“Shamefully ignorant of the details, I’m afraid,” Dilman confessed. “I remember some of it from school, and side reading, of course. And lately the papers have been full of it, highly colored, and the radio and television have been dinning it in our ears, but somehow, I’ve been unconsciously avoiding it. I don’t know. I have the impression that President Johnson was given a bad time of it. My survival instinct tells me not to relive his hell when I’m about to undergo one of my own. It’s like—I’ll tell you what—like you’re about to face an unusual life-or-death major surgical operation. You know there’s been one similar case. Well, you’re not inclined to study the gory details beforehand. You sort of prefer to shut your eyes and let them roll you in, the mystery of it still a mystery, holding your layman’s blind high hopes before you go under.”
Abrahams had listened solemnly, full understanding in his face, “Yes,” he said. “Nevertheless, if you can bring yourself to it, I believe you should try to understand something of that other impeachment trial.”
“If you think so, Nat. But why?”
“Because, far from being dead history, the facts of it will become a living part of your own trial. I repeat, it is the single precedent both sides have to go by. The House managers and the four of us will quote from it, refer to it, whenever it is to advantage, you can be sure. Furthermore, not surprisingly, President Johnson’s impeachment crosses and touches yours in several important areas. I do recommend you acquaint yourself with the salient facts, Doug.”
“All right, then, I will.”
“I’m not saying you must go out and get some weighty tome from the Library of Congress. I know you haven’t the time. But—” He leaned sideways, riffling the file folder tabs in his briefcase on the floor. “I have something here, if I can find it . . . ah, here it is.” He came up with what appeared to be a stapled typescript. “We all read what we could on the Andrew Johnson trial. Then Tuttle condensed the proceedings of that trial into eighty pages, for easier reference.” He handed it across the table to Dilman. “Take a look at it when you can. Of course, the great amount of offstage byplay, the cloakroom hanky-panky, isn’t in there—”
“Like what?” asked Dilman, fingering the manuscript.
“Like—well—to be quick about it—when Booth’s derringer pistol killed Lincoln, it was Vice-President Andrew Johnson who became President in 1865, when he was fifty-seven. It makes me laugh, Doug, when I read those columnists who say you weren’t prepared for the Presidency. You were ten times better prepared for it than half our past heads of state, and a hundred times better prepared than Andrew Johnson. He’d been a tailor in North and South Carolina, and owned a tailorshop in eastern Tennessee. He’d never had a single day’s formal education. So he went into politics, and made the United States Senate. Lincoln took to him because, even though Johnson owned slaves and was a Southern Democrat, he fought against secession. Well, anyway, by the time Johnson became President, he had few friends left. The Southern Democrats considered him a traitor. The Northern Republicans considered him an untrustworthy rebel-lover. He was lonely as hell in the White House. He had a wife, but she was invalided by tuberculosis, and I believe she made just one public appearance beside him in four years.”
Dilman nodded. His heart went out to that vilified President who had been treated like some sort of white nigger. “I never knew any of that,” he said.
“Oh, there’s more,” Abrahams said, “but to get to the crux of it, his impeachment. Why was he impeached? Basically because the Northern Republicans, who controlled Congress, wanted to treat the defeated states as a conquered and occupied country, wanted to keep the South disenfranchised and in bondage. President Johnson, on the other hand, following Lincoln’s policy, wanted to heal the wounds of war, conciliate the Southern states, bring them back into the Union. So that was a bad breach. Almost every time Congress passed some bill of reprisal keeping the South under the military heel, giving freed slaves control there, Johnson would veto it, and then Congress would override him. Finally, it resolved itself into a fight for power between the executive and legislative branches of government. Congress felt that it should run the Reconstruction of the South, and the President felt that this task belonged to him. There were endless secondary factors against Johnson, also. He was hated as a man who was neither fish nor fowl, neither true Southerner nor Northerner. He was resented for going soft on the ex-rebels, when they were being blamed for Lincoln’s assassination. He was feared by the Republicans, who didn’t want him to bring the Southern Democrats back into power on the Hill by admitting the Southern states back into the Union. So the House decided to get rid of him. They started impeachment proceedings against him, not once but three times, and the third time they succeeded in getting their impeachment. And on March 5, 1868, his case went on trial before the Senate.”
