Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy

by David O. Stewart

  Though Bingham’s speech pleased the galleries—perhaps because Republicans passed out most of the admission tickets—he advanced his cause very little. His address had become flat and repetitive on the second day. One Radical called it overprepared. The anti-Johnson Chicago Tribune sniffed that the Senate listened to Bingham placidly, “its withers unwrung.” Bingham was humble about his effort. “God knows I have tried to do my duty,” he said. “It is in the hands of the Senate now. The great work of my life is done.”

  For almost three weeks, William Evarts had been maddeningly confident of his client’s acquittal. How could he be so certain? Was he simply putting up a brave front? Did he know something? Speaker Colfax, diligently counting noses, thought impeachment was losing steam. “We are not as strong or as confident,” he wrote on April 28, “as last week.”

  With the lawyers silenced for good, the struggle over Andrew Johnson’s fate moved away from center stage. Much would happen now in private rooms where powerful men could speak frankly with one another, and in silent rooms where wavering senators calculated their public duties and their private interests. If there was a way to persuade a senator to vote one way or another, this was the moment to do it.

  THE DARK MEN

  MAY 5–9, 1868

  We should go through barring corruption—money is here to be used like water.

  BENJAMIN BUTLER, MAY 12, 1868

  ON TUESDAY MORNING, May 5, before John Bingham began the second day of his closing argument, three groups of powerful men met privately to discuss the impeachment vote. Two of the meetings were in Washington City. The House managers gathered for their daily pretrial session at 11 A.M. They carefully reviewed which way each senator might vote, along with the reasons why. With the outcome uncertain, they doubtless vowed to redouble their efforts to persuade or compel Republican senators to toe the party line.

  High spirits infected the second meeting, Johnson’s Cabinet session. The department heads assembled at the Executive Mansion at noon. Secretary of State Seward, supremely confident, taunted a colleague who was uncertain of the verdict. Seward offered to wager a basket of champagne on the president’s acquittal. When the bet was declined, Seward offered two-to-one odds. Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch was equally optimistic.

  The third meeting took place two hundred miles to the northeast. Thurlow Weed, for more than three decades a newspaper editor and powerful political boss, welcomed four political professionals to his plush suite at the Astor House hotel in New York. The hulking Weed, at age seventy still “altogether massive,” with shaggy eyebrows and great natural strength, had assembled men with the experience to evaluate a proposal to bribe Republican senators to vote for the president’s acquittal.

  Johnson’s supporters were already working on at least two bribery schemes, both of which passed through the hands of Edmund Cooper of Tennessee, the interim assistant treasury secretary. Along with Postmaster General Alexander Randall, Cooper was managing the president’s $150,000 acquittal fund. Cooper also was negotiating over bribes with several Kansas-based connivers, including postal agent James Legate, Indian trader Perry Fuller, and Willis Gaylord, the brother-in-law of Senator Pomeroy. Now Weed had assembled several of Seward’s closest allies, along with the postmaster general, to review a third bribery scheme.

  Though they tried to conceal their activities, the five men of the Astor House group left behind a web of circumstantial evidence that includes coded telegrams, murky messages, and striking intersections with the efforts of other Johnson operators like Edmund Cooper, Perry Fuller, New York Collector Henry Smythe, printer Cornelius Wendell, and lobbyist Sam Ward. Taken together, the surviving evidence leaves the indelible impression that dark men undertook dark deeds to keep Andrew Johnson in office.

  The proposal that prompted the May 5 meeting at the Astor House came from an unsavory source, General Alonzo W. Adams. A native of upstate New York, Adams left a trail of chicanery behind him when he crossed the nation. After army service during the Mexican War, he joined the California Gold Rush in the late 1840s, ending up as a collector of that state’s tax on foreigners wishing to prospect for American gold. Adams won election to the California State Senate in 1850, but soon was under investigation for failing to turn over to the state some $5,000 in taxes he had collected. A State Senate investigating committee recommended Adams’s expulsion from the legislature, but he was allowed to resign. In early 1851, as a local newspaper put it, Adams “quietly slipped away from the Capitol, to avoid the earnest greetings the Sheriff had in store for him.” He evidently left behind a wife; at least that was the claim in the bigamy lawsuit filed by a New Jersey woman whom he later married.

