The Impeachers

by Brenda Wineapple

  The good-looking District Attorney Key: Key was also the nephew of Chief Justice Roger Taney, the man who’d delivered the controversial Dred Scott decision.

  “pantherlike pursuit of the evildoer”: Hendrick, Lincoln’s War Cabinet, p. 247.

  “man of administrative scope”: quoted in Burlingame, ed. Lincoln’s Journalist: John Hay’s Anonymous Writings for the Press, 1862–1864, p. 196; “make a tour of a smallpox hospital,” quoted in Thayer, John Hay, vol. 1, p. 147.

  During the war: See Howe, Moorfield Storey, p. 67.

  “Stanton is a character such as Plutarch would have liked to describe”: Francis Lieber to [Benson J. Losing?], Dec. 25, 1865, LC.

  “Such hostility should”: Blaine, Twenty Years in Congress, vol. 2, p. 60.

  “My own personal knowledge”: Black, “Mr. Black to Mr. Wilson,” p. 261.

  “run with the hare”: Black, “Mr. Black to Mr. Wilson,” p. 263.

  Were there two different Stantons?: see DeWitt, The Impeachment, p. 242.

  “Keep me alive”: See Benjamin, “Recollections of Secretary Stanton,” p. 760.

  “in-betweenity”: Impeachment Testimony, pp. 35, 403, 622.

  “He seemed to regard”: Benjamin, “Recollections of Secretary Stanton,” p. 765.

  “He was the bulwark of confidence”: Albert E.H. Johnson, “Reminiscences of the Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War,” p. 77; “In the dark hours”: Ibid., p. 92.

  “merry twinkle,” “like a woman”: Johnson, ed. “Sensitivity and Civil War: The Selected Diaries and Papers, 1858–1866, of Frances Adeline [Fanny] Seward,” pp. 545, 869.

  “mild as drawn butter,”: quoted in Lowe, Meade’s Army, The Private Diaries of Theodore Lyman, p. 345.

  “giraffe,”: See Piatt, Memories of Men Who Saved the Union, p. 59. Also note that Thomas and Hyman, Edwin Stanton, pp. 116–18, question Piatt’s credibility.

  “As soon as I can”: Stanton to Charles A. Dana, Jan. 24, 1862, quoted in Flower, Stanton, p. 141.

  “I consider him one of the heroic elements in our war,”: Francis Lieber to [Benson J. Losing?] Dec. 25, 1865, LC.

  “He was prone to be suspicious”: Dawes, “Recollections of Stanton under Lincoln,” p. 168.

  “ ‘God help me to do my duty,’ ”: quoted in Flower, Stanton, p. 419.

  “against which the breakers”: quoted in Flower, Stanton, pp. 369–70.

  “one of the great men of the Republic”: quoted in Young, Around the World with General Grant, p. 334.

  “It is not for you to say”: Wilson, “Edwin M. Stanton,” p. 243.

  He oversaw Lincoln’s burial attire: see Stahr, Stanton: Lincoln’s War Secretary, p. 446.

  “God will punish & forgive,”: Willard Saxton diary, April 18, 1865, Yale.

  “May God support”: quoted in Trefousse, Andrew Johnson, p. 194.

  “I was never so”: Zachariah Chandler to Letitia Chandler, March 6, 1865, LC.

  “clearly…that those who are good enough”: “The President and the Rebel Chiefs,” Harper’s Weekly, p. 274.

  “would prove a godsend”: Julian, Political Recollections, p. 255.

  “robbery is a crime”: Julian, “George W. Julian’s Journal,” p. 335.

  “So too was Ohio Senator Benjamin Wade,”: Julian, Political Recollections, pp. 257, 255; see also Julian, “George W. Julian’s Journal,” p. 335.

  “Thank God Stanton lives,”: W. M. Dickson to Edwin Stanton, April 15, 1865, LC.

  “The country cannot”: George Bancroft to Edwin Stanton, April 26, 1865, LC.

  “Stand your ground”: J. K. Moorhead, inter alia., to Edwin Stanton, April 19, 1865, LC.

  CHAPTER TWO: MAGNIFICENT INTENTIONS

  “There is incompleteness”: Willard Saxton diary, July 15, 1866, Yale.

  some 40,000 freed blacks: see Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long, pp. 413–514.

  “dead horses, dead dogs, cats, rats, rubbish, and refuse of all kind,”: Larsen, ed., Crusader and Feminist: The Letters of Jane Swisshelm, p. 287.

  “I have even heard its inhabitants tell stories of nightly pig-hunts in the streets,”: Latham, Black and White: A Journal of a Three Months’ Tour in the United States, p. 59.

