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

by David O. Stewart

  “I am unwilling”: Cong. Globe, 36th Cong., 2d sess., p. 117 (December 18, 1860), pp. 1354–56 (March 2, 1861).

  Lincoln’s seven-man Cabinet: New York Times, March 6, 1865.

  Hamlin, an antislavery man: As early as March of 1864, the press reported that Johnson might be the Republican pick for vice president. New York Times, March 24, 1864. Four years before, he had been Tennessee’s “favorite son” candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. In the 1860 Democratic Convention, his home state delegation voted for him on thirty-five ballots. Johnson then angled for the Democratic nod for vice president. Hans Trefousse, Andrew Johnson, A Biography, New York: W. W. Norton & Co. (1989), pp. 123–24. Now he might have an opportunity to run for the office on the opposing ticket.

  Some 600 delegates arrived in Baltimore for the Republican convention on June 7, 1864. Reflecting the strategy of reaching out to Democratic voters, the gathering was called the “National Union Convention,” and the party called itself the “National Union Party.” Three candidates led the field for vice president: Johnson, the incumbent Hamlin, and Daniel Dickinson of New York, a former U.S. senator and a War Democrat. After unanimously choosing Lincoln for president, the convention turned to the second spot. Johnson led in the first balloting with 200 votes to Hamlin’s 150 and Dickinson’s 108. On the second roll call, Johnson won all but a handful of votes. Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions, 1856, 1860, and 1864,…As Reported by Horace Greeley, Minneapolis: Charles W. Johnson (1893), pp. 188–89, 198–99, 236–39. Johnson’s opponents suffered fatal defections from delegations that should have supported them. Dickinson commanded only half the votes of his own New York delegation. Those New Yorkers allied with Secretary of State William Seward supported Hamlin at first, then switched to Johnson. Seward, Lincoln’s closest adviser, may have been implementing his boss’s preferences. In so doing, Seward also protected his own job. Under the unwritten political rules of the 1860s, one state could not have two high officials in an administration. If Dickinson became vice president, Seward would have to leave office. Hamlin also came to grief in his home region, New England, when the Massachusetts delegation did not support him. P. J. Staudenraus, ed., Noah Brooks, Mr. Lincoln’s Washington, Washington, DC: T. Yosellof (1967), p. 326 (June 7, 1864); James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln to Garfield, Norwich, CT: Henry Bill Publishing Co. (1886), vol. 2, pp. 64–69; Diary of Gideon Welles, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. (1911), vol. 2, p. 66; Glyndon Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, New York: Oxford University Press (1967), p. 433. Charles E. Hamlin, The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin, Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press (1899), pp. 464–76, 506; James F. Glonek, “Lincoln, Johnson, and the Baltimore Ticket,” Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 6:270–71 ( March 1951); Don E. Fehrenbacher, “The Making of a Myth: Lincoln and the Vice-Presidential Nomination in 1864,” Civil War History 41:273 (1995).

  Did Lincoln drive Johnson’s selection? Before the convention, Lincoln said several times that he was neutral as to the choice of his running mate, hardly a vote of confidence for Hamlin. Lincoln’s official neutrality probably was a smokescreen. The president likely sought to nudge the party toward Johnson while still appearing to be above the fray. One Republican congressman wrote, “It was understood that the President favored Johnson, though certain I am that he made no open declaration of his wishes.” Albert G. Riddle, Recollections of War Times: Reminiscences of Men and Events in Washington, 1860–1865, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons (1895), p. 282.

  “[K]nowing that Johnson”: Hamlin, p. 497.

  A Supreme Court justice: Noah Brooks, Washington in Lincoln’s Time, Herbert Mitgang, ed., New York: Rinehart & Co. (1958), pp. 211–12. Senator John Sherman of Ohio remembered Johnson’s address similarly, though with different details. John Sherman, John Sherman’s Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate, and Cabinet: An Autobiography, Chicago: Werner Co. (1895), p. 351:

  He was plainly intoxicated and delivered a stump speech unworthy of the occasion…. He went on in a maudlin and rambling way for twenty minutes or more, until finally he was suppressed by the suggestion of the secretary that the time for the inauguration had arrived, and he must close.

  Brandishing it before the crowd: Brooks, p. 213.

  As the tall president: Staudenraus, ed., p. 425.

  A visitor to Johnson’s office: J. B. Brownlow, quoted in David Bowen, Andrew Johnson and the Negro, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press (1989), p. 174 n. 35; Charles A. Dana, Recollections of the Civil War, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press (1996), p. 106. Numerous other observations confirm these accounts. Harriott S. Turner, “Recollections of Andrew Johnson,” Harpers Monthly 120:173 (1910); Oliver P. Temple, Notable Men of Tennessee, New York: Cosmopolitan Press (1912), p. 366; Garrett Epps, Democracy Reborn, the Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post–Civil War America, New York: Henry Holt & Co. (2006), p. 26; Chauncey M. Depew, My Memories of Eighty Years, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons (1922), p. 48.

