The Impeachers
Page 51
CHAPTER TEN: ANDY’S SWING AROUND THE CIRCLE
“The mere fact of the north”: Sylvanus Cadwallader, “Four Years with Grant,” mss., Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
“purposes hostile”: see Henry J. Raymond, “Extracts from the Journal of Henry J. Raymond,” p. 275. My account of Raymond’s hesitation is derived from the extracts.
“It encourages those against whom every Union”: BB to AJ, Aug. 10, 1866, PAJ 11: 56.
“the transfer of the political power”: William Evarts to John Dix, July 25, 1866, Butler.
“to rupture the Republican Party”: Fitz-john Porter to Manton Marble, July 16, 1866, LC.
Interior Secretary James Harlan: see “From Washington,” Chicago Tribune, July 15, 1866, p. 1.
“He holds on like grim death,”: “Evening Dispatches,” Detroit Free Press, July 13, 1866, p. 6.
“Rebels and Copperheads mostly”: Aug. 14, 1866, Strong, The Diary of George Templeton Strong, vol. 4, p. 97.
The roof leaked: for an excellent overview of the convention, see Thomas Wagstaff, “The Arm-in-Arm Convention,” pp. 101–19.
“As matters now look,”: Edwards Pierrepont to John Bigelow, June 16, 1866, in Bigelow, Retrospections, vol. 3, p. 462.
“there could hardly be”: Charles Eliot Norton to E. L. Godkin, August 30, 1866, Houghton.
“the event of the season”: The Nation, Sept. 6, 1866.
“were far more plentiful than bread and butter or cold water.”: Cadwallader, “Four Years with Grant,” mss., Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
James Doolittle had warned Johnson: see James Doolittle to AJ, Aug. 28, 1866, PAJ 11: 153; Thurlow Weed, see Weed, The Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 630.
“itch for speechmaking”: see Rhodes, A History of the United States, vol. 6, p. 5.
“Why don’t you hang”: see, for example, “Mr. Johnson’s Disgraceful Speech at Cleveland,” Chicago Tribune, Sept. 6, 1866, p. 4.
“I don’t care about my dignity”: see for example, “The President’s Tour: Extraordinary Scene at Cleveland, New York Evening Post, Sept. 4, 1866, p. 8; see also “Politicians and Journalists,” The Round Table, Sept. 15, 1866, p. 100.
“The President was fortunate…bad men”: Cadwallader, “Four Years with Grant,” mss., Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
The morning after the Cleveland speech: see “The Tour,” New York Herald, Sept. 5, 1866, p. 7.
“this radical Congress”: “The President’s Tour,” Washington Star, Sept. 10, 1866, p. 1.
“Who ever heard of such a Presidential Ass?”: quoted in McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, p. 434.
The publisher James Bennett had reminded: see “President Johnson and Congress during the Past Year,” New York Herald, Sept. 26, 1866, p. 8.
Moderate Republicans: see “America,” Saturday Review, Sept. 15, 1868, p. 318.
“Proud and sensitive,”: “Mr. Beecher’s Second Letter,” The Independent, Sept. 13, 1866, p. 1.
“The ‘so-called’ President”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Charles Eliot Norton, Sept. 12, 1866, Houghton.
“What a muddle we are in politically!”: Henry Raymond to E. P. Whipple, Oct. 11, 1866, NYPL.
“sunk the Presidential office”: John Sherman to WTS, Oct. 26, 1866, in Thorndike, ed., The Sherman Letters, p. 278.
“nothing in his official life ever became him like his leaving of it,”: “Let Mr. Johnson Resign,” The Round Table, Sept. 22, 1866, p. 115.
“If he left Washington”: Whittier, The Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, vol. 3, p. 133.
“How can you, Mr. President”: Isaac N. Arnold to AJ, Sept. 29, 1866, PAJ 11: 285.
“If there is any man”: Reynolds, “The New Orleans Riot of 1866, Reconsidered,” p. 15.
“Does Seward mean”: William H. Hurlburt to Manton Marble, Sept. 2, 1866, LC.
Others speculated: see The Boston Traveller, clipping.
Johnson had been too lenient: see “President Johnson and the True Policy for His Administration,” New York Herald, Sept. 14, 1866, p. 4; see also William B. Phillips to AJ, Sept. 16, 1866, PAJ 11: 227.
“to mix myself in the domestic business of this people.”: Matías Romero of Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores, Sept. 2, 1866, in Romero, “The Mexican Minister Describes Andrew Johnson’s ‘Swing Around the Circle,’ ” ed. Thomas Schoonover, p. 157.
“indisposition,”: Cadwallader, “Four Years with Grant,” mss., Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. See also Sept. 19, 1866, Welles, Diary, LC.
