THE ADMINISTRATION OF ANDREW JOHNSON--RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT.
On the evening of April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated
at Ford's theater in the city of Washington. The universal grief was
fitly described by Disraeli, who said, in the British Commons, that the
character of the victim and the circumstances of his death took the
event "out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy;
it touched the heart of nations and appealed to the domestic sentiment
of mankind." Its effect upon the American people was profound, and it
deepened vastly the public appreciation of the essential barbarity of
the prejudices, passions and ambitions which had plunged the republic
into civil war.
The members of the Committee on the Conduct of the War returned on
the evening of this crime from Richmond, having made an unsuccessful
attempt to visit North Carolina for the purpose of taking testimony in
regard to the Fort Fisher expedition. On the following morning they
met, and addressed a formal note to Andrew Johnson, who had, while a
Senator, served upon that committee, expressing the wish of his "old
associates" to call upon him and acquaint him with "many things which
they had seen and heard at Richmond." They were promptly admitted to
his apartments at the Kirkwood House, and were among the first to talk
freely with the man who had been so tragically made President of the
newly-restored Union. Mr. Johnson had just been sworn into office by
Chief Justice Chase in the presence of some of the Cabinet and a few
Congressmen, and naturally the conversation chiefly turned upon the
pursuit of the assassins, and the proper punishment of the men who
had inspired or countenanced this crime, as well as of its actual
committers. As a sequel of this conference, an important meeting was
held on the following day (Sunday, April 16, 1865) in the President's
rooms. By appointment Senators Chandler and Wade and John Covode (an
original member of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, then a
contestant for a seat in the House) called upon Mr. Johnson, and
proceeded to consider with him what policy should be pursued toward
the chiefs of the conquered rebellion. They believed that the public
interest required that examples should be made of a few of the more
guilty of the Southern traitors, and urged such a course upon the
President. They found him--confronted as he was with the danger of
assassination, and recollecting his own sufferings as a Southern
Unionist--eager for measures of extreme rigor, and were compelled at
the outset to seek to moderate a violence of intention on his part,
which was certain to defeat the aim they were anxious to secure,
namely: that of impressing the public with a sense of the justice as
well as the severity of the punishment of deliberate and inexcusable
treason. Andrew Johnson's disposition was to give to the contemplated
proceedings rather a revengeful than a sternly retributive complexion.
The relations of Mr. Chandler, Mr. Wade and Mr. Covode with their
former fellow-committeeman were then exceedingly intimate, and they
labored to restrain his vehemence and to direct his determination into
a channel of action which should be just and not passionate, and should
thus yield wholesome influences. It had been suggested that Davis
and other fugitive rebels should be allowed to escape to Mexico or
Europe, and the question of their punishment thus evaded; this plan was
promptly condemned by all the participants in the conference, and there
was a general agreement that the leaders of the rebellion should be
arrested as rapidly as possible and held to answer for their offenses.
The next question that arose related to the best method of procedure
after these men had been captured, and then it was decided than Gen.
Benjamin F. Butler should be sent for to give his advice as a lawyer.
Mr. Covode undertook this errand and soon returned with him. Mr.
Chandler then stated to General Butler the subject of the conference,
and the President added that he was anxious to make a historical
example of the leading traitors, for its moral effect upon the future,
and took exceedingly extreme ground on this point, much more so than
the other gentlemen were willing to approve. All of those present
expressed their opinions in turn, after Mr. Johnson had concluded, and
all agreed upon one point, namely: that in the case of the seizure of
Jefferson Davis he should be summarily punished by death. Mr. Chandler
remarked, with emphasis:
"You have only to hang a few of these traitors and all will be peace
and quiet in the South. A few men have done the mischief, and the
masses of the people were misled by them. They have put the country
in great peril to gratify their political ambition and they ought to
suffer the penalty of treason as a warning to all men hereafter."