  “I have known Andy Johnson”: Hugh McCulloch, Men and Measures of Half a Century, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons (1889), p. 373.

  “The Vice President Elect”: Letter of Senator Zachariah Chandler to his wife, quoted in Howard Means, The Avenger Takes His Place: Andrew Johnson and the 45 Days that Changed the Nation, New York: Harcourt (2006), p. 92.

  A future member: John Sherman’s Recollections, p. 351; Hamlin, p. 498; Welles Diary, vol. 2, p. 252; Staudenraus, ed., pp. 422–23 (March 12, 1865); The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, Springfield: Illinois State Historical Society (1933), vol. 2, p. 9.

  All eyes: Times (London), March 20, 1865.

  From that day on: Chicago Tribune, March 13, 1865; Carl Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, New York: McClure Co. (1908), vol. 3, p. 227.

  2. PRESIDENT JOHNSON

  I am for a white man’s government: John W. Gorham to Johnson, June 3, 1865, in Johnson Papers 8:173 (quoting prior statement by Johnson).

  Notable among them: Trefousse, Andrew Johnson, p. 208.

  Johnson was fastidious: Truman, p. 435.

  After meeting the president: Quoted in Trefousse, Andrew Johnson, p. 346; ibid., pp. 20–24. 15 After long seconds of silence: Life, Speeches, and Services of Andrew Johnson (T. B. Peterson, 1865), pp. 112–13. 15 One of the president’s few recreations: W. H. Crook, Memories of the White House, Boston: Little, Brown & Co. (1911) (Henry Rood, ed.), pp. 45, 57, 61.

  During the White House years: Frank Cowan, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States: Reminiscences of his Private Life and Character, Greenesburgh, PA: Oliver Publishing House (1894), p. 7.

  A White House worker: Nancy Beck Young, “Eliza (McCardle) Johnson,” in Lewis L. Gould, ed., American First Ladies: Their Lives and Their Legacy, New York: Garland Publishing (1996), p. 196.

  Their older surviving son: Trefousse, Andrew Johnson, p. 168; Bowen, p. 82.

  Johnson’s bodyguard: Johnson to Mary Johnson, December 7, 1856, in Johnson Papers 1:592–93; Cowan, pp. 7, 11, 14; Moore Diary/AJ, p. 27 (February 24, 1867); Blaine, vol. 1, p. 325; McCulloch, p. 404; Margarita Spalding Gerry, “Andrew Johnson in the White House, Being the Reminiscences of William H. Crook,” Century 126: 877 (1908).

  He once claimed to like circuses: Cowan, p. 6 and passim; Turner, p. 170; George Fort Milton, The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals, New York: Coward-McCann (1930), p. 121.

  Those who met with Johnson: Cong. Globe, 28th Cong., 1st sess., app. 96 (January 31, 1844), in Johnson Papers 1:140; Bowen, p. 2; George W. Julian, Political Recollections, 1840 to 1872, New York: Jansen, McClurg & Co. (1884), p. 243.

  “Of all the dangers”: Benjamin B. French to Johnson, February 8, 1866, in Johnson Papers 10:57; Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 2d sess., app. 2–3 (December 3, 1867).

  When Wade suggested: Trefousse, Andrew Johnson, pp. 197–98; “Interview with Pennsylvania Delegation,” May 3, 1865, in Johnson Papers 8:22; Mary Land, “Ben Wade,” in
Kenneth Wheeler, ed., For the Union: Ohio Leaders in the Civil War, Columbus: Ohio State University Press (1998), p. 217; Memoirs of W. W. Holden, Durham (NC): Seeman Printery (1911), pp. 55–56.

  Ultimately, the president abandoned: Testimony before House Judiciary Committee, July 18, 1867, in Grant Papers 17:212–16.

  With Secretary of State Seward: James L. Swanson, Manhunt, New York: HarperCollins (2006), pp. 202–3; Henry Dawes, “Recollections of Stanton Under Johnson,” Atlantic Monthly 74:497 (October 1894).

  “The prim conservatives”: “Reconstruction,” September 6, 1865, in Stevens Papers 2:23.

  He thought the nation: Charles O. Lerche, Jr., “Congressional Interpretation of the Guarantee of a Republican Form of Government During Reconstruction,” Journal of Southern History 15:192 (1949); quoted in James M. Scovel, “Thaddeus Stevens,” Lippincott’s Monthly, April 1898, p. 546.