“The President of the United States is my superior officer, and I am under his command,”: “The President’s Tour: Grant and Farragut,” New-York Tribune, Sept. 14, 1866, p. 5.
“I wouldn’t have started if I had”: Richardson, Personal History of Ulysses S. Grant, p. 528.
“a National disgrace”: USG to Julia Grant, Sept. 6, 1866, PUSG 16: 308.
“If the public get an idea that Grant is with the President it will do us great injury,”: William DeFrees to Elihu Washburne, Aug. 23, 1866, LC.
“the Genl. may say that he”: Joseph Russell Jones to Elihu Washburne, Sept. 9, 1866, LC.
“his reticence”: John A. Clark to Elihu Washburne, Oct. 11, 1866, LC.
“violent with the opposition he meets with”: USG to Philip Sheridan, Oct. 12, 1866, quoted in Badeau, Grant in Peace, p. 51.
“There is some plan to get Grant out of the way”: quoted in PUSG 16: 340.
Grant unequivocally declined: see Moore, “Notes of Colonel W. G. Moore,” ed. St. George L. Syosset, p. 100.
“No power on earth can compel me to it”: see Badeau, Grant in Peace, p. 54.
“I cheerfully consented”: WTS to John Sherman, Oct. 31, 1866, in The Sherman Letters, ed. Thorndike, p. 280.
“The influence of Mr. Seward”: Matías Romero of Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores, Sept. 2, 1866, in “The Mexican Minister Describes Andrew Johnson’s ‘Swing Around the Circle,’ ” ed. Thomas Schoonover, Civil War History (June 1973), p. 154.
Seward had tried to climb into the Lincoln”: see Lowell, “The Seward-Johnson Reaction,” p. 527.
“Poor Seward!”: Charles Eliot Norton to E. L. Godkin, August 30, 1866 , Houghton.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: RESISTANCE
“Permit this government to be reestablished”: Anna Dickinson, holograph speech, nd [early 1867?], LC.
“that miserable abortion”: “ ‘My Policy,’ A Radical Analysis. Miss Anna E. Dickinson at the Academy,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 19, 1866, pp. 1, 8.
“sunk into eternal perdition,”: “The Fanatics on the Rampage,” Daily (Albany) Argus, May 10, 1866, p. 2.
“and a devastation”: see “The President’s Purpose Revolutionary Avowed,” The Wooster [Ohio] Republican, Sept. 5, 1866, p. 1.
The outgoing minister to France: John Bigelow diary, Oct. 30, 1866, NYPL.
General James Steedman: see Browning, Nov. 1, 1866, The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, vol. 2, pp. 109–10.
“I have sometimes been”: Feb. 24, 1868, Welles, Diary, vol. 3, p. 291.
“inferior races”: Boutwell, Reminiscences, vol. 1, p. 18.
“A conspiracy was on foot to put the government into the hands of rebels”: quoted in Summers, A Dangerous Stir, p. 119.
Johnson was a dictator: see Boutwell, “The Usurpation,” p. 509.
“This tells well”: Diary of Rufus Saxton, Sunday, May 20, 1860, Yale.
“what New Orleans will be today”: “The President’s Riot at New Orleans,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, Sept. 6, 1866, p. 2.
“best abused, best hated man in the House”: Ellis, The Sights and Secrets in the National Capital, p. 163.
“there always seemed”: Catton, Terrible Swift Sword, p. 359.
“as if it had been a bottle, strong corked”: see Trefousse, Ben Butler, p. 183.
“He was no pretender and no hypocrite.”: James Wilson, The Life of Charles A. Dana, p. 484.
The crowd laughed: see Macrae, The Americans at Home, pp. 163–164.
“A collision will come”: BB to J. W. Shaffer, April 10, 1866, LC.
“We will not…The war did not end with the surrender of Lee”: “Impeachment—Speech of Butler at the Brooklyn Academy of Music,” New-York Tribune, Nov. 26, 1866, pp. 1, 8.
“Come back to the true principles”: “Speech By General Butler,” The Wooster Republican, Sept. 6, 1866, p. 2.
“The massacre at New Orleans will open many eyes,”: George William Curtis to William M. Grosvenor, Aug 4, 1866, Butler.
“If the elections”: Rutherford B. Hayes to Guy M. Bryan, Oct. 1, 1866, in The Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, vol. 2, p. 33.
“The events at New Orleans &c. & Mr. Johnson’s exhibition”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Charles Eliot Norton, Sept. 12, 1866, Houghton.
