute force, enough to overcome the power against him, he would be acquitted.” A day later, the commissioner told Legate he “might make some money” from the impeachment, then turned the conversation to the Kansas senators, Ross and Samuel Pomeroy, both Republicans. The superintendent wanted to know, Legate testified later, “if there might not be some way invented by which through me [Legate], they [Ross and Pomeroy] might be induced to vote against impeachment.”
Recognizing an opportunity, Legate sought guidance from Thomas Ewing, Jr., a former Kansas Supreme Court justice who also was brother-in-law to General Sherman and the son of the pending appointee as secretary of war. Both Ewing and his father served as informal advisers to President Johnson. Ewing sent Legate to Indian trader Perry Fuller. After all, Fuller had bribed Kansas state legislators to secure Senate seats for both Pomeroy and Ross. Who would know better how to influence those two senators? Fuller also had a personal connection with Senator Ross. While in Washington City, Ross lived at the home of Robert Ream, who was Fuller’s father-in-law.
The crafty Fuller made a proposal to the postal agent that was roundabout, almost subtle. Legate, Fuller said, should organize a movement to support Chief Justice Chase’s presidential longings. This “Chase movement” could receive funds that then would be diverted to pay senators for their votes to acquit the president. Legate replied that in return “for $50,000, $25,000 down and $25,000 after acquittal,” Pomeroy could direct four Republican votes for acquittal. Legate urged that the funds be paid to a reliable third party who would hold them for the “Chase movement.” After the senators voted to acquit the president, the third party could deliver the funds to the senators’ agents.
Under this scheme, Legate and Fuller intended not only to bribe senators, but also that the middlemen (them) would help themselves to some of the “Chase movement” funds. To this end, Legate joined up with another opportunist who dwelt in the shadows of government. Willis Gaylord, a New Yorker who was Senator Pomeroy’s brother-in-law, had acted for Pomeroy in earlier payoff schemes involving land grants to Kansas railroads and treaties to acquire Indian lands. Gaylord, again acting for Senator Pomeroy, angled to be the stakeholder of the $50,000 in bribe money.
Perry Fuller took Legate to see Edmund Cooper, the president’s man at the Treasury. Jointly, Cooper and Fuller instructed Legate on a key political consideration. The president, they boasted, could call on the vote of Kansas Senator Ross if needed, but that could be controversial for Ross in Republican Kansas. To limit Ross’s political risk, they wanted the other Kansas Republican (Pomeroy) also to vote for acquittal. They were willing to pay for Pomeroy’s vote.
The courtly Cooper instructed Legate on how the bribe money could be raised. Tax collectors in New York and New Jersey had seized large amounts of whiskey on which federal tax had not been paid. Cooper, showing Legate a list of the seizures, said that Legate could earn commissions by helping to settle those cases. Those commissions could pay for bribes to senators, with some money left over for themselves. Two days later, Legate took the train to New York to complete this mission. Lists of whiskey seizures in the New York area were prepared. Within a few days, however, Treasury officials cooled on the project. Legate returned to Washington City empty-handed, resolved to renew his scheming with Gaylord and Cooper. He became a regular visitor to Cooper’s room in the
Metropolitan Hotel as he pressed the Treasury official to find another way to conclude a bribery deal.
The resumed negotiations advanced to the point of concrete proposals about specific sums. Gaylord promised that $40,000 would ensure the pro-Johnson votes of Pomeroy and four other Republican senators. Cooper authorized Perry Fuller to offer $40,000 for the “Chase movement,” with the money to be paid if the Senate acquitted Johnson. In one version, Cooper met with Gaylord and counted out most of the money in cash, then added a check drawn on a Washington bank. Gaylord declined the payment, in this account, because he would not accept the check.
Though the schemers admitted engaging in extensive bribery foreplay, they tended to deny that there was any consummation. Cooper claimed that during negotiations over the payment to Gaylord, he began to suspect that the New Yorker’s overture might be a trap, that Cooper’s efforts to purchase senators’ votes could be revealed publicly to embarrass Johnson.
