Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy
Page 45
“I will do nothing of the kind”: Moore Diary/AJ, February 29, 1868, p. 123.
“Nothing is being done”: New York Times, March 7, 1868; Petersburg (VA) Index, March 30, 1868.
In Philadelphia and Cincinnati: New York Herald, February 26, 1868; New York Times, February 25 and 26, 1868; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, March 3, 1868. 165 The nation’s financial market: The Nation, 6:161 (February 27, 1868). Senator Sherman of Ohio found it “strange” that the impeachment proceedings “have so little effect on prices and business. The struggle has been so long that the effect has been discounted.” Thorndike, Sherman Letters, p. 315.
There was room: Philadelphia Press, March 2, 1868.
Through the week when the House: New York Times, February 29, 1868; Philadelphia Press, March 2, 1868; Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1868.
Wherever society met: Mary Logan, Reminiscences, pp. 156–59.
The war secretary, ever the pedant: Thomas and Hyman, p. 575.
A sure sign of reduced tensions: Philadelphia Press, March 4, 1868.
Each sent his orders: Townsend, p. 131; Archives, Impeachment: Various House Papers, testimony of Col. William Moore, pp. 35–36, 43, 45 (March 12, 1868).
As for the reports: Thomas and Hyman, p. 599.
Yet the specter: Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1868; New York Times, February 25, 26, 28, and 29, 1868; New York Herald, February 25, 1868; Henry J. Harker to Wade, March 5, 1868, in Wade Papers, Reel 7; S. Barnett to C. A. Trowbridge, March 14, 1868, in Wade Papers, Reel 7 (proposing candidate for secretary of the treasury); Briggs, p. 50; New York Herald, February 26, 1868; Welles Diary, vol. 3, p. 293 (February 25, 1868).
14. SEND IN THE LAWYERS
We are all nervous: Medill to John Logan, March 18, 1868, Logan Family Papers, Box 2.
John Bingham led: McClure, Lincoln and Men of War-Times, p. 270; Ex Parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866); Beauregard, Bingham of the Hills, p. 126.
He missed meetings: Butler’s Book, p. 927. According to the committee’s journal, Stevens missed five sessions in March alone. Archives, Managers’ Journal. Stevens was reported to be “perilously ill” on March 10 by the New York Tribune, and again by the Philadelphia Press on March 17, 1868.
Even with Stanton: Archives, Impeachment: Various House Papers (transcripts of testimony); Chicago Tribune, March 12, 1868; New York Times, March 13, 1868; Stanton to Butler, March 11, 1868; Stanton to Butler, March 17, 1868; Butler to Bingham, March 21, 1868, in Butler Papers, Box 44.
Distracted from their studies: New York Times, March 23, 1868, reprinting letter to Cincinnati Commercial, March 16, 1868.
Butler issued: Philadelphia Press, March 11 and 13, 1868; New York Times, March 13, 1868; New York Times, March 26, 1868, reprinting letter from the Salem (MA) Gazette, March 16, 1868.
hell’s blackest imp: Briggs, p. 35; John Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men, New York: Harper & Brothers (1881) (reprinted, Da Capo Press, 1970), p. 82; Murray M. Horowitz, “Benjamin F. Butler: Seventeenth President,” Lincoln Herald 77:193 (winter 1975), quoting David Macrae, “The Americans at Home,” (Edinburgh, 1870), at 370n.
Perhaps as important: Welles Diary, vol. 1, p. 365 (August 22, 1865); George F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons (1903), p. 329; Blaine, vol. 2, p. 289.
His colleagues fell for it: Butler’s Book, pp. 927–28.
When the defense: Globe Supp., pp. 8–9 (March 13, 1868).
It was a blunder: A perceptive dissection of Butler’s trial strategy appears in a pamphlet, George P. Brockway, Political Deals That Saved Andrew Johnson, New York: Coalition of Publishers for Employment (1977).