CHAPTER TWELVE: TENURE OF OFFICE
“I charge him with a usurpation”: CG 39: 2, Jan. 7, 1867, p. 320. See also, “Our Washington Correspondence,” Georgia Weekly Telegraph, Jan. 21, 1867, p. 1.
he was acting rashly: see HVNB, “Letter from Washington,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, Jan. 8, 1867, p. 1.
The Judiciary Committee included James F. Wilson of Iowa (chair); George Boutwell of Massachusetts; Burton C. Cook of Illinois; William Lawrence of Ohio; Daniel Morris of New York; Francis Thomas of Maryland; Thomas Williams of Pennsylvania; Frederick E. Woodbridge of Vermont (all Republicans); and Andrew J. Rogers of New Jersey, a Democrat.
Unsettled by the whole business: on burying the impeachment, see Bigelow diary, Feb. 28, 1867, NYPL.
“and assumed a positon that should have been held”: Poore, Perley’s Recollections of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis, vol. 2, p. 202.
Known by those who disliked him: see “The Character of the Man Who Moves for the Impeachment of the President,” [Columbus] Crisis, Jan. 23, 1867, p. 414.
“If we could succeed in an impeachment”: JG to Burke Aaron Hinsdale, January 1, 1867, in Life and Letters, ed. Smith, vol. 1, p. 396.
“rascally virtue, called discretion,”: quoted in Arnett, Souvenir of the Afro-American League, p. 564.
“nut with an idée fixe”: C. Vann Woodward, “The Other Impeachment,” New York Times Magazine, Aug. 11, 1974, p. 28; “an occult mixture”: McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, p. 492.
Washington reporter for The Independent, Mary Clemmer Ames, said: see M.C.A., “A Woman in Washington,” May 10, 1866, The Independent, p. 1.
“Yet it has happened to him”: quoted in Arnett, ed. Souvenir of the Afro-American League, p. 7.
“chill and gloom…children”: Ibid., p. 883. See also Horowitz, The Great Impeacher, p. 169.
So Ashley’s resolution: The Judiciary Committee was chaired by Representative James F. Wilson of Iowa, a moderate man and well-respected lawyer who’d been adamant about abolishing slavery but was not at all convinced about impeachment.
“Hardly a speech is made,”: clipping from “The Corporal,” Philadelphia Press, Jan. [indecipherable] 1867, Willard Saxton papers, Yale.
“The Radicals are holding the threat”: John Nugent to Samuel L. M. Barlow, January 10, 1867, Barlow papers, Huntington.
“cross as a cinnamon bear”: John Nugent to Samuel L. M. Barlow, January 10, 1867, Barlow papers, Huntington.
“It would be just as easy”: quoted in “License to Murder,” New-York Tribune, Dec. 24, 1866, p. 4.
“the great weight of its influence”: “Trials by Military Commissions—The Supreme Court Decision,” New York Times, Jan. 3, 1867, p. 4.
“This excels in brutality the Watson”: A. F. Higgs to Elihu Wasbhurne, Dec. 27, 1866.
“Anyone who hopes”: January 26, 1867, Clemenceau, American Reconstruction, pp. 83–84.
“I say nothing…as I should be one of his judges,”: CS to Anna Cabot Lodge, Dec. 16, 1866, Letters, vol. 2, ed. Palmer, p. 386.
“We are having pretty serious times here,”: WW to his mother, Jan. 15, 1867, in Whitman, Correspondence, vol. 1, ed. Miller, p. 307.
Had he perpetrated any overt act against Congress: see “The Impeachment of President Johnson,” Littell’s Living Age, Nov 17, 1866, pp. 440–41.
“There is never a lack of legal texts any more than of religious texts,”: Clemenceau, American Reconstruction, Jan. 5, 1867, p. 75.
“The long haired men and cadaverous females”: Benjamin Truman to AJ, Oct. 4, 1866, PAJ 11: p. 307.
shouldn’t deplorable, bigoted, or reckless acts: see Berger: Impeachment, and also Roberts, “The Law of Impeachment in Stuart England: A Reply to Raoul Berger,” p. 1419.
“If with the negro”: Frederick Douglass, “Reconstruction,” p. 765.
“The folly of continuing”: Allen Pierse to AJ, Nov. 21, 1866, PAJ 11: 471.
“I think you will agree”: William B. Phillips to AJ, Nov. 8, 1866, PAJ 11: 439.
“The tendency”: Simeon M. Johnson to AJ, Nov. 18, 1866, PAJ 11: 469.
“When I told him”: Samuel Cox to Manton Marble, nd [Monday], LC.
radical among the Radical: see for instance, “South Carolina: The President Advises the Southern States to Reject the Constitutions Amendment,” New York Times, Dec. 27, 1866, p. 4; “The Reported Commissioner from South Carolina to Washington,” Augusta Chronicle, Dec. 27, 1866, p. 3; “Colonel T. C. Weatherly,” Boston Advertiser, Jan. 23, 1867, p. 2.