THE KANSAS CABAL
Senator Samuel Pomeroy
Radical Republican who proposed Cabinet changes to President Johnson to defeat impeachment, and whose agents negotiated for bribes for several Republican senators.
Senator Edmund Ross
Radical Republican who (like Pomeroy) owed his Senate seat to bribes paid to Kansas state legislators.
Perry Fuller
Indian trader who bribed Kansas legislators to win seats for Pomeroy and Ross, and sought to head the federal tax agency. Assisted Legate in a proposal to bribe senators to vote to acquit.
James Legate
Postal agent detailed to Washington; negotiated with Treasury official Edmund Cooper for bribes to Republican senators.
Willis Gaylord
New Yorker and brother-in-law of Pomeroy; negotiated with Cooper on behalf of Pomeroy and others for bribes.
Robert Ream
Landlord of Senator Ross; father-in-law of Perry Fuller.
Thomas Ewing, Jr.
Adviser to President Johnson and Senator Ross, former Kansas Supreme Court Justice, and brother-in-law of Gen. Sherman; helped Legate advance a scheme for bribing senators.
Perhaps the most remarkable part of the Kansans’ saga is that their scheming reached into the White House, into Andrew Johnson’s office. In late March, postal agent Legate persuaded a representative (probably Fuller or the younger Ewing) to deliver a message to a Johnson aide: If the aide would ask Senator Pomeroy for his opinion of Legate, the ensuing conversation “would open up the way of securing half a dozen radical votes for the President.” When the aide described Legate’s message to the president, Johnson understood its significance immediately. He replied that he preferred conviction with a clean conscience to acquittal by nefarious means.
That was what the president said. But Senator Pomeroy made a similar overture to the White House and met a different reception. Pomeroy sent a message to Johnson: If the president would change his Cabinet, impeachment would halt. “Impeachment,” Pomeroy’s message insisted, should be viewed “as a political, not a legal question.” Johnson again reacted indignantly, announcing to his staff, “I will have to insult some of these men yet.” The president’s huffy response may have been due to the source of the proposal. Pomeroy, a Radical and hardly a Johnson ally, had a noisome reputation for mixing corruption with sanctimonious Christian piety. The Kansan’s hypocrisy was so notorious that he served as the model for Mark Twain’s avatar of venality, Senator Dilworthy, in his novel The Gilded Age.
Despite his pious protestations, the president met with Pomeroy early the next morning. He did not use the occasion to insult the senator. Afterward, Johnson related an innocuous version of this meeting. According to the president, the Kansas senator said nothing of changing the Cabinet, but offered a few tepid comments about current Cabinet officers. After a “very friendly” talk, Pomeroy supposedly departed with the wish that Johnson give him “suggestions that might tend toward producing a good effect in the present condition of affairs.”
Johnson’s bland account of his conversation with Pomeroy concealed far more than it revealed. In the midst of the impeachment crisis, two such veteran politicians were not likely to pass the time exchanging vague niceties about Cabinet officers. Certainly not when, as Johnson admitted, “several persons” had urged him to talk to Pomeroy. (Was Cooper one of those urging him?) The Kansas senator had a definite agenda for the meeting, and no doubt pursued it. Perhaps he pressed for changes in the Cabinet. Perhaps the proposal for a Cabinet shakeup morphed into a bold demand for control of federal patronage jobs in Kansas, or an even bolder demand for a bribe. Though the president had protested that he would not bargain for votes, for the next two months Senators Ross and Pomeroy would figure in many discussions of what type of bargain might bring them to vote for acquittal.
The Kansans were the first, but they were not the only ones thinking about how to use money to influence the Senate’s verdict. A second plan came from more august sources. Three of Johnson’s Cabinet members established a war chest for bribing Republican senators. Once more, the scheme ran through the hands of Edmund Cooper at Treasury, Johnson’s trusted supporter.