“There were eleven Articles charged against him, weren’t there?” Dilman asked.
“That’s right,” said Abrahams. “Most of them, like most of the charges against you, were pure stuff and nonsense. Andrew Johnson was charged with using foul language, with drinking intoxicants, with ridiculing Congress in his public speeches. But the whole thing came down to the three Articles accusing Johnson of breaking the law by defying the Tenure of Office Act. That was the grandfather of the New Succession Act that you defied by firing Eaton. The tenure act handcuffed Johnson to his Senate, told him he could remove no one in the Cabinet he had inherited from Lincoln without the approval of the Senate. Well, the President saw that his Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, was performing not as his adviser but as his enemy and as a spy for his opposition in Congress, and so he asked Stanton to resign. Stanton refused. So the President, in effect, threw him out without consent of the Senate, arguing that Stanton didn’t come under the tenure act since Johnson hadn’t appointed him, and insisting the tenure act was unconstitutional anyway and the Senate had no right to tell him who to keep and who to fire. Shades of you and Eaton, Doug.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“It was a nasty eleven-and-a-half-week trial, the House’s seven managers pitted against the President’s five attorneys. But there was considerably more that went on than oratory and cross-examination of witnesses. The majority of the Senate was determined to get Johnson, whether the charges against him were proved or not. They arranged to have witnesses favorable to him kept out of court. There were attempts at bribery. And as for sitting as an impartial body of jurors—listen to this, Doug—the President pro tempore of that Senate was Benjamin Wade, who hated Johnson, and who was next in line to become President if Johnson was found guilty, and yet he was allowed to sit and vote on Johnson’s impeachment. In fact, Wade was so sure he and his friends would convict Johnson, and that he himself would be the new President, that he picked his Cabinet before the trial was over and before he had cast his vote!”
“Incredible,” said Dilman.
“Yes, it was incredible. Of course, while you don’t have a President pro tempore eligible to succeed you, sitting in judgment of you, you do have some senators—notably Hoyt Watson because of his personal involvement, Bruce Hankins because of his regional prejudices, John Selander because of his affection for T. C.—already committed against you. But, to get back to precedent. In order to convict President Johnson, two-thirds of the Senate had to find him guilty, that is, at least thirty-six senators against eighteen. Well, you know the result. One senator, Edmund Ross of Nebraska, though he personally disliked Johnson, disliked even more what he had observed and heard from his fellow congressmen during the trial. He determined that the office of President should not be disgraced and degraded by an impeachment based on partisanship. And so at the last minute, after sleepless nights, he went over to Johnson. His vote, which cost him his political future, was the President’s life belt. The final tally showed thirty-five for guilty, nineteen for not guilty. The two-thirds required for conviction had fallen short by one. Andrew Johnson remained President of the United States.”
The cigar in Dilman’s hand had long gone cold. Deliberately, he flicked the gray ash into a tray and lighted the end again. He waited for the first cloud of smoke to lift, and he said, “Nat, I think I have far less chance to remain President than Andrew Johnson did.”
“Less chance? No, there’s no reason to believe—”
“Nat, in our careers as attorneys, we’ve both tried all kinds of cases before hundreds of jurors. You know as well as I do that jurors are not legal-minded, often subject to being moved to vote guilty or not guilty because of their emotions and prejudices. They will ignore or discard the logic of a case, and simply vote for or against a defendant because they like or do not like his manner, personality, nervous habits, clothes. It’s happened to us in court, and it still could happen here, despite the early judicial background of so many senators, because they’re politicians now, not level-headed jurists, and you can’t deny it.”
“Yes,” admitted Abrahams, “that occasionally has happened, and conceivably it could happen here.”
