* * *
—
“I THINK THERE was buying and selling enough to save Johnson,—that is to acquit him on the impeachment,” Jeremiah Black said. That’s what the managers believed. They’d begun their corruption inquiry right away, interviewing such witnesses as Perry Fuller, Thomas Ewing, Jr., and the lawyer Charles Woolley. Woolley, about forty years old, stout, and silent, refused to explain what he had done with $10,000 given him by a deputy collector of internal revenue in New York named Sheridan Shook. Woolley had suspiciously withdrawn the money in $1,000 bills but refused to answer any question unrelated to impeachment.
All the witnesses blathered, evaded the subject, or feigned complete ignorance. Sheridan Shook too answered very few questions, or he replied nonsensically. For instance, midway through Shook’s initial testimony, Ben Butler asked him, “Did you state in Mr. Woolley’s rooms, in the presence of four persons, that if the Committee called you as a witness they would find you the greatest know-nothing they ever saw?”
A. I have no recollection of making any such statement as that.
Q. Did you, or did you not?
A. No, sir. If I did I must have been drunk or crazy, one or the other.
Then there was the wheeling and dealing around Chief Justice Chase. Perry Fuller had evidently told a special agent in the Kansas Post Office Department named James Legate that if impeachment failed, Salmon Chase would lead a third party to the White House, and money raised for Chase’s presidential bid was really a fund for the President’s acquittal. A Chase “circle” was set up. “I think ‘circle’ was the word he used; it may have been ‘ring,’ ” Legate testified.
The cartoon satirizes the prosecuting managers of the impeachment trial who tried to learn whether bribery or other chicanery influenced the vote. Pictured from left to right are John A. Logan, George S. Boutwell, Thomas Williams, Benjamin F. Butler, Thaddeus Stevens, and John A. Bingham. At the far right is Andrew Johnson, who says, “It’s no use Gentlemen. Your old nag is dead and you can’t ride it any more; my Woolley friend finished him.”
Soon the euphemisms faded away, most witnesses allowing that they had heard talk of purchasing votes, though they couldn’t recall whom they heard it from or what precisely might have been said.
“People here are afraid to write letters, and I must be a little cautious at present,” Jerome Stillson complained to Samuel Barlow. “Spies are, really, everywhere.”
But the prosecutorial zeal was backfiring. With the committee high-handedly seizing telegrams, even if by subpoena, and Ben Butler sniffing into the bank accounts of private citizens who happened to have withdrawn large sums, Democrats denounced the whole thing as a “smelling” committee. Republicans too were dubious. “Butler has ruined the cause: all his partisans are disgusted with him,” Stillson observed with satisfaction.
Still, the managers were pretty sure that they were on the right track, although men in the know, like Thomas Ewing, Jr., assumed they’d never get anywhere. “The managers are pushing the investigation & profess to believe that Woolley’s $20,000 went into Ross’s pocket,” Ewing boasted. “Logan says ‘only one or two links are wanting.’ That is, they can’t tell who got it from Woolley or who paid it to Ross!”
Thurlow Weed shed some light, although he said a great deal more by what he didn’t say. Tall, broad-shouldered, and cunning, Weed was a former New York assemblyman and powerful newspaper publisher who, at seventy years old, was still a crack political boss whose advice, influence, and friendship had been essential to William Seward—and to Andrew Johnson. Most recently, though, Weed too considered Johnson’s sacking Stanton to be stupid. “I followed the President into the Ditch,” Weed had complained. He also despised the whole impeachment business and harnessed the full weight of his paper, the New-York Commercial Advertiser, to stop it.
He told the committee that there had indeed been a group of men determined to acquit the President—a group that included Henry Smythe, the collector of customs in New York, an oily character accused of corruption in the Customs House and nearly thrown out of office; Weed’s friend Sheridan Shook; former Congressman Samuel “Sunset” Cox; and Julia Ward Howe’s jovial brother Sam Ward, the epicurean lobbyist with a taste for poetry, champagne, and backroom politics.