This plan originated with Secretary of State Seward, Treasury Secretary McCulloch, and Postmaster General Alexander Randall. The three high officials fretted that the president might well be convicted and removed from office. They convened a conference with an expert on corruption, printing executive Cornelius Wendell. A Democrat who performed all federal printing contracts in the 1850s, Wendell was a notorious figure in Washington City. He operated a political slush fund in the years before the Civil War, using excess payments from his government contracts to support Democratic newspapers and make contributions to Democrats around the nation. In a six-year period, Wendell received $3.8 million for public printing (at least $50 million in current dollars), more than half of which was pure boodle. That arrangement, directed by President Buchanan himself, led another Democrat to call Wendell “that most corrupt of all men.” In but one example, in 1858 Wendell spent $40,000 (at least $560,000 in current dollars) to push legislation through Congress.
Although Wendell’s graft and bribery were exposed in congressional hearings in 1860, President Johnson made him Superintendent of Public Printing. One Wendell sponsor said he had recommended the scoundrel to Johnson “as Gen. [Andrew] Jackson employed Lafitte the pirate. He knew the intricacies of the mouth of the Mississippi and would be able to detect the approaches of the enemy.” That sponsor later recanted his recommendation, admitting, “Wendell has joined the knaves whom he supplanted.”
The three Cabinet officers had a pressing question for this infamous character: how much would it cost to assure the president’s acquittal? After some hedging, Wendell estimated that $150,000 (over $2 million in today’s money) should do the job, though he refused to handle the funds himself. After the impeachment trial ended, Wendell recalled that the entire amount was raised and placed in an acquittal fund. Some came from Postmaster General Randall, some from Treasury Secretary McCulloch. Much was raised by “outsiders.”
Contributors to the acquittal fund doubtless included the many government contractors and patronage employees whose livelihoods depended on the continuation of the Johnson Administration. Some came from employees of the custom houses in Baltimore and Philadelphia. More came from whiskey distillers who evaded taxes by bribing Johnson’s tax men. Collector Henry Smythe, who presided over the golden river of revenue at the New York Custom House, was eager to help. He sent a deputy to the White House to inquire about the best way to pay the president’s defense costs. After all, three months earlier Smythe had collected funds from every employee in his domain for the stated purpose of helping the president with impeachment. Moreover, Smythe was now after a foreign posting, the plum position of minister to Great Britain. A man seeking high appointment will want to be useful. Colonel Moore, Johnson’s aide, referred Smythe’s man to William Evarts, the president’s lawyer from New York, so they could arrange money ma
tters “in a quiet way.” Moore warned that “extreme caution was necessary.”
The acquittal fund was assigned to the care of Cooper and Postmaster General Randall, who jointly controlled it. The inconspicuous Cooper thus coordinated a second major scheme for buying impeachment votes. Before the trial ended, at least one more corrupt intrigue would land on his desk.
While the fixers plotted, the trial loomed as a momentous event in the nation’s life, nowhere more so than in the South. Southern Unionists and freedmen, outnumbered and beleaguered, held their breath. “The impeachment of the President,” wrote an Alabama Republican, “will be a death blow to the rebellion, still strong with life.” An army commander in Kentucky reported that the “rebels” were alarmed by the impeachment. “Here in the South,” he added, “we cannot calmly think of the failure of impeachment and the long train of evils that would follow in its wake.”
As each day passed, every participant in the trial could feel the lens of history beginning to focus. The House managers went to Mathew Brady’s gallery to sit for a group photograph, a grim affair in which some resemble avenging angels, others seem befuddled to be there at all, and only James Wilson looks like a potentially pleasant dinner companion. Stevens learned that teenage sculptor Vinnie Ream had completed a statuette of him. Ms. Ream, the precociously talented daughter of Senator Ross’s landlord, Robert Ream (and thus sister-in-law to Indian trader Perry Fuller), was eager to show the work to Stevens, who doted on her. Ben Butler worked feverishly on his opening speech in the Senate, his opportunity to frame the constitutional contest. Through three days of preparation, he slept only nine hours, refusing to meet his many callers, aided by a team of stenographers and an Ohio congressman. No other manager lent a hand.
Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy Page 21