“Very well. I feel certain Andrew Johnson lost as many votes because his jurors didn’t like his crudities, bad temper, immoderate speech as because of the legal case against him. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it a last time. I suspect it will be worse for me. In my trial, the defendant is a black man, whatever else is against him, and the emotions and prejudices this may evoke among the jurors, and not Southern ones alone, is not too difficult to imagine.” Dilman shook his head sadly. “Why—dammit, why does it have to be? Why does so much judgment of me—not only me but all men like me—have to be influenced by some instinctive rejection or acceptance of so superficial a thing as my color? Why are we still darkies, shines, coons, spooks, jigs, or, at best, hanky-heads, and not people? Why are we isolated, forced into our squalid ghettos, our Niggertowns, from Atlanta’s Buttermilk Bottom to Chicago’s South Side to Los Angeles’ Central Avenue, with tin plates feeding us morsels of tokenism, concession, slight adjustment, unfulfilled promises? Why this callous and subhuman mistreatment? It—it’s bewildering, Nat. I won’t go further, no, I won’t say that the white men, not the lunatic fringe but the otherwise decent Caucasians, can’t really understand how we Negroes feel, can’t fathom what it is really like to be a Negro, because that would concede to them their argument that Negroes are inherently different, which we are not.”
Then an embarrassed smile crossed Dilman’s lips. “Silly of me, Nat, at a late date like this, bringing it up again. That’s like trying to obtain an Instant Answer to a tired and complicated old question—how can civil rights still be an issue in a free country? And yet, I keep asking myself—how is this possible? Why? Ridiculous. Let’s forget it, and—”
Abrahams had been thoughtful, but now he said, “No, Doug, you’ve posed a legitimate question, familiar as it is to both of us. We all know the endless reasons why American whites are prejudiced against Negroes. We’ve heard it from anthropologists and psychiatrists, from intellectuals and segregationists. We know there is a basic prejudice in all human beings that grows out of xenophobia—the dislike of foreigners, the fear of persons who look and seem to act differently. In the case of Negroes, this phobia is severely heightened. We know there is a widespread psychological, as well as an esthetic, antipathy toward black-skinned people. We know there is a belief, hidden or overt, that Negroes are of inferior mentality. Don’t segregationists always quote Arnold Toynbee to the effect that of history’s twenty-one great civilizations, Negroid Africa produced not one? We know that there is a fear, a deep unreasoning fear, among whites that Negroes are closer to savagery than to civilization, and therefore are unpredictable and threatening. I was thinking about this point just the other night. We’ve kept the Negro down so cruelly and for so damn long, denying him equal housing, employment, education, transportation, public accommodations, justice at the ballot box and in the courts, that despite the Supreme Court demand that we assimilate him ‘with all deliberate speed,’ we find we are reluctant to do so, to open up the Niggertown stockades and let him out. You see, by now, Doug, we’re simply afraid to let him free. Do you understand?”
“I’m not sure,” Dilman said uncertainly.
“Well, let me put it another way,” Abrahams went on. “By now, we suspect that the most meek and submissive Negro servant in our kitchen harbors a strong resentment toward us. And outside the kitchen, in the city streets, we know there are colored men who have been so long deprived, whose lives are so hopeless, that they no longer have anything to lose by employing force and violence against us. We know we have shoved too many of them beyond the safe boundaries of adherence to custom and law. We fear that, given half a chance, they may invade our secure boundaries to confiscate what is rightfully theirs, and more, and beat us up in the process, take our women by force, maim and kill, because they do not recognize the rules that we have for so many years forbidden them to live by. That’s part of the picture we both know, Doug, but in your case there is one more thing, I believe.”
Dilman waited, and then he asked, “What more can there be?”
“This. The men who are prosecuting you, and the public out there that has denounced you, they have done this for many of the reasons I’ve enunciated. But the quality of their antagonism toward you is different from what it is toward the Negro-on-the-street. This antagonism doesn’t spring from fear of you—since they know you are educated, oriented to the white world, surrounded by whites of strength and importance—and they know you are in the full glare of the spotlight, unable to initiate any violence, always subject to their laws and accountable to their decision. If they hate you, and want to be rid of you, and are trying you, I suspect it is for a different psychological motive than fear.”