Everyone accused everyone.
What role had William Seward played? “Mr. Seward also looked at matters in a businesslike way,” a friend acknowledged. It seemed that Seward, along with Postmaster Randall, had been in touch with Cornelius Wendell to arrange bribes. Wendell, a Washington printer who’d fattened his bank account by overcharging the government, told the committee he hadn’t wanted any part of this plan and in turn pointed a finger at Seward’s aide Erastus Webster, who’d apparently put together a purse of $165,000 to pay for acquittal votes. Most of the money had been raised by Postmaster Randall, Secretary McCulloch, and Henry Smythe at the Custom House. The conspirators used middlemen like Perry Fuller and James Legate, though it was also said that Fuller and Legate had pocketed most of the cash.
And then there was the matter of incriminating telegrams. Several hours before the vote on May 16, Woolley had telegraphed George Pendleton, “Andy all right.”
The day before the final vote was taken, Ben Butler delivered a preliminary report of the committee’s findings, and it did seem that the committee had amassed a great deal of circumstantial evidence suggesting that some senators had been bribed.
There was a great deal of smoke, in other words, but no fire.
* * *
—
WHEN CHARLES WOOLLEY refused to recognize the authority of the committee and did not appear, Butler recommended that the House arrest him for contempt and hold him in custody until he agreed to testify. Authorizing Woolley’s arrest, the House placed him in the basement studio of the Capitol, the one occupied by Vinnie Ream, who was told she had to vacate right away.
* * *
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A NUMBER OF Republicans believed the committee’s findings might justify censure, a change of vote, or perhaps even a “tainted” verdict, if the recusant senators continued to vote against impeachment. Several of them silently entered the House, along with the President’s son-in-law David Patterson, when Butler read the committee’s report. Trumbull seated himself with the Democrats, as did Edmund Ross.
* * *
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AND WHAT OF the vehement Edwin Stanton, whose firing had set all this in motion, the man Walt Whitman had called “wonderfully patriotic, courageous, far-seeing” and “the best sort of man”? What of Stanton and his future? He had already been warned about the verdict. “Mr. Evarts has been at my house this day,” his friend Edwards Pierrepont confided the day before the vote was scheduled. “He assures me that he knows and that the President will surely be acquitted.”
Stanton said he’d stay in the War Department until the other ten impeachment articles had been voted upon, and he waited alone there for the verdict on May 16, the windows in his office open to the warm spring air. The army telegraph had delivered the vote on the eleventh article; it was what he had expected, having already learned at least of the defection of Grimes, Trumbull, and Fessenden. He did not speak to reporters, and he locked the door to his office.
The nomination of Grant and Colfax had pleased him. He’d been standing by the telegraph in the War Department when the news arrived. Stanton rushed to Grant’s office. “General,” he said, “I have come to tell you that you have been nominated by the Republican party for President of the United States.”
Grant said nothing beyond a simple thank-you, asked about the platform, and handed out a few cigars. A few days later, Grant released a formal acceptance letter that ended with the plea, soon to become a mantra, “Let us have peace.”
* * *
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IN NEW ORLEANS, a musical review called The Impeachment Trial be
came a local favorite.
* * *
—
THERE WAS TALK of another impeachment article, to be written by Thaddeus Stevens, health permitting, but Stevens was growing more feeble every day. And now with the presidential campaign of the enormously popular Grant under way, there was also talk of shutting down the trial as quickly and quietly as possible. No one really expected the seven recusants to change their votes. But if this impeachment failed, given all the favorable circumstances, all the breaches of law, all the usurpation, the staunchest Radicals felt that no American President would ever be successfully impeached and convicted, and there would alas be no limit to a President’s power.