“change the whole character of our Government,”: AJ to Lewis E. Parsons, Jan. 17, 1867, PAJ 11: 611.
“They have deliberated”: CG 39: 2, Feb. 8, 1867, p. 1104.
“newspaper gossip,” “rumors,” “negro quarrels”: Feb. 15, 1867, Welles, Diary, vol. 2, p. 42.
“made plain”: Sheridan, Personal Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 242.
“He is refractory and lavishes”: Nov. 26, 1866, Strong, The Diary of George Templeton Strong, vol. 4, p. 114.
Stanton had moved: see Boutwell, Reminiscences, vol. 2, p. 108.
“blush for the honor of the American name,”: John Price to AJ, Oct. 6, 1866, PAJ 11: 319–20.
“Arrest the traitors.”: Thomas Powell to AJ, Jan. 5, 1867, PAJ 11: 588.
“They don’t cut throats any longer here,”: Bigelow, Retrospections, vol. 4, March 6, 1867, p. 88.
“There are men in the House”: Henry Dawes to Electa Dawes, Dec. 7, 1866, LC.
“few of our side call on him,”: Henry Dawes to his daughter, Dec. 8, 1866, LC.
“there was a war still being waged”: CG 39, 2, Jan. 18, 1867, p. 542.
“Johnson has resigned himself to drunkenness”: March 14, 1867, in The Union on Trial, ed. Phillips and Jason Pendleton, p. 270.
“never told the truth, even by accident”: Testimony Taken Before the House Judiciary Committee, p. 111. But soon there was a caricature: J. A. McKean to Elihu Washburne, May 30, 1866, LC.
Newly seated: The Committee now included Johnson C. Churchill of New York (Republican) and Charles Eldridge of Wisconsin and Samuel S. Marshall of Illinois, who replaced Cook, Morris, and Rogers.
“shrewd, sinuous, tricky lawyer”: Feb. 8, 1868, Welles, Diary, vol. 2, p. 274.
“When he puts his hand on the wheel”: Briggs, The Olivia Letters, March 27, 1867, p. 36. On Bingham, see also Brooks, Washington in Lincoln’s Time, p. 112; Nevins, Hamilton Fish.
Previously an anti-slavery Whig: see Magliocca, American Founding Son, p. 136.
“I did all I could, the best I could”: CG
, 40: 1, March 21, 1863, p. 263.
“He can comfort”: Briggs, March 26, 1867, The Olivia Letters, p. 36.
“I was led on by a sincere desire”: “A Remarkable Lecture! John Surratt Reveals His Story,” Washington Evening Star, Dec. 7, 1870, quoted in Hatch, John Surratt, pp. 173–74.
Back in Washington: see January 25, 1867, and Feb. 19, 1867, Browning, The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, vol. 2, pp. 126, 131.
George Boutwell: see CG 39, 2, Dec. 4, 1866, pp. 12–13.
“tried with Surratt for conniving at the attempt upon his own life,”: Bigelow, Retrospections of an Active Life, vol. 4, March 6, 1867, p. 48.
“there is much talk about impeachment”: WW to his mother, March 5, 1867, Correspondence, ed. Miller, p. 316; “growled and thundered”: Briggs, March 27, 1867, The Olivia Letters, p. 34.
“if nothing is done to give it new life,”: Henry Dawes to Electa Dawes, March 8, 1867, LC.
“I have had a son killed”: Colonel W. G. Moore, March 1867, typescript of diary, LC, p. 33.
He presented: see M.C.A., “A Woman’s Letter from Washington,” Independent, May 9, 1867, p. 1.
“The President’s cook”: “Miscellaneous Paragraphs,” quoted in the Daily Albany Argus, April 8, 1867, p. 2.
“to sit all summer”: Briggs, March 27, 1867, The Olivia Letters, p. 34.
“fussy, unnecessary and absurd”: “The Presidency: The Race for the Radical Nomination,” New York Herald, July 8, 1867, p. 6.
“These innumerable eggs”: “Speech on the Impeachment of the President,” Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, vol. 2, pp. 446–47.
“making a mere pretense of prosecuting impeachment,”: quoted in DeWitt, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, p. 223.
The revolutionary farce is over, the shameful crusade ended: see “Cabinet Decision on the Powers of 787. Commanders—New Obstacles to Reconstruction,” New York Herald, June 15, 1867, p. 6.
“Amid whatever clouds,”: Walt Whitman, “Democracy,” Galaxy, Dec. 1867, p. 930, 933. Whitman read Carlyle’s essay the previous August and began composing his response then.