He hesitated, and Dilman said, “For what, then, Nat? Why do they want to get rid of me?”
“Not because they fear you, but because—because they are ashamed of you. There are a hundred truths, but this is the main one, I would suggest. Men live by pride, and the predominantly white population of this country is mortified by the fact that their beautiful land and their beautiful lives are being run by a person who is—they have been brought up to believe—so shockingly their inferior, by a person whom one and all think they are superior to, and whom consequently they cannot respect, and whom they cannot have pride in before each other and the world at large. There is a kind of unvoiced national desire to regain national pride by liquidating, through due process, through civilized process, the one blot on the pure white landscape—and also, in doing so, sleep and play with less guilt for not having to look up constantly at you, Negro, so long wronged, who towers as a blatant rebuke to the national conscience. So, by legal hook or crook, out, damned spot. And that, I suppose, is why you go on trial in four hours.”
Dilman sat back in his chair, and his eyes did not leave those of his friend. “Nat, I intend to help you, not for myself but for what it means to everyone, the tormentors and the tormented. How can I help you?”
“By staying right in the Oval Office. By doing your job as President as well as you can. By letting us fight to keep you there.”
“Nat, that’s not enough. I want to confront the Senate and the country. I want them to see me and hear me on trial. I want them to see the man they’re ashamed of. I want to be the last witness for the defense.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Andrew Johnson never appeared in the Senate during his impeachment trial. His managers would not permit it. They felt that he might be goaded into losing his head and into saying things that could never be taken back. They felt his appearance could only endanger his cause. Johnson complained and protested, but he gave in.”
“Nat—why not?”
“Listen, you nigger lover, don’t you give me any more trouble. I’ve got headaches enough,” he said lightly, and he stood up. Then, looking at Dilman, he became serious. “Why not, Doug? Because I won’t throw a sheep, even a black sheep, to a slobbering pack of jacka
ls. I may be your couselor, but I am also your friend. . . . Now, you wish both of us luck, and if you believe in St. Christopher, it wouldn’t hurt to give him a jingle on the hot line, and ask him to hold a good thought.”
At five minutes to one o’clock in the afternoon, Nat Abrahams was witness to a sight that had been seen only once before in American history.
Jittery and impatient, he had left his three associates awaiting the official summons in the Senate Office of the Vice-President, slipped past the emptying Senate lobby, and come to the filled doorway on the Minority’s side of the Senate Chamber. The two doors had been fastened open, and the entry was crowded with curious, blue-uniformed Capitol police and gawking, scrubbed Senate page boys.
A policeman recognized Abrahams, and started to make a place for him just inside the Chamber, but Abrahams declined the offer. He did not yet want to be seen by the assembling congressmen and the eagle-eyed occupants of the press gallery. Instead he hung back, partially hidden from public view, but, because of his height, he was able to survey the scene inside fully.
The scene of this second Presidential trial for impeachment was, Abrahams felt sure, twice as hectic and highly charged as the first one over a century before. When the Andrew Johnson tribunal had convened, in those horse-and-carriage days, there had been 54 senators in attendance, and 190 representatives of the House present as onlookers, representing a United States populated by 30 million constituents. This early afternoon, there were packed in the Chamber before him 100 senators, to sit as jurors, and behind them 448 representatives of the House who had voted to become a Committee of the Whole to present themselves as guests in court, and these represented 230 million constituents. In 1868, the Andrew Johnson trial, beyond settling the balance of power in the government, as well as a political vendetta, possessed no central issue that would affect the lives of the citizens of the country. Today’s trial, Abrahams knew, possessed an issue of incalculable importance, that of the hidden reason for which President Dilman was being tried, the color of his skin, an issue that touched the life of every American. The outcome of the judgment on this issue would seriously affect America’s future at home and abroad.
(1964) The Man Page 74