For think what Andrew Johnson had done: “From the date of his infamous speech of 22nd of February, down to the present time, he has openly and covertly worked toward the realization of an avowed object, with an earnestness and consistency worthy of a great cause,” declared John Forney. “That cause, as he presents it, is the restoration of the late rebel States to their places in the Union as co-equal members thereof, under their old constitutions and with their old bodies politic. He has steadily pursued this policy regardless of the good of the country; regardless of the law of the land; reckless of his own reputation; through good report and through evil report; and justifying the means by the end, he has introduced the most fearful system of corruption and demoralization into any government known in modern history.”
It wasn’t just the rings, the corruption, and the abuse of power, Forney was insisting; Johnson had been steadily and scrupulously restoring a system of slavery, of inequality and indignity by other means. “Before any Senator who was elected as a Republican, who voted for the reconstruction laws, the civil rights bill, or the tenure-of-office bill, who believes in the doctrine of human rights against class privilege, who reveres the memory of the soldiers that fell; for the Union, who believes in progressive civilization and the dignity of labor,” Forney was begging, “before any such Senator votes for Andrew Johnson’s acquittal, we implore him to look ahead.”
* * *
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IT WAS SAID the trial would live as long as history itself, that it was the wonder of the world. Yet it soon disappeared into history’s thick annals, and if it was a wonder of the world, it was an ephemeral one, a spectacle that gathered only the dust of time and, later, obloquy. If the public thought the trial would be showy, shiny, and prosecuted with speed, they were wrong. The showiest person was the equivocal Ben Butler, an opportunist, an operator, a tireless and dogged prosecutor hated by many but after all considered, as Benjamin Perley Poore said, “the life, soul, body, boots and breeches of impeachment.”
And trials are slow, ponderous, and in this case, far too serious for speed. Despite partisan bickering, name-calling, and ugliness, the issues were serious and worthy of a serious debate. What constituted an impeachable offense? Had the trial been a judicial hearing or a political event? And what would the results, either of acquittal or conviction, come to mean? For the issues were, many also felt, a matter of life and death, not just of human beings but of the nation itself, for the country had to ask why the recent war had been fought, if the rebels had won after all, and what the consequences to one nation, presumably indivisible, were likely to be.
* * *
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ONCE AGAIN MEN and women in bright colors streamed into the Capitol. British novelist Anthony Trollope deposited himself in a front-row seat, and Kate Chase Sprague, dressed in a violet dress with a springlike sheen, peered down at her presidential father. They had come to witness the very last act.
Several senators wanted to adjourn until the end of June to give the investigating committee time to collect more evidence about possible corruption. The motion was defeated. No one—not the spectators nor the senators nor most of the public—believed that in the end the allegations could be proved.
So the fifty-four U.S. senators sitting in the court for the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, on this day, May 26, 1868, took up the second impeachment article and then the third. The second article accused Johnson of intending to violate the Constitution and the Tenure of Office Act by issuing and delivering to General Lorenzo Thomas a letter of authority as interim secretary of war on February 21, 1868. The third article accused Johnson of violating the Constitution by appointing General Thomas as interim war secretary on the same date.
The roll was called. The result was the same as it had been ten days earlier: thirty-five senators voted “guilty,” and nineteen men voted to acquit. Ross flushed pink.
It was a little before two o’clock in the afternoon. The President had been acquitted of high crimes and misdemeanors on both articles.
The Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment, adjourned sine die, without setting a future date to reconvene.
It was over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Human Rights
“The day is coming when the black man will vote, and he will be the balance of power.”
—HENRY JEROME BROWN
At midnight on August 11, eleven weeks after the acquittal of Andrew Johnson, the seventy-six-year-old Thaddeus Stevens quietly died. By his side were his companion Lydia Smith, his nephews, and two sisters of charity, Loretta O’Reilly and Genevieve Ewers. Earlier that same day, of all the many people knocking at his door, only Reverend Mr. Hall and the Reverend Mr. Reed, two black clergymen, had been admitted. Stevens whispered thank you as he pressed each of the ministers’ hands.
