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

by David O. Stewart

  Butler’s most prolific source of leads was a raffish New Yorker, George Wilkes, who published the scandalmongering National Police Gazette, a crime magazine. Sometimes accused of blackmailing the subjects of his stories, Wilkes only once was convicted of criminal libel. He turned that jail sentence into profit by publishing an exposé of the prison system. Wilkes sponsored prizefights and acquired a sporting weekly, Spirit of the Times. Politically, he became a Radical Republican during the war, then joined Butler in a scheme to colonize Baja California. Avid for impeachment, Wilkes shared with Butler his expertise in the world of detectives and law enforcement. Wilkes and Butler were accused of keeping the doubtful senators under twenty-four-hour surveillance for the week before the vote on May 16. Wilkes was on the Senate floor several times during May, engaging in informal advocacy with individual senators. Like many sporting men of the day, the New Yorker bet heavily on the trial’s outcome.

  Wilkes developed a confidential informant who was close to Sam Ward. According to this source, Ward paid Senator Ross $12,000 for his vote. The money supposedly came from John Morrissey, the prizefighter-turned-congressman who ran both Tammany Hall and New York’s biggest lottery business, and also was one of Sam Ward’s clients. In a salacious twist, Wilkes speculated that the payoffs were handled by “Charley Morgan,” Sam Ward’s cross-dressing mistress who supposedly was having a simultaneous affair with Congressman Morrissey’s wife. Charley Morgan, Wilkes pointed out, “has the singular advantage of being able to change himself into a handsome young woman for one purpose or another.”

  In the middle of Butler’s investigation, the young woman posing as Charley Morgan was arrested in New York. Identified in the New York Times as “Julia H,” she pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor of “indecency,” telling the court that she had not worn women’s clothes for four years. Butler assured Sam Ward that he had nothing to do with Morgan’s arrest, protesting that he had resisted pressure to “mortify” Ward by calling her as a witness. Butler never proved that Sam Ward had bribed Senator Ross.

  The impeachment committee took testimony for six weeks after the vote on May 16. While the committee made its inquiries, workmen replaced the heavy carpets of the Capitol with white matting for the heat of summer; they retired cushioned chairs in favor of wooden ones. The committee—which soon shrank to Butler and John Logan of Illinois, with only Butler present on some days—heard over a dozen witnesses, several for more than one day. Four members of the Astor House group appeared: Weed, Shook, Erastus Webster, and Woolley. Butler questioned Treasury official Edmund Cooper, New York Collector Henry Smythe, Indian trader Perry Fuller, railroad man James Craig, and Sam Ward. Although it offended the dignity of the Senate to be investigated in this way, two senators agreed to testify. Missouri’s Henderson appeared early in the investigation, while Pomeroy of Kansas testified four times in a frantic effort to straighten out his crooked story.

  From the first day of the investigation, Butler zeroed in on Woolley, the Whiskey Ring lawyer. Butler may have understood that he could only get so far with wily political alligators like Thurlow Weed and Cornelius Wendell. They gave the testimony they intended to give, no more and no less. They did not get embarrassed or flustered. Weed, for example, admitted to having conversations about bribing senators and receiving numerous coded telegrams following up on those conversations. When pressed for details, the New York boss lamely insisted that he knew only that the messages “related to impeachment,” but did not recall what they meant—even though all of the events had occurred within the previous two weeks! In another notable exchange, Butler began to abuse Wendell for refusing to answer a question. “If I tell anything,” Wendell responded coolly, “I shall tell all I know. Do you wish me to do so, General?” Butler, acutely aware of his own attempt to pay $100,000 for Wendell’s testimony against the Astor House group, changed the subject.