To this Andrew Johnson replied that Mr. Chandler could not know the
full enormity of the crime Davis and his associates had committed,
that Northern men could never realize the sufferings the rebellion had
brought upon the loyal people of the South, and that no punishment
could be too severe. He added that he was determined that a precedent
should be established that would be forever a terror to such men as had
conspired to overthrow the government.
After some further conversation, the President asked General Butler
for his professional opinion, as to whether Davis, Benjamin, Floyd,
Wigfall, and the other civil officers of the Confederacy, could be
tried by a military commission. General Butler replied that if they
could be arrested in the insurrectionary States--in any locality
under military control and where no civil authority existed or was
recognized--they could be arraigned before such a tribunal, but a court
of this character would have no jurisdiction if the criminals should
get upon foreign soil, or, before being apprehended, reach any district
where the civil law was in force. Mr. Chandler then urged that Davis
should, by all means, be secured before he had a chance to leave the
seceded States; and inquired as to the situation of the troops in the
South and the probability of their defeating an attempt by Davis to
fly through Mexico, or by boat on the Gulf. President Johnson replied
that no way was open for his escape, but that he would be captured,
dead or alive. The supposition that Davis was implicated in the
assassination plot was then discussed with some difference of opinion,
and finally the President asked General Butler to indicate a plan for
the prosecution and punishment of Davis and his associates, for the use
of the government. General Butler consented and the conference ended.
With the preparation of the memorandum thus requested, General Butler
occupied almost his entire time for several weeks, investigating
precedents, and examining authorities with the utmost thoroughness.
During this work he was repeatedly in consultation with Mr. Chandler,
who saw all of his notes and made many suggestions; before its
completion, Davis had been captured and sent to Fortress Monroe.
General Butler's plan was submitted to President Johnson in the latter
part of May, 1865. It was long and elaborate, was based upon an
exhaustive examination of the history of all military tribunals, and
set forth in substance these propositions:
1. That Davis could be tried by a military commission, having been
captured while in rebellion in a locality where no lawful civil
authority existed. This tribunal could sit at Fortress Monroe, where
Davis was a prisoner, as that was still within the military lines.
2. That this commission should be composed of the thirteen officers
of the highest rank in the army; this provision would have made it
consist of Lieut.-Gen. U. S. Grant; Major-Generals H. W. Halleck, W.
T. Sherman, George G. Meade, Philip H. Sheridan, George H. Thomas, and
Brigadier-Generals Irwin McDowell, Wm. S. Rosecrans, Philip St. George
Cooke, John Pope, Joseph Hooker, W. S. Hancock, and John M. Schofield.
3. That in case of conviction, before the sentence should be executed,
Davis should be allowed an opportunity to appeal to the Supreme Court
of the United States; this would silence criticism, secure Davis all
his legal rights, and establish a precedent which might stand for all
time.
4. That the only doubt that existed as to the conviction of Davis
was to be found in the question of the jurisdiction of the military
commission.
5. That the prosecution should hold Davis's assumption of military
authority against the United States as the overt act of treason, and
that his military orders, his commissions of officers, his official
announcements of himself as "commander-in-chief of the military and
naval forces of the Confederate States," his official reviews of
troops, the official reports made to him by commanders of armies in
rebellion, should be proven to establish the case.
6. That the record of the oaths taken by him as an officer in the
United States army, as a Senator, and as Secretary of War, should be
shown with evidence that he had violated them.
7. That the various acts of cruelty to prisoners of war committed
by his orders should be proven; other minor counts could also be
introduced in the indictment to secure an accumulation of charges.
General Butler's memorandum further set forth that the prosecution
should expect to be met by the defense:
1. With the question of jurisdiction.
2. With an attempt to prove the right of secession.
3. With the claim that the duty of allegiance to a state was superior
to the duty of allegiance to the general government.
4. With the claim that the acts of which Davis was accused were
performed by him as the head of a _de facto_ government, to which
office he had been elected under forms of law.
5. With the further point that the recognition of this _de facto_
government by the United States in the exchange of prisoners, in the
acceptance of terms of surrender, in the observance of flags of truce,
and in correspondence of various kinds, amounted to such a recognition
of the existence of a government with which it was at war, as must
prevent the United States from claiming that participation therein was
treason.