He resigned that post: Moore Diary/AHR, p. 123 (March 10 and 11, 1868); Stanberry to Johnson, March 11, 1868, in Johnson Papers 13:647.
The last lawyer: Washington Daily National Intelligencer, March 4, 1868 (Curtis at White House); New York Times, March 7, 1868 (Groesbeck at White House); Browning Diary, vol. 2, p. 185 (March 7, 1868). Some Republicans hoped that Evarts would refuse to act as Johnson’s counsel, but were disappointed. Chicago Tribune, March 8, 1868; The Independent, May 14, 1868; Chester Leonard Barrows, William M. Evarts, Lawyer, Diplomat, Statesman, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (1941), p. 141.
One Cabinet member called: Washington Daily National Intelligencer, March 12, 1868, reprinting interview in New York World on March 11, 1868; Welles Diary, vol. 3, p. 311 (March 12, 1868).
Stanton was not protected: Stuart Streichler, Justice Curtis in the Civil War Era, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press (2005), p. 172; George Ticknor Curtis, A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, LL.D., Boston: Little, Brown & Co. (1879), vol. 1, pp. 409–10; Globe Supp., pp. 12–18 (March 23, 1868).
Stanberry had no idea: Moore Diary/AHR, p. 124 (March 16, 1868).
In Cabinet meetings: Moore Diary/AHR, p. 123 (March 14, 1868); p. 125 (March 17, 1868); p. 127 (March 19, 20, 21, and 22, 1868); p. 128 (March 25, 1868); New York Times, March 18, 1868; Welles Diary, vol. 3, pp. 313 (March 14, 1868), 315 (March 17, 1868).
Johnson bade Black farewell: Cowan, p. 11; Moore Diary/AHR, March 21, 1868; p. 128 (March 24, 1868). Black’s withdrawal was explained in the press as well. New York Herald, March 25, 1868. A few years later, Black defended Secretary of War William Belknap against impeachment charges based on bribes from an Indian trader. Belknap resigned after the House of Representatives approved an impeachment resolution, but the Senate conducted a trial anyway, falling short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction. Several senators voted to acquit because they thought the Senate had no jurisdiction to try a former official. Perley’s Reminiscences, vol. 2, p. 313; “Impeachment: Selected Materials,” House Judiciary Committee, 93d Cong., 1st sess. (October 1973), p. 717.
Their task may have been: Moore Diary/AHR, p. 127 (March 22, 1868).
The blacks in the rotunda: New York Times, March 11, 13, and 24, 1868; New York Herald, March 5, 1868; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, March 15, 1868 (“Every body remarks the unusual absence of the African”); Philadelphia Press, March 14, 1868 (“no colored people were present, and it is understood that no applications for tickets were made by them”).
The debate blew itself out: Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 1671–81, 1701 (March 5, 1868); New York Times, March 6 and 7, 1868; New York Herald, March 6, 1868.
The reaction was amplified: New York Herald, March 5, 1868; Senate Misc. Doc. No. 43, 40th Cong., 2d sess. (Letter from the Hon. S. P. Chase, Chief Justice, March 4, 1868).
Chase’s “theology is unsound”: Goodwin, pp. 17–18, 34–43; Piatt, pp. 96, 97; Dennett, p. 53.
Chase hedged his bets: Goodwin, p. 634; Julian, Political Recollections, p. 236; Robert B. Warden, An Account of the Private Life and the Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase, Cincinnati: Wilstach, Baldwin & Co. (1874), pp. 669–70; Warden, p. 681 (Chase to J. E. Snodgrass, March 16, 1868); Perman, Reunion Without Compromise, p. 255; John Hanxhurst to Elihu Washburne, March 23, 1868, in Washburne Papers, vol. 58; Warden, pp. 669–70 (in an August 5, 1867, letter to Horace Greeley, Chase reported discussing with President Johnson the constitutionality of the Reconstruction Acts, an issue that certainly would come before the Supreme Court), p. 681 (March 18, 1868 letter to J. Snodgrass); Cincinnati Commercial, March 22, 1868; Frederick Bancroft, “Some Radicals as Statesmen: Chase, Sumner, Adams, and Stevens,” Atlantic Monthly 86:279 (August 1900).