  When the war came in 1861, Adams signed on with the First New York Cavalry. His second round of military service included numerous disputes with brother officers, as Adams liberally used political connections to advance his career. By war’s end, Adams commanded the regiment and could point to a distinguished battlefield record. He then cashed in on that record. According to a niece who lived with him in New York, Adams labored as “a Lobbyist of the worst type, doing all the dirty work of parties who are vile enough to employ him.” Adams boasted of buying senators’ votes, she continued, including during the impeachment trial.

  In late April of 1868, Adams approached Henry Smythe, the collector of the New York Custom House. Smythe, who himself had been threatened with impeachment only the year before, was still seeking diplomatic appointment, now as the American minister to Austria. Adams’s overture resembled the tale spun two weeks earlier by James Legate, the postal inspector who joined Perry Fuller in a bribery scheme focused on Senators Pomeroy and Ross of Kansas. General Adams told Smythe that for $30,000 he could guarantee three additional Republican votes for the president’s acquittal. (Adams named at least two of the senators to be bribed.) Adams wrote Smythe a letter explaining that he already had arranged to pay the bribes but needed funds to conclude the scheme. Smythe promptly introduced Adams to Thurlow Weed, a man who surely would know how to manage this opportunity. Although Weed later said that he told Smythe to ignore Adams’s proposal, that claim rings particularly hollow since Weed convened the Astor House meeting to review the Adams scheme and thereafter received a half-dozen telegrams on the same subject.

  Weed’s guests on May 5 were political mechanics of distinction from the principal centers of government patronage and corrupt dealing. Weed himself had unquestioned credentials as a political fixer. The longtime sponsor of Secretary of State Seward—one Cabinet member described Seward as “part of Weed”—the boss assembled a large fund for Seward’s presidential bid in 1860. In return, donors to Weed’s fund received franchises to provide trolley and local railway service in New York City. When Seward lost the nomination to Lincoln, Weed used the fund to pay “floaters” to travel to southern Illinois and vote Republican there. During the Civil War, Weed arranged government contracts in return for 5 percent of the take. As pay for supporting a land grant request in Minnesota, Weed received $750,000 worth of shares in a railroad (the equivalent of at least $10 million in current dollars). He had long followed a practice in the New York legislature of buying the votes he needed.

  Preeminent among Weed’s guests was Postmaster General Randall, who took a train up from Washington the night before. Not only did the former governor of Wisconsin preside over the largest trove of federal jobs—postmaster positions in every town and village—but he also co-managed with Edmund Cooper the $150,000 acquittal fund that had been proposed by Cornelius Wendell and approved by Seward and Treasury Secretary McCulloch. If there was bribing to be done, Randall had the wherewithal to do it.

  Then there was Weed’s righthand man, Sheridan Shook. As chief federal revenue collector in New York, Shook was implicated in congressional investigations of whiskey tax frauds. He also served on the New York Board of Supervisors with the notorious William Marcy Tweed, better known as “Boss” Tweed. Erastus D. Webster, an official in Shook’s graft-ridden
revenue district, represented the secretary of state, whom he had served as personal secretary. For the impeachment trial, Seward gave Webster the delicate task of canvassing the votes of senators.

  No meeting about bribing senators would have been complete without a representative from the Whiskey Ring. The fifth man in the room was Charles Woolley, a Kentucky lawyer closely identified with liquor interests. To support his taste for fast horses and the finer things of life, Woolley concentrated his law practice on Cincinnati distillers and their disputes with the federal tax authorities. Though Woolley was the least prominent figure in this worldly group, and the only one lacking a close connection to Seward, soon he would be more notorious than all the others combined.

  THE ASTOR HOUSE GROUP, AND ALLIES

  Thurlow Weed

  New York editor and political boss, longtime sponsor of Secretary of State Seward.