  “get back the political ascendancy dear to every Southern heart,”: see Charlotte Cushman, notes on an unfinished ms., pp. 498, 532–33, nd, LC.

  “the worst men of the South,”: John Sherman to WTS, May 16, 1865, ed. Rachel Thorndike, The Sherman Letters, p. 251.

  “inadmissible,” “simple military view,”: John Sherman to Edwin Stanton, April 27, 1865, LC.

  “No one could be with him half an hour and doubt his greatness,”: Badeau, Military History of General Grant, vol. 2, p. 19.

  “He stood by me when I was crazy”: Brockett, Our Great Captains, p. 175.

  “Gossip of my having presidential aspirations”: OR, part 47, section 3, May 28, 1865, p. 583.

  “I will not accept if nominated…and will not serve if elected,”: quoted in Marszalek, Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order, p. 493.

  “we, the loyal people”: April 11, 1865, CWL 8: 399–405. For the best summary discussion of Lincoln’s views, and his last cabinet meeting, see Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, pp. 290–336.

  “This is a moment”: Charles Sumner to Francis Lieber, [May] 14, [1864], Houghton.

  “if the colored loyalists”: Salmon Chase to Abraham Lincoln, April 11, 1865, The Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase, vol. 5, p. 15.

  “the political power in the late insurrectionary State be intrusted exclusively”: [George William Curtis], “The Main Question,” Harper’s Weekly, May 27, 1865, p. 322.

  “Slavery is not abolished”: quoted in “Anti-Slavery Society: Exciting Debate,” The New York Times, May 11, 1865, p. 2.

  Radical Republicans were not: see McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, pp. 53–67.

  “radical abolition”: “The Prospects of the Administration and the South—the Negro Suffrage Question,” New York Herald, June 30, 1865, p. 4.

  Schuyler Colfax: See Hollister, The Life of Schuyler Colfax, p. 255; see also pp. 220–22.

  providence had chosen him to: see for instance “President Johnson and the South Carolinians: An Interesting Conference,” Massachusetts Spy, June 28, 1865, p. 3, where Johnson talks of his providential mission.

  “dignified, urbane, and self-possessed”: Strong, The Diary of George Templeton Strong, vol. 3, p. 591.

  “I rejoice”: see Lydia Maria Child, “Letter from L. M. Child,” The Liberator, May 11, 1865, p. 4.

  “Those occupying high official positions”: “To New York City Merchants,” May 22, 1865, PAJ 8: 104.

  “We plebeians, the majority of the U.S.”: Stephen M. Barbour to AJ, May 1, 1865, PAJ 8: 2.

  “out Herod, Herod,”: Daniel Dudley Avery to Dudley Avery, May 12, 1865, Avery Family Papers, serial J, part 5, reel 11, SHA.

  “as colored men, we have entire confidence in President Johnson,”: “Andrew Johnson President of the United States,” New Orleans Black Republican, April 22, 1865, p. 1.

  Hadn’t Andrew Johnson: see “Moses of the Colored Men,” Oct. 24, 1864, PAJ 7: 251.

  “in the question”: quoted in Stearns, The Life and Public Service of George Luther Stearns, p. 343.

  “Sumner had too often taken”: Donald, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man, p. 224.

  “He will break with them”: Montgomery Blair to S.L.M. Barlow, May 13, 1865, Barlow papers, Huntington.

  “It was a remarkable”: Brooks, Washington in Lincoln’s Time, p. 274.

  CHAPTER THREE: THE ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENT

  One newspaper: New York Ledger, quoted in “The Poisoning of Andrew Johnson on the
Fourth of March,” The New York Times, May 7, 1865, p. 1.

  “We have an era of good feeling now”: May 11, 1865, Strong, The Diary, vol. 3, p. 596.

  “Johnson talks first rate”: quoted in Marshall, ed. Letters and Private Correspondence of Benjamin Butler, p. 619.

  “There is no guarantee”: Stanley Matthews to Salmon Chase, April 19, 1865, The Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase, vol. 5, p. 28.

  “carry its ballots”: “From North Carolina Blacks,” May 10, 1865, PAJ 8: 58.

  “with freedom every thing they need is to come like manna from heaven”: “Reply to Delegation of Black Ministers,” May 11, 1865, PAJ 8: 62.

  “In what new skin will the old snake come forth?”: Frederick Douglass, “An Address Delivered in New York, New York,” May 10, 1865, reprinted in Frederick Douglass Papers, vol. 4, pp. 80–85.

  “aided by the Federal Government”: see “Order Restoring Virginia,” May 9, 1865, PAJ 8: 53.

  “I see the President is precipitating”: Thaddeus Stevens to Charles Sumner, May 10, 1865, Houghton.