He has an unhappy way: Carl Schurz to Mrs. Schurz, April 12, 1868, in Intimate Letters, p. 433. A Radical newspaper described Chase as “mad with Presidential fever and…meanly jealous of Wade, and, perhaps, cherishing the forlorn hope of a Democratic nomination.” Anti-Slavery Standard, March 9, 1868.
Republican senators: Thomas W. Egan to Johnson, October 7, 1867, in Johnson Papers 13:141. There was a further awkwardness to having Chase preside over the pretrial proceedings in March. At the beginning of the month, the Supreme Court heard four days of argument in Ex Parte McCardle, a case tha
t might define Reconstruction. In the fall of 1867, the Army arrested William McCardle, editor of the Vicksburg Times, for editorials denouncing army commanders as “infamous, cowardly, and abandoned villains” who should be jailed. Pursuing a writ of habeas corpus—the device Lorenzo Thomas had wanted to use to challenge the Tenure of Office Act—McCardle argued that the Reconstruction laws violated his rights by subjecting him to army power. Johnson actively helped McCardle. One of the president’s lawyers, Jeremiah Black, represented the editor, and Attorney General Stanberry refused to defend the government in the case. Congress authorized the secretary of war to retain a lawyer to defend the statute. Stanton hired Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois. After twelve hours of argument before the Court, Republicans feared a ruling that would derail Reconstruction. Charles Fairman, Reconstruction and Reunion, Part One, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. (1971), pp. 437–40; Chicago Tribune, March 3, 1868; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, March 26, 1868.
Trumbull contrived a legislative evasion. With Congress about to approve a law on Supreme Court jurisdiction over tax cases, Trumbull inserted legislative language eliminating the Court’s power to hear habeas corpus appeals. House Manager Wilson, chair of the Judiciary Committee, slipped the bill through the House in mid-March without describing it. Asked a week later why he had not explained it, Wilson replied that he would “never trouble the House with any unnecessary remarks.” Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 2d sess., p. 2060 (March 21, 1868); New York Times, March 16, 1868; Fairman, p. 464. The New York Times reported on March 23 that House Democrats complained “good-humoredly that they had been caught napping.”
The president was not caught napping. He vetoed the bill, but Congress overrode his veto. The Court, having not yet decided McCardle’s case, scheduled reargument on the question whether Congress had the power to eliminate habeas corpus appeals. Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 2128 (March 26, 1868), 2170 (March 27, 1868). The Court ultimately upheld Congress on that question. Ex Parte McCardle, 74 U.S. 506 (1869).
And Thaddeus Stevens: Moore Diary/AHR, March 14, 1868, p. 122; Philadelphia Press, March 17, 1868.
“People who never could”: New York Herald, March 14 and 29, 1868.
Baron Gerolt: Washington Daily National Intelligencer, March 15, 1868.
During a recess: New York Herald, March 14, 1868; Philadelphia Press, March 14 and 24, 1868; New York Times, March 24, 1868.
They set the trial’s opening day: Globe Supp., p. 8 (March 13, 1868), p. 25 (March 23, 1868), p. 29 (March 24, 1868).
15. INFLUENCE AND EDMUND COOPER
I told him: Testimony of James Legate before House Impeachment Committee, May 22, 1868, p. 11, in Butler Papers, Box 175.
Newspapers across the country: Anti-Slavery Standard, March 2, 1868, March 9, 1868; New York Times, April 6, 1868, reprinting report in Baltimore Sun, April 3, 1868; Charleston (SC) Courier, April 9, 1868, reprinting report from New York World, April 1, 1868; Benedict, Compromise, p. 299; Storey to his father, March 17 and April 19, 1868, in Howe, Portrait of an Independent, pp. 78, 97–98; New York Herald, April 11, 1868; Edmond L. Goold to Barlow, March 21, 1868, Barlow Papers, Box 66; The Independent, April 9, 1868; Colfax to Young, April 9, 1868, Young Papers.