  Alexander Randall

  Postmaster general and former Wisconsin governor; cocustodian of “acquittal fund” with Edmund Cooper.

  Sheridan Shook

  Trusted Weed associate and chief revenue collector for New York district.

  Erastus Webster

  Revenue official in New York and former personal secretary to Seward.

  Charles Woolley

  Lawyer from Cincinnati and Kentucky, represented Whiskey Ring interests.

  Henry Smythe

  Collector of Customs for New York City and aspirant for diplomatic appointments.

  Sam Ward

  “King of the Lobby,” New York-based bon vivant who worked with the Astor House group.

  Alonzo Adams

  Former Union cavalry officer and source of proposal to purchase Senate votes to acquit the president.

  Through long careers in this heyday of political manipulation, these five men had encountered each other before. Political and financial interest united them in support of President Johnson and his power to appoint every postmaster, every custom house employee, and every tax collector. No president could manage all of those appointments, so he had to rely on men like Thurlow Weed to screen applicants. Those advisers ensured that lucrative positions went to reliable men who would remember to be grateful to their benefactors. Even though Johnson had less than a year left in office, there were plenty of jobs to protect and hand out during that time. Indeed, the Tenure of Office Act could have the unintended effect of increasing the value of Johnson’s more senior patronage appointments. As long as that statute was in effect, the next president would need the concurrence of the Senate to remove each Johnson appointee below Cabinet rank.

  The purpose of the Astor House session, Thurlow Weed admitted later, was to secure his support in raising still more funds for bribing senators. After reviewing General Adams’s proposal, the Astor House fixers set off in a determined fashion. Much of their story unfolds through elliptical telegrams—some coded, many sent under aliases, all carrying the distinctive scent of skullduggery. Edmund Cooper at the Treasury now became the single point of intersection for all three schemes to purchase Senate votes for Johnson’s acquittal. As soon as the Astor House meeting ended, Webster (the tax official and Seward confidant) fired off a message to Cooper in Washington City. “All’s well,” he reported. Webster’s telegram promised a meeting with Cooper in the morning, no doubt to report fully on the Astor House session. Webster joined Woolley and the postmaster general on the evening train back to Washington. Weed set off in another direction, seeking the aid of a longtime factotum, Albany editor Hugh Hastings. Weed’s telegram told Hastings he was needed in Washington. Hastings was needed, Weed later confirmed, to deal with the impeachment.

  Woolley, the Whiskey Ring lawyer, wrote to Sheridan Shook from Washington in the late morning of the next day, May 6. “My business is adjusted,” he announced. He asked Shook to place $10,000 to his credit at a New York bank. For what purpose did Woolley need that $10,000, just the day after the Astor House meeting, now that his “business” was “adjusted”? Where did Shook get the money? Woolley then withdrew $10,000 from a Washington bank in ten $1,000 bills. In whose pocket did those $1,000 bills end up?

  Shook simultaneously received a terse message from Erastus Webster, who had just met with Cooper at the Treasury: “All right,” Webster wrote, with admirable brevity. What was all right? Had Cooper approved the plans of the Astor House group? Webster sent a second message to Thurlow Weed. This one was heavier with unexpressed meaning, yet almost as light on detail: “He will do it; telegraph Hugh Hastings to come here right away.” Who will do what? And how did Hugh Hastings figure in this event?

  Whatever the Astor House group was up to, it seemed to bear immediate fruit. A “Wall-street operator,” who had offered to share with Johnson’s men his special access to certain senators, announced in a telegram that day that there had been a shift in the trial’s prospects: “Radical change in favor of the President. Bets are offered five-to-one against conviction.” Sam Ward, the King of the Lobby, agreed that the president’s prospects had improved suddenly. At the same moment on May 6, he telegraphed to New York, “All OK—I think twice eleven sure”; Ward later explained that his message meant that he then counted twenty-two senators who would vote for acquittal. Was this dramatic change the doing of Cooper and Webster, and of Woolley and Shook?