  “reconstruction is a very”: Thaddeus Stevens to AJ, May 16, 1865, PAJ 8: 80.

  “The Pierpont govt is nothing but a sham,”: Charles Sumner to Wendell Phillips, May 11, 1865, Sumner, Selected Letters of Charles Sumner, vol. 2. p. 302.

  “with all the powers necessary”: see “Order Restoring North Carolina,” May 29, 1865, PAJ 8: 136.

  “Better, far better”: see “Boston Anniversaries,” The New York Times, June 1, 1865, p. 1, and New-York Tribune, June 2, 1865, p. 6.

  “way to arrest the insane”: Thaddeus Stevens to Charles Sumner, June 12, 1865, Houghton.

  “I see our worthy”: Thaddeus Stevens to William D. Kelley, c, vol. 2, p. 6.

  “I am not well satisfied”: Charles Eliot Norton to E. L. Godkin, June 15, 1865, Houghton.

  “Nothing since Chancellorsville,”: Charles Sumner to Gideon Welles, June 15, 1865, LC.

  “a clime and country suited to you,”: “Reply to Delegation of Black Ministers,” May 11, 1865, PAJ 8: 46.

  “Among all the leading Union men”: Thaddeus Stevens to AJ, July 6, 1865, PAJ 8: 365.

  “moral, political”: Salmon Chase to Joseph W. Schuckers, June 25, 1865, The Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase, vol. 5, p. 55.

  “These States have not gone out of”: “Interview with John A. Logan,” May 31, 1865, PAJ 8: 154.

  “vacated,” “by all local”: Sumner, “Our Domestic Relations,” p. 527.

  “The theory that”: CG 39: 1, Dec. 18, 1865, p. 73.

  they be “held in a territorial”: Reconstruction: Speech of the Honorable Thaddeus Stevens, Sept. 7, 1865 pp. 3–4.

  Welles nonetheless considered: Gideon Welles, “Recollections of Andrew Johnson and His Cabinet,” nd, NYPL. See also Carl Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, vol. 3, pp. 202–03.

  “God damn you Seward”: Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, p. 249.

  But as historians have persuasively argued: see Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, p. 401 ff.

  But hardline Democrats loathed: see for instance Montgomery Blair to S.M.L. Barlow, nd; April 28, 1865; June 14, 1865; July 21, 1865; August 3, 1865; Thomas Pratt to S.M.L. Barlow, August 18, 1865; and William Shipman to S.M.L. Barlow, August 21, 1865, all in Barlow papers, Huntington.

  “Seward entered into him,”: quoted in McCall, Thaddeus Stevens, p. 325.

  Carl Schurz, the noted German refugee: see Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, vol. 3, pp. 202–03.

  The radical National Anti-Slavery Standard: see National Anti-Slavery Standard, Oct. 28, 1865.

  “we give them political power”: Sumner, “Clemency and Common Sense,” p. 760.

  The dynastic Blair family: Francis Preston Blair Sr., the patriarch, had served in Andrew Jackson’s cabinet and for many years published the renowned Democratic mouthpiece The Globe. The patriarch’s son Francis P. Blair, Jr., or Frank, was a leading Missouri politician and Union general who opposed slavery but wanted slaves emancipated gradually—and then deported. Charles Francis Adams, descendent of a political clan that included two American Presidents, referred to them as a motley gang, with “one statesman, one politician, two jobbers, one intriguer, and two respectable old gentlemen”: Quoted in Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, p. 274.

  “there will be but few [Southerners] punished after all”: Montgomery Blair to Samuel L. M. Barlow, May 13, 1865, Barlow papers, Huntington.

  “there may be mischief done”: Montgomery Blair to Samuel L. M. Barlow, June 14, 1865, Barlow papers, Huntington.

  “Public events have shown”: George T. Curtis to Manton Marble, July 19, 1865, LC.

  “What chance at conservative ideas”: George T. Curtis to Manton Marble, July 19, 1865, LC.

  “Seward & Stanton are jubilant”: Samuel Cox to Samuel L. M. Barlow, August 18, 1865, Barlow papers, Huntington.

  “He is nominally a President of a republic”: William D. Shipman to Samuel L. M. Barlow, August 26, 1865, Barlow papers, Huntington.

  “Now while the President would doubtless appoint better men”: William D. Shipman to Samuel L. M. Barlow, August 26, 1865, Barlow papers, Huntington.

  CHAPTER FOUR: MOSES

  “I am opposed to secession,”: CG 36: 2, Dec. 18, 1860, p. 117.

  “He that is unwilling”: CG 36: 2, Dec. 18, 1860, p. 117.

  “as the ship-wrecked mariner”: CG 36: 2, Dec. 19, 1860, p. 141.

  Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis: see for instance “The State of the Nation,” New York Evening Post, Dec. 21, 1860, p. 3. See also Winston, Andrew Johnson, p. 167.

  “Hanging is too good”: quoted in “Andrew Johnson,” Augusta [Georgia] Chronicle, Feb. 14, 1861, p. 3.

  Soon it was also rumored: see “The News,” New York Herald, Feb. 8, 1861, p. 4, and Wigfall Wright, A Southern Girl in ’61, p. 32.

  “upstart, swelled-headed”: “To the Freemen of the First District,” Oct. 15, 1845, PAJ 1: 270.

  “If Andrew Jackson”: CG 36: 2, Feb. 6, 1861, p. 770.

  “I care not whence the blows come”: CG 36: 2, Feb. 6, 1861, p. 772.

  “These two eyes of mine”: CG 36: 2, March 2, 1861, p. 1350.

  “Three cheers for Andy Johnson,”: quoted in Temple, Notable Men of Tennessee, p. 398.

  “He was free from”: Lichtenstein, Andrew Johnson as He Really Was, pp. 14–15.

  “family distinctions”: AJ, “To the Freemen of the First District of Tennessee,” October 15, 1845, PAJ 1: 270–71.

  “by fatiguing their ingenuity,”: CG 30: 1, June 5, 1848, p. 801.

  “Because they had not sense”: Turner, “Recollections of Andrew Johnson,” p. 170.

  “The voice of the people”: PAJ 2: 176.

  He fiercely advocated homestead legislation: see, for instance, “The State of the Nation: The Virginia Election—Senator Seward’s Opinion—Johnson’s Onslaught,” New York Evening Post, Feb. 6, 1861, p. 2.

  “When a man has a home”: Frank Moore, ed. “On the Homestead Bill, Speech Delivered in the Senate of the United States, May 20, 1858,” in Speeches of Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, p. 33; see also pp. 36 and 62.

  “Were I President of the United States”: CG 36: 2, March 2, 1861, p. 1350.

  A knot of men blocked his train at the Lynchburg, Virginia, station: see “Andrew Johnson in Lynchburg,” Alexandria Gazette, April 23, 186, p. 3.

  political equivalent: see “First Inaugural Address,” Oct. 17, 1853, PAJ 2: 177.

  “Though she sent me out penniless and friendless”: “The President’s Visit to Raleigh,” New-York Tribune, June 4, 1867, p. 2.

  “It would have satisfied my desire”: see William H. Moore diary, July 8, 1868, LC.

  Johnson said he could
read it: see William H. Moore, diary, Jan. 10, 1867, and March 28, 1868, LC.

  “road to distinction,”: The American Speaker, p. iv.

  In the spring of 1824: see Van der Zee, Bound Over, p. 354.

  When Johnson returned: see Gordon-Reed, Andrew Johnson, p. 26.

  Johnson was eighteen and Eliza a little over sixteen, and his worldly possessions: see “East Tennessee: A Visit to President Johnson’s Old Home,” Chicago Tribune, Aug. 29, 1865, p. 2.

  “sparkling”: Truman, “Anecdotes of Andrew Johnson,” p. 85.

  He spent long periods separated: For rumors about the separation, see The Diary of Claude August Crommelin, A Young Dutchman Views Post-Civil War America, ed. Augustus J. Veenendaal, Jr., p. 118.

  “in the end”: Margaret Gray Blanton to Milton Lomask, June 14, 1961, University of Tennessee-Knoxville Special Collections.

  “We must hold out”: AJ to Eliza Johnson, March 27, 1863, PAJ 6: 195.

  When Johnson entered the White House: see Cowan, Reminiscences of Andrew Johnson, p. 7.

  “far more content”: Gerry, ed., Through Five Administrations: Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook, p. 87.

  “He was naturally and inherently”: Temple, Notable Men of Tennessee, p. 363.

  In 1829, he was elected alderman: see Temple, Notable Men of Tennessee, p. 363: “Stevenson [the opponent] was no match in debate for his young antagonist. Johnson hacked and arraigned Stevens until his friend pitied him.”

  the tailor’s profession: see Hunt, “The President’s Defense: His Side of the Case, as Told by His Correspondence,” p. 427.

  Years later a rumor circulated: see Gordon-Reed, Andrew Johnson, pp. 38–39; see also PAJ 16: 761. Dolly’s children were Liz, 1846–circa 1900; Florence; and William, 1858–1943.

  Having successfully: See Turner, “Recollections of Andrew Johnson,” p. 168.

  “He was always a candidate for Something,”: Emerson Etheredge to Oliver P. Temple, July 26, 1892, Temple Papers, Knoxville, Univ. of Tennessee.