The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation

by Brenda Wineapple

In Federalist 65, Alexander Hamilton clarified—sort of: a high crime is an abuse of executive authority, proceeding from “an abuse or violation of some public trust.”

“There is no such thing as reconstruction,” he added. “These States have not gone out of the Union, therefore reconstruction is unnecessary. I do not mean to treat them as inchoate States, but merely as existing under a temporary suspension of their government, provided always they [now] elect loyal men.”

in the end, he did veto both the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Bill.

Johnson said that he, as President, would reject all legislation concerning the freedmen until representatives from these former rebel states were admitted to Congress. That last statement seemed to be his major point. He wanted to force Congress to do his bidding—and in fact he was denying the legitimacy of a Congress that refused to embrace, with virtually no questions asked, the representatives of the former Confederacy.

The South, as a bloc, would have more than twenty more congressional seats and electoral votes. And so Northern Republicans continued to worry that if blacks were denied the vote, a South of former rebels would surely rise again, join with Northern Democrats, and control the legislature just as they had before the war, endangering the rights of black men and women.

“There is never a lack of legal texts any more than of religious texts, when men seek to stifle their consciences,” Georges Clemenceau commented with more than a touch of acerbity.

The Radicals and the more moderate Republicans decided they must act. Johnson had to be curtailed, particularly if he attempted to remove those who dared to disagree. Congress therefore drafted a bill requiring the President to secure the approval of the Senate before firing or suspending any federal officer, including members of the cabinet, who’d been confirmed by the Senate. This would become the contentious Tenure of Office Act—so contentious, in fact, that it was finally and fully repealed, but not until 1887.

the Military (or First) Reconstruction Act. The act placed ten formerly seceded states into five temporary military districts. (Tennessee was excepted since it had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.) Each of these five districts might contain only one state, as was the case of the First Military District, which included Virginia; or they might cover several states, as was the case of the Third Military District, which included Georgia, Alabama, and Florida.

The Reconstruction Act also outlined the qualifications for a state’s readmission to Congress. The five military commanders were to oversee elections in the several states they superintended. Any adult male citizen, regardless of race or color, who had resided in his state for at least one year and had not previously been disqualified by felony or because of his participation in the rebellion was eligible to vote for delegates to the state’s constitutional convention. These chosen delegates would then draft a new state constitution, to be ratified by the voters of that state, again regardless of his race or color; the new constitution was required to grant voting rights, in all future elections, to black men. Then, after ratification of the new constitution, the state could elect a governor and legislators to replace the governments Johnson had established.

newly elected representatives and senators would be admitted into Congress—provided too that the state had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, conferring citizenship on black men and women and guaranteeing their civil rights.

But as John Sherman explained to his brother, the act left the actual machinery of voting to the individual states.

Congress again overrode Johnson’s veto. “He is a nullity & will be treated as such,” Charles Sumner said.

passed a Second Reconstruction Act to fix what had been missing in the first: the actual supervision of elections. The new bill authorized the military to register eligible voters, black and white, and to schedule elections as well as convene conventions, since intransigent white Southerners had been reluctant to do so.

The rider also specified that General Grant could not be dismissed without the consent of the Senate.

Per Johnson’s instructions, Stanbery announced in early June that no military commander had the right to remove any civil office-holder. And since the military possessed neither the education nor the training for the delicate task of interpreting the law, the military was entitled to exercise only a very limited authority in the districts. The civil governments of the South must stand; their state governments alone could enforce the Civil Rights Act—not ignorant military commanders, as Stanbery alluded to the district generals, deliberately insulting them. Stanbery also claimed that former rebels should be able to vote even if they’d participated in or aided the rebellion.

members swiftly passed a Third Reconstruction Act to obstruct the President’s course by giving to the general of the army—namely, General Ulysses S. Grant—complete authority over the execution of congressional reconstruction; it also gave full authority to the district commanders, should they choose to fire civil officers; and it allocated over a million and a half dollars to defray expenses. In addition, the House voted its thanks to General Sheridan as well as to the other military commanders in the districts. The President of course promptly vetoed the Third Reconstruction Act, and Congress just as promptly overturned his veto.