  The definitive answers to these questions lie buried with the men of the Astor House group, and with Edmund Cooper and their allies. None of them ever completely described what they did to pursue General Adams’s proposal, or the scheme of postal agent Legate, or any other plan to buy senators’ votes. Indeed, the few statements they later made about their vote-buying often involved polite refusals to comment, sometimes bald-faced lies.

  Still, their activities were directed from the highest levels of government. Weed, Shook, and Webster had close ties to Secretary of State Seward. Seward himself authorized the acquittal fund, as had Treasury Secretary McCulloch and Postmaster General Randall. Every scheme led to Cooper, who had been called to Washington to serve as Johnson’s “companion and friend” and was the second-ranking official at Treasury.

  By early May, the president had a copy of an odd letter, dated the year before, from Senator Pomeroy of Kansas to postal agent Legate. The provenance of this letter has been disputed, mostly because its substance was incendiary. In the letter, Pomeroy authorized Legate to assert that the senator supported his bid to be postmaster for Leavenworth, Kansas. If Legate is appointed, the letter promises, Pomeroy will support future postal appointments and will vote against any impeachment of the president.

  In some respects, the letter seems dubious. Why would the Kansas senator make such sweeping promises to gain a single postmaster’s job? Moreover, the promise of a vote on impeachment seems out of place in April 1867. Even though the House Judiciary Committee was then investigating impeachment, the prospect of a Senate trial was remote. Still, possession of the letter, Colonel Moore wrote in his White House diary, contributed to the president’s “excellent spirits.”

  Other mysterious epistles concerned New York Collector Henry Smythe. In late April, Colonel Moore received a report that Senator Pomeroy, now supporting impeachment, claimed to have a letter from Smythe “showing expenditures on behalf of the President,” adding that the letter “might do Smythe great harm.” A troubled Smythe sneaked into Washington that evening, avoiding the main hotels. Despite his stealthy entrance, Smythe was immediately accosted by an agent of Ben Butler. Butler’s man hustled the New Yorker to a meeting with the Massachusetts congressman. Butler accused Smythe of trying to buy senators’ votes, and backed up his accusation with letters acquired, according to Smythe, by “stealth and trickery.” Smythe’s account so alarmed Colonel Moore at the White House that he begged Smythe to determine whether the stolen letters came from Moore’s desk in the Executive Mansion, or perhaps his wastebasket.

  A day later, Smythe was back at the White House, reporting that the stolen letters (now in the possession of War Secretary Stanton) were tor
n, so they probably came from Moore’s wastebasket. Because the letters mostly damaged Smythe, not the president, they were never released publicly.

  As the Senate vote neared, the Kansas postal agent (Legate) continued to press his bribery scheme with the help of Willis Gaylord, Senator Pomeroy’s brother-in-law. For at least a week during the beginning of May, Legate was in regular contact with Cooper at Treasury. At the same time, Gaylord demanded $10,000 from Indian trader Fuller to “negotiate for votes.” Gaylord still offered to sell the votes of Pomeroy and four other senators, in return for cash.

  As a matter of simple politics, Gaylord’s persistence was puzzling. By this point in the trial, Pomeroy was acting as a whip for the impeachers, pressing senators to vote for conviction and maintaining a running tally of likely votes. Indeed, after his initial flirtation with the president’s camp, Pomeroy seemed to have struck a deal with Ben Wade, the Senate president pro tem, which would grant the Kansas senator control over Kansas patronage in a Wade Administration. It would take a prodigious contortion for Pomeroy now to vote for acquittal. Perhaps, for the right price, the Kansas senator was prepared to perform such a gyration. His graft-ridden career suggests that he might not have blanched at doing so. Perhaps Pomeroy proposed to sell the votes of other senators, but not his own. Or perhaps Gaylord and Legate intended to steal the supposed payoff money themselves and did not much care what Pomeroy planned to do. Once they had their hands on any bribe money, what could anyone do to get it back? Whatever the explanation, the Kansans persevered.