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

by David O. Stewart

  Boynton’s investigation certainly reinforces suspicions of corruption in the Senate vote. So does a letter that Wendell wrote the day before Johnson left office in March of 1869. In it, Wendell requested the president’s help in recovering $10,000 paid for “expenses attending the impeachment trial.” The costs, Wendell explained, were incurred “at the instigation and by the direction of [Postmaster General] A. W. Randall, E[dmund] Cooper, and E[rastus] D. Webster.” Randall and Wendell had managed to raise $1,500 of the amount, but the balance remained unpaid. Without directly asking for payment, Wendell told the president, “You can judge the object of this note.”

  With evidence that is both untidy and incomplete, definitive pronouncements are difficult to make about bribery and the impeachment vote. Operating without modern tools for investigating public crime—such as coercive grants of witness immunity, ready access to sophisticated banking records, or the threat of long prison terms for perjury and official misconduct—Butler still turned up intriguing evidence, significant chunks of which can be confirmed. That Butler was not exclusively interested in the truth makes the historical riddle yet more challenging. Still, some points can be stated.

  The president’s partisans assembled at least one war chest, and probably more, to buy senators’ votes. They entered into substantive negotiations with numerous parties claiming to represent senators interested in selling their votes—General Alonzo Adams, postal agent James Legate, Indian trader Perry Fuller, Willis Gaylord (Pomeroy’s agent), Senator Pomeroy himself, and possibly others who managed to cover their tracks more effectively. Legate described a concerted effort to sell senators’ votes, which Fuller confirmed in substantial part. Indeed, Legate claimed eighteen months after the trial that John Henderson of Missouri received $50,000 at New York’s Astor House for his vote, and that Gaylord received $25,000 that had been raised for the impeachment but was diverted to a futile attempt to purchase Collector Smythe’s confirmation as American minister to Austria. Sixty thousand dollars, Legate explained, was paid for yet another senator’s vote, and $25,000 went to Senator Waitman Willey of West Virginia, who double-crossed his bribers by voting for conviction but keeping the money. Though many elements of Legate’s tale are not confirmed, Perry Fuller had to have very good reasons for paying off Legate’s mortgage in return for the postal agent’s papers and his hasty departure from Washington. And then Fuller burned Legate’s papers.

  Were any votes actually sold? With no solid proof, only probabilities can be offered. A number of clever and powerful people worked hard to purchase votes. Virtually all contemporaries defended the honor of Senators Fessenden, Grimes, and Trumbull. In doing so, most made clear that they were not so sure about the other four defectors. At least three of those others—Ross, Fowler, and Henderson—cast votes that were contrary to their prior statements and to their immediate political advantage as Republicans. And what of the two or three additional Republicans who were expected to vote for acquittal if their votes were needed? Were arrangements (that is, payments) made with them, also?

  Then there was Ross’s double game before the May 16 vote. The Kansan argued that he should not be suspected of corruption merely because he changed his mind about how to vote. That’s a fair point. His actions might be explained as reflecting genuine uncertainty. But they are explained equally well, even better, as the efforts of a man holding out for the best offer. For a man whose companions in the hours before he voted were Perry Fuller, the embodiment of corruption in 1868, and Thomas Ewing, Jr., another leading political manipulator, that explanation has great power.

  Selling a vote in the first presidential impeachment would have been a dazzlingly craven act, but not inconsistent with the ethics of the era. House Speaker Colfax and a fistful of congressmen took railroad stock in return for supporting the Union Pacific Railroad. A secretary of war, William Belknap, would be forced to resign in 1872 for taking kickbacks from military contractors, while President Grant’s chief of staff would be linked to the Whiskey Ring. Were senators’ votes purchased to preserve Johnson’s presidency? Admitting a lack of certainty, the verdict here is that it is more likely than not.

  Though he kept some distance from the grimy details of the campaign to save Johnson by all possible means, Secretary of State Seward plainly inspired and set in motion much of the effort. Many of the schemers who planned the political deals, bribes, and patronage payoffs were Seward men, from Thurlow Weed to William Evarts, from Sheridan Shook to Erastus Webster to Ransom Van Valkenburg. Seward, who had accepted Johnson as Lincoln’s true heir, drew no ethical lines in the desperate battle to preserve Johnson’s presidency.