For months, the old lion, though ailing, had kept going almost by sheer force of will, he so fervently wanted to see the impeachment trial to conclusion. And while disappointed but not surprised by the outcome, he submitted new impeachment resolutions to Congress that, as he expected, went nowhere. “My sands are nearly run, and I can only see with the eye of faith,” he acknowledged while gesturing toward Speaker Colfax, now the Republican nominee for Vice President. “But you, sir, are promised length of days and a brilliant career. If you and your compeers can fling away ambition and realize that every human being, however lowly born or degraded by fortune, is your equal, that every inalienable right which belongs to you belongs also to him, truth and righteousness will spread over the land.”
Earlier, a reporter had walked over to his house on South B Street, fronted by linden trees, where Stevens lived with Lydia Smith. Stevens was reclining on his bed, vest and jacket off, in a low-roofed room decorated only with a photograph of Lincoln and a bust of Stevens sculpted by Vinnie Ream. Stevens was talkative. “I am very sick indeed,” he ruefully told the reporter, but with characteristic generosity added, “come to me any time [sic] whenever you are in difficulty or doubt, and I will do all I can for you.”
He still showed up for work. “They’ll miss me at the Council board, and before the game is up, they’ll own that I was not very far wrong,” he wryly told journalist John Forney. Many associates did say just that—Stevens wasn’t far wrong. “No single mind has done more to shape this era,” Wendell Phillips declared, and when Stevens died, Georges Clemenceau exclaimed that “the nation has lost in him a great citizen.” Enemies like Fernando Wood of New York, the notorious anti-war Democrat, saluted Old Thad. “That he has left an impress on the page of our history none can dispute,” Wood conceded. “That he was a thoroughly honest, as well as a truly great man, all will admit.”
He was also feared. “The death of Thaddeus Stevens is an emancipation for the Republican Party,” James Blaine reportedly exulted. And in the future, Stevens would frequently be remembered as autocratic, relentless, almost demonic. “Of course he was hated,” the writer known as Grace Greenwood said, “as every great, wholesome, courageous nature is hated—as every proud, honest, absolute character is hated—by the weak, the cowardly, and the false.”
A company of black Zouaves from Massachusetts requested the privilege of standing watch over Stevens’ body when i
t lay in state under the great dome in the Capitol rotunda. And that’s where Thad Stevens belonged: he was the essential man of Congress, of the Capitol, of Washington and the nation. When the doors to the east side of the Capitol opened, a crush of citizens approached the rosewood coffin that sat before a life-sized statue of Abraham Lincoln. The Zouaves hoisted the little black children from St. Aloysen’s Orphanage so that they could take a last look at Mr. Stevens, and more than 15,000 people, black and white, mechanics and farmers, soldiers, homemakers and clerks and clergy, as well as congressmen, both Republicans and Democrats, friends and foes, passed through that rotunda. The outpouring of sorrow reminded many of the day they wept for Lincoln.
“In time,” a reporter mourned, “we shall come to recognize the wisdom of his views.”
Congress had recently adjourned, but during the funeral ceremony, the massive head of Senator Charles Sumner, who stood a little to the right of the bier, could be seen from afar, and Senator Trumbull, gold spectacles gleaming, was seated nearby. “In the last few years, in shaping the destinies of our Government, he has had more to do than any one man,” the Reverend Dr. Emery described Thaddeus Stevens. The cause that he pleaded most eloquently was the cause of all mankind—“hence there is a vacancy. Who among our peers can fill it?”
After the service, mourners followed the hearse, which was pulled by four white horses and accompanied by 125 men from an organization sponsoring the election of General Grant. At the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad depot, a special train waited to convey Stevens to his home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where over 10,000 people, some say 20,000, lined the streets in anticipation of his return. As the train chugged to its destination, bells tolled throughout the nation, pealing loudly.
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