  Butler did not back down with Charles Woolley, the Whiskey Ring lawyer who handled large piles of cash during the last two weeks before the vote. Through two committee appearances, Woolley used evasions, objections, assertions of the attorney-client privilege, and other delaying tactics. The committee tried to “follow the money” in Woolley’s possession—employing the tactic that became a mantra in the Watergate investigation a century later—particularly Woolley’s withdrawal of $20,000 from a Washington bank during the trial. Where had the money gone? The next day, Woolley argued that his prior testimony was void because he took the oath from a mere committee member, not from the nominal committee chairman, John Bingham. After hours of testifying, Woolley claimed he gave most of the money ($16,000) to his hotel suite-mate, Sheridan Shook, for safekeeping. The rest, according to Woolley, went for high living. Unfortunately for Woolley, Shook denied receiving any money from him.

  When Woolley was summoned for a third day of testimony, the Whiskey Ring lawyer lost his appetite for the process. First he pled illness, providing a letter from a physician who said Woolley could not leave his hotel because of “irritation from sequellae of gastric derangement.” Woolley accompanied that message with an affidavit challenging the committee’s power to seize his papers or ask him about his private business. Miraculously recovering his strength, he fled to New York. Stalling was a shrewd tactic. Butler was under impossible time pressure. The second round of voting on the impeachment articles was scheduled for May 26. If the corruption investigation were to make any difference in the outcome, Butler needed results before then. Only Butler signed the committee’s interim report, which issued on May 25. That report admitted there was no proof yet of corruption in the Senate’s vote but demanded that the House compel Woolley’s testimony.

  On the evening of May 25, the sergeant-at-arms of the House seized Woolley, who had returned to Washington. Hauled before the House the next day, Woolley had to explain why he would not answer the committee’s questions. The proceeding was interrupted so the congressmen could trudge to the other side of the Capitol to witness the death rattle of the impeachment case: the Senate’s acquittal of Johnson on Articles II and III. Reconvening, the House ordered Woolley to answer the committee’s questions. Protesting that he had not tried to corrupt any senators, Woolley told the House he would not answer questions about actions unrelated to the trial. The House found him in contempt and authorized the sergeant-at-arms to detain him until he testified. Woolley was held in the hearing room of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, which was fitted out with a bed. Meals came from the Capitol restaurant.

  The jailing of Woolley was a sensation. Democrats flocked to see the new celebrity, who passed the time in his elegant prison with his wife and child. House Democrats staged confrontations over Butler’s high-handed tactics. As the lawyer’s detention dragged on, he was moved to the studio of Vinnie Ream in the Capitol basement. She was forced to shift her sculptures into the corridor.

  “The Smelling Committee” meets Johnson and his “Woolley Friend” after the trial.

  While Woolley battled Butler, his Astor House allies scrambled to back him up on the unexplained $20,000. Another Seward intimate, who served as the secretary of state’s agent in several matters, stepped forward with an unlikely alibi. After the committee first questioned Woolley about the money, Cornelius Wendell and Woolley’s new alibi witness took the noon train to New York, polishing a story through nine hours of jostling over the tracks. They met Sheridan Shook late that evening (May 20) at the Astor House, whereupon the alibi witness pulled a wad of currency out of a pocket and claimed it was Woolley’s money. Or so Wendell testified.

  The alibi witness, who carried the aristocratic name of Ransom Van Valkenburg, told Butler’s committee that on May 17 (the day after the first impeachment vote) he and Woolley made a $10,000 bet on the 1868 election. The bettors supposedly asked Shook to hold the stakes, but Shook refused. Portraying Shook and Woolley as blind drunk at the time, Van Valkenburg said he picked up Woolley’s money and placed it in the safe at the Metropolitan Hotel, where it remained undisturbed for thr
ee weeks. In one of the most convincing passages in his final report, Butler wrote, “[Y]our committee believed no part of this stupid fabrication.”

  The committee questioned the imprisoned Woolley on May 27, after his first day under arrest, rejecting his request for a lawyer. Finding the lawyer still unresponsive, Butler sent Woolley back to his detention. However much Woolley might dislike being detained, Butler was the one who could not wait. Eleven days later, Woolley managed to place his dilemma before the House. This time, Woolley assured the House that he would answer Butler’s questions. Butler accepted those empty assurances. The committee brought in Van Valkenburg, who produced a package of greenbacks totaling $17,000 and a hotel manager who said the package had, indeed, been in his hotel safe. Stymied by this “mass of corruption,” unable to distinguish Van Valkenburg’s cash from any other cash Woolley may have had, Butler released the Cincinnati lawyer after seventeen days of confinement.