  Secretary of State William Henry Seward, staunch Johnson loyalist.

  Then arises the more modern question: What did President Johnson know and when did he know it? Was he aware of the war chests assembled to buy senators on his behalf? Did he know of the bargaining with supposed agents for senators willing to be corrupted? The president’s men were generally careful to absolve Johnson of having any knowledge of their activities in trying to buy impeachment votes. Johnson made several statements to staff members that he would not buy senators’ votes. Are they, and he, to be believed?

  Here again, only probabilities can be stated, but they are strong. Edmund Cooper of Tennessee, Johnson’s friend and companion, touched every corrupt scheme. Other senior officials were deeply involved in the vote-buying efforts. From the Cabinet—Secretary of State Seward, Treasury Secretary McCulloch, and Postmaster General Randall. From the White House staff—Colonel William Moore and William Warden. Is it possible that all of them engaged in such high-risk activity without telling the boss? Is it possible that none of them ever mentioned their activities to the president with a passion for micromanagement, who kept a list of senators on his desk and reviewed with newspaper correspondents how they would vote? A truism for corruption investigations in the modern era is that when there is widespread cheating, the top official knows. Indeed, the corruption cannot happen unless that person approves. People are not so foolish as to undertake high-risk behaviors like bribery without being certain that their superiors approve. That lesson rings even more true for powerful people like Cabinet members who are jealous of their public reputations. President Johnson knew.

  For those who accept the proposition that a vote can be corruptly purchased with patronage, as well as with greenbacks, the evidence on these questions is stronger still.

  On May 14, two days before the Senate vote, Willis Gaylord sent a message to postal agent Legate. “As matters stand now,” Gaylord wrote, “the money to be made is on the other side by appointments, etc. Keep watch of good places and let me know.” By referring to “the other side,” Gaylord may have been counseling an attempt to secure promises of patronage jobs in the (presumably) incoming administration of Ben Wade. Gaylord’s focus on patronage was apt. Fortunes could be amassed in a short time as a revenue collector or Indian agent.

  As soon as the Senate votes were tallied, those who had conducted the bribery schemes swamped the president with demands for lucrative positions. On May 18, Edmund Cooper urged a tax collector position in New Orleans for Andrew Lacy, who assisted Woolley and the Astor House group. “I have been saved by so many men,” Johnson remarked, “that I am often accused of ingratitude because I can’t help them all.” He did, however, help a lot of them.

  When it came to converting the president’s acquittal into lucrative patronage, Edmund Ross was at the head of the line. For Ross, the biggest prize was making Perry Fuller the commissioner of internal revenue, a position Fuller had pursued for six months. On June 23, while Butler’s committee was hearing witnesses about vote-buying, Ross sent Johnson a letter urging him to name Fuller to the position, referring to their earlier conversation on the matter. Three days later, the president did just as Ross asked.

  The negative reaction to Fuller’s nomination was immediate. Press reports referred to Fuller as “that notorious Indian trader and lobbyist,” a man
whose “reputation is bad,” a name “associated with corrupt contracts, and with a ring of western adventurers who have been implicated in many of the inequities notorious at Washington.” When the Senate Finance Committee recommended against Fuller’s nomination, Johnson withdrew it.

  In response, Fuller set his sights a bit lower. In late August, Johnson appointed him collector at the Port of New Orleans, through which passed the heavy Mississippi River traffic to and from foreign destinations. Because the Senate was in recess, Fuller could take office immediately, without being confirmed. One correspondent wrote disgustedly that Fuller’s appointment resolved any nagging doubt that perhaps Johnson was not so bad after all: “The man who can give the country such public servants has come to posterity and been judged already.”

  Fuller arrived in New Orleans in September and set straight to work. He fired 65 Republican employees of the custom house, replacing them with no fewer than 150 worthies, all his creatures. Fuller’s overhaul caused the treasury secretary to fret that expenses “will be considerably increased by Mr. Fuller while those of all other Custom Houses are being reduced.” But Fuller was just getting started.