Once impeachment proceedings began: Schuyler Colfax to John Russell Young, April 16, 1868, Young Papers; Benedict, Compromise, p. 299. Fowler, a teacher, strongly supported Andrew Johnson’s pro-Union stance in late 1860. While Johnson was military governor of Tennessee, Fowler was his comptroller. He also was a floor leader for Johnson at the 1864 Republican Convention. Clifton H. Hall, Andrew Johnson, Military Governor of Tennessee, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (1916), p. 42; Walter T. Durham, “How Say You, Senator Fowler?” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 42:43–45 (1983).
He came from: William G. Brownlow to Johnson, June 8, 1865, in Johnson Papers 8:200; “A Distinguished Tennessean, Hon. Edmund Cooper,” www.usgennet.org/usa/ga/county/macon/newspapers/CV/cv1911pg_14.htm; Archibald Yell Smith Memories, in “Tullahoma Time Table,” published by the Tullahoma Historical Preservation Society, October 1989, http://drbobyoung.net/Dad%20Website/unpublished/page3.htm.
Despite a period of detention: Hinds County Gazette, November 10, 1869; James Patton, Unionism and Reconstruction in Tennessee, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith (1966; originally 1934), p. 34; Edmund Cooper to D. B. Cooper, October 20, 1862, and December 10, 1862, in Cooper Family Papers, Box 8.
Cooper artfully called: Francis C. LeBlond to Johnson, February 8, 1867, in Johnson Papers 12:16; Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 713–14 (January 24, 1867); Daily Cleveland Herald, January 29, 1867; Constance J. Cooper, “Tennessee Returns to Congress,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 37:53–54.
After imploring Johnson: Cooper to Johnson, April 5, 1867, in Johnson Papers 12:205–6; Cooper to Johnson, June 27, 1867, ibid., pp. 357–58.
“The more boldly”: Cooper to Johnson, August 30, 1867, ibid., p. 526.
I would forego: Cooper to Johnson, September 12, 1867, ibid., 13:63.
“The President needs”: Welles Diary, vol. 3, p. 221 (October 4, 1867); The War of the Rebellion, Series II, Vol. IV, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office (1899); New York Times, August 15, 1865; Joshua W. Caldwell, ed., Studies in Constitutional History of Tennessee, Cincinnati: Robert Clarke Co. (1907), pp. 278–79; Cooper to Johnson, November 1, 1863, in James B. Jones, Jr., ed., Tennessee Civil War Sourcebook, www.tennessee.civilwarsourcebook.com (January 6, 2006); Archives, Impeachment: Various House Papers, testimony of C. E. Creecy, March 19, 1868.
Cooper lauded: Johnson to E. Cooper, April 6, 1866, and E. Cooper to D. B. Cooper, October 28, 1867, in Cooper Family Papers, Box 8.
Periodically questioning McCulloch’s loyalty: Moore Diary/AHR, p. 125 (March 18, 1868); Moore Diary/Large Diary, p. 64 (July 23, 1868); William W. Warden to Johnson, July 1, 1868, in Johnson Papers 14:296.
Cooper’s “interim” posting: Globe Supp., p. 87 (April 2, 1868); Robert W. Latham to Johnson, January 10, 1868, in Johnson Papers 13:463–64; Trefousse, Andrew Johnson, pp. 324, 344.
When his leave was about to expire: Impeachment Money, pp. 4, 7; Temple, Notable Men of Tennessee, pp. 198–202.
Gaylord, again acting for Senator Pomeroy: Legate’s account of the bribery efforts in the spring of 1868 is preserved in a transcript of his testimony taken in late May, and in portions disclosed in a report by the impeachment committee afterward. Testimony of James Legate, before House Impeachment Committee, May 22, 1868, in Butler Papers, Box 175, pp. 1–19; Impeachment Money, passim. David G. Taylor, “Thomas Ewing, Jr., and the Origins of the Kansas Pacific Railway Company,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 42:162, 164–65 and app.