Grant had the backing of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who had formally stated that he would obey the Reconstruction Acts passed by Congress, and he would protect Grant and the army.

Together, Ulysses S. Grant and Edwin Stanton controlled the military, which Congress had empowered to curb—if not completely undercut—Johnson’s policy in the South, a policy that had been undermining white Union loyalists, allowing the murder of black men and women, and reviving state militias; it was a policy that, as they saw it, effectively restored the antebellum aristocracy.

With the end of the Civil War, the line separating the federal government and the unbridled business community had grown progressively blurrier.

Whatever their internal rifts, in the fall of 1867 Democrats had concocted a winning brew, compounded of anger over Republican monetary policy—and racial prejudice. Republicans in Congress recognized the brew’s potency, and soon after the House reconvened in the fall, it forbade Treasury Secretary McCulloch from taking more greenbacks out of circulation.

Grant supporters, however, were highly pleased with the results of the state elections. Voters were evidently drifting away from Radical Republicans, and Grant could thus step into the breach and save Republicans from their more fanatical selves.

House Republican John Bingham didn’t listen to Wendell Phillips. He and his colleague Elihu Washburne both wanted General Grant elected President, impeachment off the table, the party united, and Radical Republicans run out of town. They assumed that if the House passed articles of impeachment, Grant would be lost, for they believed that the impeachers wanted to put the radical Senator Benjamin Wade in the White House, and they weren’t entirely wrong.

Johnson declared that the recent Reconstruction Acts of Congress needed to be repealed, for they unconstitutionally sanctioned the vengeance being wreaked upon all (white) classes, sects, parties, and communities. And although the Reconstruction Acts were only provisional measures, Johnson continued, they effectively “enslaved” the states. Think of the implications of those acts, Johnson added: black people permitted to “rule the white race, make and administer State laws, elect Presidents and members of Congress, and shape to a greater or lesser extent the future destiny of the whole country. Would such a trust and power be safe in such hands?” Andrew Johnson answered his own question. “Negros have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people,” he announced. If left “to their own devices, they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism.”

Then, remarkably, Johnson said he had decided against using the armed forces to resist Congress, for he didn’t want to trigger another civil war.

Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, no. 65, where Hamilton said that impeachment should result from the misconduct of public men or abuse of the public trust. That

Did Mr. Boutwell really intend to plant a government on the “shifting fortunes of political parties,” Wilson asked.

if Johnson’s motives were patriotic but his actions wicked, shouldn’t he be held accountable for those actions? And who could really know his motives anyway? Or, even if you could, did his motives offer comfort or compensation, never mind freedom, to the people who’d been injured by those actions? But with his argument, Wilson had held out to Republicans, particularly moderates, a thin reed of good intentions, should they choose to seize it to justify their refusal to impeach.

the House of Representatives voted against the impeachment resolution, 108 to 57.

VINDICATED, JOHNSON LET loose, just as Wendell Phillips had predicted. He dismissed another of the five military commanders, General John Pope, who supervised the Third Military District

Andrew Johnson, acting as one of the chief architects of his own impeachment, was tangling with Ulysses S. Grant and precipitating a crisis that he didn’t know how to resolve or, more to the point, that he didn’t want to fix.

FOR THE REST of January, a transfixed country read Grant’s and Johnson’s two very different accounts of their discussion about Stanton’s job. The two most prominent men in the country, each politically motivated, were publicly quarreling over issues that could change the course of the entire nation.

With Johnson and Grant engaged in a public spat, some Republicans previously skeptical about Grant’s loyalty to the party rushed to his side. Radical Republicans kept their distance.

Johnson ordered General Grant not to recognize Stanton’s authority as war secretary and forbade Grant from following any orders to the army that Stanton might issue. The formerly imperturbable Grant refused. The news was stunning. The President of the United States had not only impugned the character of the country’s biggest war hero but was asking him to break the law: to disobey the Tenure of Office Act, which protected Stanton’s position as war secretary.