  Butler had other leads. He brandished a statement by seven congressmen that in January 1868, Senator Fowler of Tennessee demanded the impeachment of President Johnson to end “the sufferings of Southern Union men and the murder of so many of them.” Butler recited other examples of Fowler’s previous support for impeachment. What, he demanded, converted the Tennessean to a key vote for acquittal? John Bingham and the governor of Tennessee were certain Fowler had been bribed. And what about Henderson of Missouri and his mystifying changes in position? In each case, Butler could not get his hands on definitive proof of bribery.

  Butler got closer with Senator Ross and his sponsor, Indian trader Perry Fuller. Fuller admitted that he offered $40,000 to Senator Pomeroy’s brother-in-law Willis Gaylord for the “Chase movement,” and that he did so on the authority of Edmund Cooper at Treasury, the president’s devoted supporter. Even more damning, Fuller acknowledged that in late May, in the midst of Butler’s investigation, he paid off the home mortgage of James Legate, the Kansas postal agent who had spilled the beans about Fuller’s involvement in vote-buying. Fuller also arranged for Legate to collect pay from the Post Office for his many weeks of scheming in Washington and then paid for Legate’s passage back to Kansas. In return, Legate gave Fuller all his papers about the bribery scheme, which Fuller promptly incinerated. The Indian trader’s purpose in all these steps, he admitted, was “drying up the investigation.” Despite the sinister implications of these deeds, Butler did not uncover the final link, the one that traced Cooper’s cash to the pocket of a senator.

  In at least one instance, Butler seems to have missed key evidence. After a two-hour appearance before the committee, Sam Ward, the King of the Lobby, shared his fine cigars with the House manager. Ward admitted later that he had “trembled about that d——d telegram of Monkhood [an alias used by Ward] & Harry Smythe which would, if interpreted, have brought [railroad man James] Craig’s business in…which I have steered clear of.” What had Butler overlooked while savoring Ward’s cigars? Was there another ring of corruption around the impeachment, one connecting Collector Smythe with the Missouri railroad man and the King of the Lobby? Because Butler never found out, neither have we.

  Ward was so elated by his escape from Butler’s clutches that he wrote an audacious letter proposing that Butler drop the investigation, apologize to Woolley, and introduce legislation to pay the president’s legal fees. Whatever Butler missed, it may have been why Ward said that in his whole life, he was “proudest of the part I took in defeating the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.”

  For all of Butler’s industry, though, he seemed to pull some of his punches, chasing less promising leads while failing to follow up on others. To begin with, he concentrated on securing the testimony of Woolley, the least well-connected member of the Astor House group. He meticulously traced Woolley’s financial transactions during those critical weeks of the trial, ultimately placing some $45,000 in Woolley’s hands. Other witnesses declined to answer questions, were evasive, or were contradicted by competing evidence, yet Butler gave those other witnesses a pass. The House manager freely allowed witnesses to revise their testimony after the fact, sometimes in significant ways. Some witnesses were questioned informally, not under oath. General Alonzo Adams, who originated one bribery scheme, claimed he could not even recall when he had become a General of the Army. He was deemed by the committee “utterly false and untruthful.” Yet Butler took no action against him.

  Was Butler merely putting on a show of pursuing the truth? He likely realized soon enough that he could not gain great political advantages from the investigation. Neither the House nor the Senate intended to deal with impeachment any more. Johnson’s term in office would end on March 4, 1869, which was drawing ever closer.

  Butler evidently sought to uncover only certain truths, those that would serve his political goals, which involved inflicting the maximum possible damage on the president and the Democratic Party, while reinforcing the Grant-Colfax ticket for the fall election. Also high among Butler’s priorities was any development that would increase his own power and influence. With these goals, Butler found it awkward, at best, that so much evidence seemed to implicate Kansas Senator Pomeroy, who had been a firm vote to convict the president but also had a most checkered reputation. Butler’s ability to attack others was limited by his need to whitewash Pomeroy, despite evidence so incriminating that the Kansan testified four times in a desperate search for a satisfactory narrative for his conduct. Postal agent Legate went through a three-hour preparation session in Pomeroy’s committee room to ensure that he did not irretrievably implicate his fellow Kansan.