  He appointed Vinnie Ream’s father—Senator Ross’s landlord in Washington—to be superintendent of the warehouses that held imported goods before they were taxed. Goods sent through one of those warehouses, however, were never taxed. Though Fuller served as collector in New Orleans for only seven months, he was arrested in September 1869 and charged with using this scheme to defraud the government of $3 million in tax revenues. A grand jury in New Orleans returned a nineteen-count indictment against him. Fuller won release on a bond that was guaranteed by two United States senators: Edmund Ross of Kansas and an Arkansas senator whose brother was Fuller’s business partner. When Fuller failed to appear on his bond, Ross was called upon to produce the fugitive. The senator never answered in court. According to a later report, Fuller’s New Orleans scam generated more than $50,000 in kickbacks for him. The criminal charges against Fuller were never pursued.

  But Perry Fuller’s was only the most lurid name on Senator Ross’s shopping list. According to one Radical newspaper, the president yielded to Ross the control over all patronage appointments in Kansas and the territories of Colorado and New Mexico. In early June, Ross requested the appointment of a friend as superintendent of Indian lands in Kansas and the neighboring Indian Territory (the future Oklahoma). Ross’s letter to Johnson was blunt. “There is a large amount of patronage connected with that office,” he wrote on June 6, “making it very valuable to the possessor.” The appointment was “vital,” the Kansan continued, to maintain his political position after “my action on the impeachment.” The president made the appointment.

  A week later, Ross demanded that the president approve a treaty with the Osage Tribe. On the same day, Johnson sent the treaty to the Senate. Two weeks later, Ross wanted his brother appointed a special mail agent in Florida. Shortly after that, the Kansas senator requested three appointments, including the surveyor general of Kansas and two Indian agents. Acknowledging that he was asking much of the president, Ross wrote that he felt warranted in doing so “by the many assurances of kindly personal regard that I have received from you.” Only the candidate for surveyor general was nominated as Ross requested. Undeterred, the Kansas senator also asked the president to grant public lands to a Kansas coal company. Ross’s demands made an impression on Johnson’s bodyguard. The Kansas senator, the guard recalled, “was at the White House a good deal during the last months of Mr. Johnson’s administration,” pursuing “appointments in Kansas.”

  Johnson’s patronage largesse was not confined to Senator Ross. Van Winkle of West Virginia, Fowler of Tennessee, and Grimes of Iowa all sent the president requests for appointments, albeit on a more modest scale. Cornelius Wendell, the corruption consultant who designed Johnson’s acquittal fund, received a lucrative sinecure as a government director on the board of the Union Pacific Railroad.

  John Henderson of Missouri was not appointed to the Cabinet, despite reports that his vote was purchased with promises of such a spot. In late June, he wed Mary Foote in a Washington ceremony. The president attended the wedding, where Senator Fowler of Tennessee served as a groomsman. With an impressive lack of concern for appearances, Johnson provided a unique wedding gift, appointing the senator’s father-in-law, Elisha Foote, to be commissioner of patents. The Senate promptly confirmed the appointment.

  On the same day as the Henderson-Foote nuptials, the president nominated Collector Smythe to be U.S. minister to Austria. The nomination embarrassed so sturdy a Johnson loyalist as Navy Secretary Gideon Welles. It was, Welles noted tersely in his diary, “an appointment that should not have been made.” Welles’s judgment was vindicated ten weeks later when an investigation of the New York Custom House placed the collector under temporary arrest to secure his testimony. One historian estimated at “sixfold” the corrupt overcharges imposed on imports by Smythe’s Custom House. When the Senate would not confirm Smythe for Austria, Johnson nominated him to be minister to Russia. Smythe ran afoul of two more political hazards. The Custom House investigation ripened into criminal prosecutions alleging the theft of $700,000 of tax revenue during Smythe’s watch, while the collector was excoriated for placing on the public payroll the former editor of the Richmond Examiner, a prominent Confederate during the war. Despite Johnson’s dogged efforts, Smythe never did join the diplomatic service.