The public quarrel breathed momentary life into a moribund impeachment attempt, or at least into Thaddeus Stevens who, clearly unwell, had to support himself by holding on to the table when he stood. His voice fairly strong, he asked the Committee on Reconstruction—he was its chair—to take control of impeachment proceedings by opening its own investigation. Johnson’s recommendation to Grant that he disobey the Tenure of Office law constituted a conspiracy to obstruct justice, Stevens insisted. And Johnson had actually instructed Grant to disregard Secretary Stanton’s orders. After a long session, Stevens’ resolution went to a subcommittee, but it never moved out of the committee to the larger House.

Chase had already seized the moment by writing to the Senate, saying that in case of a tie, he wanted to be able to cast a vote. (Since he was not a member of the Senate, technically he should not be allowed to vote.) He wished to rule on the admissibility of evidence—subject to the vote of the Senate—and on the reliability of witnesses. These stipulations afforded him leverage over the Senate, which he then argued should be organized as a court of law during impeachment proceedings.

Radical Republicans were incensed by what they perceived as judicial interference. They believed Chase intended to embarrass the Senate or, more chillingly, derail the impeachment process.

Perennially in pursuit of the presidency for himself, Chase made no secret of his views, although he prided himself on his fairness.

His campaign to organize the Senate as a legal court was largely successful. That meant Chase might cast a vote in case of tie, decide legal disputes, and determine the admissibility of evidence.

Basically, Chase had won a significant victory. The trial of the President conducted mostly as if it were a legal proceeding slanted the definition of impeachable offense toward a breach of law and away from questions of fitness, folly, or the autocratic abuse of power. The tide was already turning.

Indiana Democrat Thomas Hendricks objected to Benjamin Wade’s swearing-in. As president pro tempore of the Senate, Wade would enter the White House if Johnson was convicted; Hendricks argued that Wade should therefore not be allowed to vote: the conflict of interest was obvious.

Johnson’s friend, the journalist Joseph McCullagh, told the President that the impeachment trial would be more about blocking Wade than about banishing Johnson.

On and on the debate raged, foreshadowing what was to come, but on Friday, March 6, for reasons unknown, or because a deal had been made, Thomas Hendricks withdrew his objection, and Benjamin Wade took the oath with the other senators. This was a victory for Radical Republicans and for Wade, it seemed. The Senate still conceived of itself as a legislative body with two representatives from every state. But at the same time, according to Salmon Chase, the Senate was reconstituted as a judicial court of impeachment, whatever that was. It was confusing. Yet moderate Republicans were sure of one thing: they didn’t want an old-time abolitionist and inflationary rabble-rouser to emerge as top dog.

Ottilie Assing, the German-Jewish journalist and intimate friend of Frederick Douglass.

Taken together, the tenth and eleventh articles accused Johnson of betraying the public trust—not just stepping on a statute.

argument against President Johnson and, more to the point, he outlined for the court and thus for the public a definition of impeachable offenses, starting with a definition of an impeachable misdemeanor. An impeachable misdemeanor might be an act that subverted the principles of government, such as one that violated the Constitution or that flouted an official oath or duty or law; it could be an act that abused or usurped power.

In an impeachment trial, the managers need only offer a preponderance of evidence to prove guilt.

the managers and the chief justice faced off about Chase’s role as presiding judge.

Chase held his ground: the chief justice should decide questions of evidence, although the Senate could vote to refute him. Butler replied that if Chase had his way, the hands of the managers were tied.

The precedents both in England and in the United States suggested that the presiding officer, even when a member of the deciding body, had no more rights than anyone else. And if he was not a member of the body, as Chase was not since he wasn’t a senator, he could merely submit the question to the larger body, not decide it.

“Mr. Chase made a little coup d’état,” Storey said. “As soon as the vote was handed him to read he said, ‘On the question the ayes are twenty-five, and the nays are twenty-five. The Chief Justice Votes “Aye,” and the question is decided in the affirmative,’ and immediately left the Chair and the Chamber,