  In the final committee report, Butler cried out in frustration that the only senators named by the Astor House group as potential bribe-takers were Republicans who voted “guilty,” including Pomeroy, Nye of Nevada, Anthony and Sprague of Rhode Island, and Morton of Indiana. What else did Butler expect his political enemies to say? After all, he spent no effort investigating allegations about those other Republicans and chose to focus on Woolley, the only Democrat in the Astor House group.

  Butler hurried the report into print on July 3. He wanted to thwart President Johnson’s quest for the Democratic nomination for president. That party’s convention was meeting in New York the following week. The report, though, was an anticlimax. As with the preliminary report, only Butler signed it. The proof still failed to place dollars in the pocket of any senator. In a letter to his father, Thomas Ewing, Jr. scorned the committee’s claim that it lacked only a link or two in proving that Charles Woolley bribed Senator Ross: “That is, they can’t tell who got [the money] from Woolley or who paid it to Ross!”

  Still, Ross, Henderson, and Fowler—the defectors most suspected of selling their votes—blistered the report in speeches on the Senate floor. Ross’s denunciation was particularly vigorous, referring to Butler’s “well-known groveling instincts and proneness to slime and uncleanness.” Denials, most politicians learn, have less force than accusations. Though that truism can be unfair, it also reflects human experience. As Henderson himself argued several years later, when he was prosecuting Whiskey Ring defendants, anyone capable of committing a crime is capable of denying it.

  For eighteen months after the impeachment trial ended, one newsman fitfully tried to answer the questions that Butler’s report raised. A native of Massachusetts, Henry Van Ness Boynton was not a man to trifle with. Made a general of Ohio Volunteers during the Civil War, he earned the Congressional Medal of Honor at the battle of Missionary Ridge, where he was severely wounded. Writing for the Cincinnati Gazette, Boynton quickly established himself as a leading Washington correspondent. Though a firm Republican, he was nonpartisan in ferreting out official misconduct.

  In reports published in late December 1869, Boynton identified three schemes to use cash to influence the impeachment vote. The first involved an offer that agents of certain Republican senators should wager $50,000 (at least $700,000 in today’s dollars) that the president would be acquitted. Once those senators voted to ensure acquittal, the
bet would be paid off. Though this proposal was supported by two Cabinet members (Seward and Postmaster General Randall), Boynton concluded that the scheme was not implemented. The second plan was the one designed by Cornelius Wendell at the request of Seward, Randall, and Treasury Secretary McCulloch. Boynton found that $150,000 (over $2 million in current value) was raised for payoffs, but he could not establish that the funds were paid to senators. Most likely, he thought, middlemen like Fuller and Legate siphoned off most of the money. The third scheme, according to Boynton, was Butler’s attempt to induce Wendell to reveal scheme number two in return for $100,000 (worth at least $1.4 million today).

  To Boynton, Ben Butler was the worst rascal in the crowd. Butler’s pursuit of Charles Woolley, the correspondent concluded, was a smokescreen behind which all other scoundrels were able to retreat. Boynton was disgusted by Butler’s failure to publish key testimony from the investigation (only a few transcripts survive from Butler’s inquiry). Wendell, Randall, and Seward aide Erastus Webster all gave testimony that was never disclosed. Boynton did not know what Butler was hiding but was sure the congressman was hiding something. Having expected to prove the perfidy of the president’s defenders, Boynton concluded that Johnson’s pursuers were no better.

  In response to Boynton’s articles, Cornelius Wendell gave an intriguing newspaper interview. He confirmed Boynton’s reporting about the proposed wager on the verdict, and the acquittal fund. In a public exchange with Senator Ross, Wendell said he did not know of money that was paid to Ross. Wendell added that several thousand dollars had been offered to Perry Fuller to influence Ross, but Fuller declined it.