  Was this parade of patronage nothing more than the standard act of rewarding one’s friends? The actions of 1868 should not be judged by the standards of the twenty-first century. Plainly, though, the most generous view of Ross’s actions must acknowledge that he strained every muscle to cash in on the president’s sense of obligation after the impeachment vote. Indeed, that surely was one of his expectations when he and Perry Fuller consulted over breakfast on the morning of May 16, and when he and Thomas Ewing, Jr., went on their midnight ramble the evening before. Were those patronage deals reached before Ross saved the president? Did the president know the extent of his obligations to Ross before the Kansan cast his vote? No sporting man would bet against it, not without the benefit of very good odds.

  THE CARAVAN MOVES ON

  JANUARY 1, 1869–

  [Acquittal] leaves him less hopelessly in the wrong than he seemed six months ago, and it leaves him in possession of the honors of the field. His escape, to be sure, has been very narrow, but in politics, as in war, an inch of a miss is as good as a mile.

  THE NATION, MAY 21, 1868

  THE FIRST DAY of 1869 brought cold drizzle and sleet to Washington City, but callers at the White House found a profusion of fresh-cut flowers and a buoyant Andrew Johnson. The president betrayed no sadness that his time in the Executive Mansion was coming to an end, even though the despised Ulysses Grant would succeed him in office, having defeated the Democratic candidate, New York Governor Horatio Seymour, in the fall election. Supported by his two gracious daughters, Johnson greeted official guests in the Blue Room for an hour. At noon, the doors opened to the public. With the Marine Band playing, visitors left their dripping umbrellas in the anterooms and piled in to offer New Year’s greetings to Johnson. The dapper president smoothly took the hand of each visitor, exchanged a quick word, and turned to the next.

  For Johnson, the holiday season had been a good one. On Christmas Day, he issued a proclamation granting amnesty to every former rebel, including Jefferson Davis, something he had wanted to do for months. December 29 might have been his most carefree day in the White House. To celebrate Johnson’s sixtieth birthday, his family invited four hundred children of their friends to a dancing party in the East Room. The children joined in square dances, waltzes, polkas, and the Virginia reel before enjoying refreshments. Mrs. Johnson came downstairs to admire the event, only the second function she attended at the White House.

  At the New Year’s Day reception, two guests drew special attention. Noble Hurdle, an aged resident of Georgetow
n, announced that he had shaken the hand of every president since the Republic began and was happy to shake Johnson’s, “the last President, but by no means the least!” The president thanked Mr. Hurdle for the compliment, muted though it was.

  Yet more remarkable was an earlier visitor, Ben Butler of Massachusetts. Despite all his tirades against the Great Criminal in the White House, despite his relentless efforts to remove Johnson from office, Butler delivered a robust two-handed greeting to the president. The two men, recently bitter adversaries, held up the reception line for five minutes while they chatted and beamed happily at each other. What accounted for such a change in political relations? Did this fraternal feeling reflect the realism of experienced politicians who were moving on to the next chapter? Or had the president respected his promise to Senator Grimes during the trial, pulled in his horns, and behaved himself following the dramatic acquittal?

  Johnson had indeed honored the most specific commitment he made to Grimes: after seriously considering backing out on the appointment of John Schofield as secretary of war, the president went through with it. The Senate confirmed Schofield’s appointment in late May. On June 1, Johnson thoroughly enjoyed a visit to the War Office, finally rid of Edwin Stanton. With a laugh, the president observed, “It is some time since I was in this room!”

  By many measures, though, Andrew Johnson did not change his political course after the acquittal. Not only did he nominate dubious figures like Perry Fuller and Henry Smythe to high positions, but he also kept on vetoing legislation. On June 20, Congress adopted a bill to readmit Arkansas under its new state constitution. The president vetoed; to do otherwise, he explained, would accept Congress’s power to exclude Arkansas’s representatives in the first place. Five days later, Johnson vetoed a law readmitting six other Southern states (all but Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas). Congress enacted both bills over his vetoes.