  The States had brought: “Interview with The Times (London) Correspondent,” January 10, 1867, in Johnson Papers 11:596.

  He might nudge: Johnson to William L. Sharkey, August 15, 1868, in Johnson Papers 8:599–600; “Interview with George L. Stearns,” October 3, 1865, in Johnson Papers 9:180; Johnson to Sharkey, August 21, 1865, in Johnson Papers 8:635; Circular to Provisional Governors, August 22, 1865, ibid., p. 639; Johnson to Sharkey, November 17, 1865, in Johnson Papers 8:400.

  An aide remarked: “Interview with John A. Logan,” May 31, 1865, in Johnson Papers 8:153–54; “Interview with South Carolina Delegation,” June 24, 1865, in Johnson Papers 8:282–83; Cowan, p. 14.

  “According to the constitution”: Seward to Gasparin, July 10, 1865, in Seward Papers. In 1867, Johnson described Seward as “an Old Roman.” A Johnson aide declared that the president had “a most sincere and friendly feeling” for his secretary of state. The aide marveled at Seward’s “equanimity under all circumstances.” Moore Diary/AJ, May 7, 1867.

  His proclamation granted amnesty: New York Times, June 26, 1865; Michael Perman, Reunion Without Compromise: The South and Reconstruction, 1865–1868, London: Cambridge University Press (1973), pp. 4–12, 70–71.

  Only six weeks: George Baber, “Johnson, Grant, Seward, Sumner,” North American Review 145:72 (1887); Trefousse, Andrew Johnson, pp. 216–17.

  Stevens’s father: Ralph Korngold, Thaddeus Stevens, A Being Darkly Wise and Rudely Great, New York: Harcourt Brace & Co. (1955), p. 6; Fawn M. Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South, New York: W. W. Norton & Co. (1959), pp. 23–24.

  A neighbor recalled: New York Times, August 14, 1868, quoting Philadelphia Press.

  Though he ultimately: Brodie, p. 25.

  A congressional colleague: Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 3d sess., p. 139 (December 17, 1868) (Ignatius Donnelly).

  He never answered: Alexander Harris, A Biographical History of Lancaster County, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co. (1974; originally 1872), p. 575; interview with David Foulk, Lancaster Historical Society, June 29, 2007; Scovel, p. 460; Trefousse, Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth Century Egalitarian, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press (1997), pp. 69–70. In his final year, Stevens was accused of living in “open adultery” with Mrs. Smith. Brodie, p. 89. This attack elicited from him a textbook nondenial. After recounting his longtime practice of hiring housekeepers, he wrote, “I believe I can say that no child was ever raised or, so far as I know, begotten under my roof.” Stevens to W. B. Melius, September 14, 1867, in Stevens Papers 2:328. That was, as he knew, not the question.

  With no further statement from Stevens, the evidence is suggestive, but not definitive. One friend referred to their “unwritten romance,” praising Mrs. Smith’s “unselfish and tender devotion” to Stevens. Scovel, p. 550. When a minister friend faced accusations that he approved of Stevens “living out of wedlock with the woman who kept his house,” the minister confessed he should have been “more guarded.” J. Blanchard to E. McPherson, January 28, 1869, in McPherson Papers. One biographer, Fawn Brodie, concluded that Stevens and Mrs. Smith must have been sexual intimates. She emphasized that Stevens paid for a fine portrait of Lydia Smith, something he would not do for “a colored woman who was merely his respected housekeeper.” Brodie, p. 88. In his will, Stevens left Mrs. Smith his furniture, as well as her choice of a yearly payment of $500 for life or a lump sum of $5,000. Trefousse, Thaddeus Stevens, p. 244.

  One enchanted observer: George S. Boutwell, Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, New York: Greenwood Press (1968), vol. 2, p. 10; Schurz, Reminiscences, vol. 3, p. 217; Staudenraus, p. 104.

  He reminded Lincoln: Schurz, Reminiscences, vol. 3, p. 214; Brodie, p. 95; Scovel, p. 549; Korngold, p. 112. The appointee with larcenous tendencies was Secretary of War Simon Cameron.

  One observer thought: Schurz, Reminiscences, vol. 3, p. 214. A congressional colleague emphasized how Stevens limped on “his short, club-footed leg.” Riddle, Recollections of War Times, p. 31.

  Ever gallant: Trefousse, Thaddeus Stevens, pp. 7–8.

  Otherwise, many would “think”: Stevens to Johnson, May 16, 1865, in Stevens Papers 2:5.

  “Among all the leading”: Stevens to Johnson, July 6, 1865, in ibid., 2:7.