They were willing to pay: Impeachment Money, p. 5; New York Times, August 21, 1865; Temple, p. 343; Chicago Tribune, January 11, 1868.
He became a regular visitor: A. J. Bleecker to Butler, attaching letter from Pomeroy to Bleecker, June 21, 1868, in Butler Papers, Box 45; Impeachment Money, pp. 5–6, 7–8.
Gaylord declined the payment: Impeachment Money, p. 7; New York World, July 29, 1868, in Thomas Ewing Family Papers; Ross’s Paper (Coffeyville, KS), January 19, 1872.
Cooper claimed: Impeachment Money, p. 8; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, May 22, 1868; undated news report, Thomas Ewing Family Papers.
He replied that he preferred: Moore Diary/Large Diary, March 27, 1868, p. 6. Colonel Moore decorously declined to name Legate’s representative, even in his diary, indicating him only by a blank line—“———”—and referring to him as someone who had lived in Kansas for some time. Fuller had made his fortune in Kansas swindles, while Thomas Ewing, Jr., served as a general of the army in Kansas and was a justice of the Kansas Supreme Court before moving to Washington City to join his father’s law practice.
Pomeroy, a Radical: Moore Diary/AHR, March 17, 1868, p. 125; Martha B. Caldwell, “Pomeroy’s ‘Ross Letter’: Genuine or Forgery?,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 13:463 (1945); Taylor, p. 155 (appen
dix details the grant to Pomeroy of $113,000 of stock in the Leavenworth, Pawnee & Western Railroad).
After a “very friendly” talk: Moore Diary/AHR, March 18, 1868, p. 126.
In a six-year period: Mark Summers, The Plundering Generation, New York: Oxford University Press (1987), pp. 45–46, 253–55; H. Rep. 249, 36th Cong., 1st sess., 120–28, 178, 185–86.
In but one example: “Covode Report,” H. Rep. No. 648, 36th Cong., 1st sess. (1860); Edwin Erle Speaks, ed., The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858, Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library (1908), p. 180.
That sponsor later recanted: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Roger Bruns, eds., Congress Investigates: A Documented History, 1792–1974, New York: Chelsea House Publishers (1975), vol. 2, pp. 1092–1103; Chicago Press, April 25, 1860; House Report No. 648, 36th Cong., 1st sess. (1860); Emerson David Fite, The Presidential Campaign of 1860, New York: Macmillan Co. (1911), p. 135; John G. Nicolay and John Hay, eds., Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works, New York: Century Co. (1907), vol. 1, p. 329; Francis P. Blair, Sr. to Johnson, February 4, 1867, in Johnson Papers 12:6. Johnson appointed Wendell to office at the request of the publisher of the Washington Daily National Intelligencer, a loyal Johnson supporter, who seems to have been relying on Wendell to give him enough government printing work to stay afloat. John F. Coyle to Johnson, July 31, 1866, in Johnson Papers 13:765.
Much was raised: Cincinnati Gazette, December 20 and 25, 1869.
Some came from employees: Impeachment Money, p. 13; Cincinnati Gazette, December 20 and 25, 1869; Ben Perley Poore, Perley’s Reminiscences, Boston: Hubbard Brothers, Publishers (1886), vol. 2, p. 313.
Moore warned: Smythe to Johnson, February 21, 1868, in Johnson Papers 13:576–77; Moore Diary/Large Diary, March 29, 1868, p. 13. Smythe directed yet another murky overture to Colonel Moore, this one from S. Taylor Suit, a Wall Street operator who had opened a bank in Virginia. New York Times, October 2, 1888. Smythe’s letter to Moore explained that Suit “had the ear of certain senators and could accomplish some things others could not.” Suit was closeted with Moore at the White House on March 29. Moore Diary/Large Diary, March 29, 1868, p. 15.