  Johnson’s designee: Benjamin Perry, Reminiscences of Public Men, with Speeches and Addresses, Philadelphia: J. D. Avil & Co., (1883), pp. 248–49; Dan T. Carter, When the War Was Over: The Failure of Self-Reconstruction in the South, 1865–67, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press (1985), p. 31.

  The presence of such men: Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 39th Cong., 1st sess., p. x (1866); Epps, p. 56; Carter, pp. 228–29; Milton, p. 256; Blaine, vol. 2, p. 113.

  Yet the president: Johnson to James Johnson, November 26, 1865, in Johnson Papers 9:432; Johnson to James B. Steedman, November 24, 1865, ibid., 9:434.

  Equally incendiary: Blaine, vol. 2, p. 94.

  One Republican called them: Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877, New York: Alfred A. Knopf (1965), p. 80 (quoting Schurz).

  Though specific terms: Blaine, vol. 2, p. 94.

  Vagrancy laws: One traveler observed a chain gang of Negroes working on the streets of Selma, Alabama. They seemed no different from slaves. The prisoners had committed

  a list of misdemeanors, one of the gravest of which was “using abusive language towards a white man.” Some had transgressed certain municipal regulations, of which, coming in from the country, they were very likely ignorant. One had sold farm produce within the town limits, contrary to an ordinance which prohibits market men from selling so much as an egg before they have reached the market and the bell has rung. For this offense he had been fined twenty dollars, which being unable to pay, he had been put upon the chain. Others had been guilty of disorderly conduct, vagrancy, and petty theft, which it was of course necessary to punish. But it was a singular fact that no white men were ever sentenced to the chain gang—being, I suppose, all virtuous.

  John T. Trowbridge, The Desolate South, 1865–1866, Gordon Carroll, ed., New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce (1956), pp. 225–26. As one Southern scholar has concluded, the black codes were “unequivocally discriminatory and designed to keep blacks in a subordinate economic and social relationship to whites.” Carter, p. 218.

  In a Mississippi hotel: John Richard Dennett, The South As It Is, Henry M. Christman, ed., New York: Viking Press (1965; originally 1866), p. 351.

  According to one traveler: Whitelaw Reid, After the War: A Southern Tour, May 1, 1865, to May 1, 1866, New York: Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin (1866), p. 237; ibid., 219; Leon Plossom to Butler, December 5, 1866, in Butler Papers, Box 41.

  Northerners began to fret: Chicago Tribune, December 15, 1865; Stampp, p. 85; Carter, pp. 227–28.

  “[i] f Andy Johnson were a snake”: Turner, p. 170.

  By 1866, Johnson had granted: Reid, pp. 304–6. This theme is discussed in a variety of sources. Stampp, p. 71; Temple, p. 419; Bowen, p. 43; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, New York: Harper & Row (1988), pp
. 191–92; Jonathan Truman Dorris, “Pardon and Amnesty During the Civil War and Reconstruction,” Abstract of Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois, 1926, pp. 9–12.

  3. LAND OF REVOLUTION

  Nothing renders society: Frederick Bancroft, ed., Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons (1913), vol. I, p. 354.

  A city of ruins: Trowbridge, pp. 39, 314; Dennett, pp. 8, 230, 237; Andrews, p. 1.

  “People on Main Street”: Report to Johnson by William Elder, Treasury Department, May 23, 1868, in Johnson Papers, Reel 14; Charles M. Blackford, Letters from Lee’s Army, Susan L. Blackford, ed., New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons (1947), p. 295. Other travelers described similar scenes in 1865 and 1866. Dennett, p. 45; Trowbridge, p. 153.

  Political rights for the former slaves: Andrews, p. 87.

  As one visitor observed: Carter, p. 202, quoting Philadelphia Inquirer, August 9, 1865.

  “You know how a bird”: Schurz, Reminiscences, vol. 3, p. 174; Dennett, pp. 95, 364; Trowbridge, p. 38.

  As one Northern correspondent: Dennett, pp. 39, 79, 124; James M. Smallwood, Time of Hope, Time of Despair: Black Texans During Reconstruction, Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press (1981), p. 29. Trowbridge, p. 56; Reid, pp. 44, 173; Foner, p. 199; Andrews, pp. 127, 178, 188, 322, 370–71; Hans Trefousse, ed., Background for Radical Reconstruction, New York: Little Brown & Co. (1970), pp. 11 and 52 (testimony of Orlando Brown, Freedmen’s Bureau official in Richmond: “By vagrant laws, and by availing themselves of the ignorance of the Negroes in the making of contracts, by getting them in debt, and otherwise, they would place them, I think, in a worse condition than they were when slaves.”) This pattern is discussed in Stampp, pp. 199–201.

  A Virginian acknowledged: Reid, p. 218; Dennett, pp. 42, 109.