These were the chief points which General Butler thought the defense
would set up, and in his brief he grouped a powerful array of
precedents and decisions upon which the prosecution could rest its
case and meet these objections. During the early stages of this work,
Mr. Chandler, General Butler and others, who firmly held that stern
punishment should be meted out to a few conspicuous rebels--not in a
spirit of vengeance, but from a belief that salutary results would
follow if it should be established as a historical fact that in the
United States treason is a high crime whose penalty is death--were
constantly anxious lest the President should by some violent act or
word destroy the moral effect of their position. In public he said
repeatedly at this time that "the penalties of the law must be in a
stern and inflexible manner executed upon conscious, intelligent and
influential traitors," but his private utterances far outstripped
this language, and were often scarcely less than bloodthirsty. Mr.
Chandler, on one occasion, came away from the White House greatly
disturbed by Mr. Johnson's disposition to treat this subject with mere
anger, and characteristically said to Senator Wade and Mr. Hamlin,
"Johnson has the nightmare, and it is important that he should be
watched." General Butler's memorandum Mr. Chandler heartily approved
as clear in scope, just in spirit, and certain to prove effective in
operation, but, by the time it was fully completed, a great change
had taken place in the disposition of the President. In April he was
in favor of hanging every body; in June he was opposed to hanging
any one. He finally ignored entirely the memorandum which General
Butler had drawn up at his request, and decided that Davis should be
tried by the civil authorities at Richmond, where his crimes had been
committed. As a result the arch-rebel was allowed to remain in prison
at Fortress Monroe for nearly two years, because of the lack of a
civil court competent to take jurisdiction of his case. In 1866 he was
indicted and arraigned, and in 1867 was admitted to bail; a year later
a _nolle prosequi_ was entered, and the case against him dismissed.
Before this matter had reached its second stage even, Mr. Chandler had
become convinced that Andrew Johnson had determined to desert the party
which had elevated him to the vice-presidency, and with that knowledge
ceased to act as his adviser and became one of the most active of his
political enemies. The leniency of the course finally pursued toward
Davis Mr. Chandler then and afterward regarded as a grave public
mistake, and believed that the failure to enforce the death penalty
where it was so thoroughly deserved was exceedingly unfortunate in its
influence upon popular opinion, and did more than any other one cause
to encourage the disloyal classes of the South in their plans for
ultimately recapturing the political supremacy they had forfeited by
rebellion.
Precisely the causes which led Andrew Johnson so quickly back into
close fellowship with the men whom he had regarded as his inveterate
enemies will never be known. It is probable that originally they
were slight, but his temperament rapidly widened disagreement into
irreconcilable hostility. His maudlin speech on Inauguration-day so
incensed many of his supporters that the Republican senators, at a
formal gathering, actually considered a proposition (urged by Mr.
Sumner) to request him to resign the office he had disgraced. The
conference decided against such a step, but Mr. Johnson heard of the
movement, and regarded those who approved it with much bitterness;
his hatred of them undoubtedly fed his growing dislike for the party
of which they were influential leaders. Again, he was a thorough
representative of the "poor whites" of the South. He felt their
jealousy of the planting aristocracy which monopolized political power
in his section, and this made him such a vigorous opponent of the
secession conspiracy which that oligarchy organized and led. But he
also shared in the prejudice of his own class against the negroes,
and, when he saw the disposition of the Republicans to accord to the
freedmen equal rights and privileges before the law, he refused to
join in that movement and set doggedly about defeating such plans.
Precisely how great Mr. Seward's influence over him was at this time
is not clear, but it is certain that the change in his attitude toward
Republicanism was simultaneous with the slow recovery of his Secretary
of State from the blows of Payne's dagger. His combative obstinacy also
made him fiercely resent the vigorous criticisms which his "policy"
of reconstruction invited when first announced; Congress did not meet
for months after his accession to the presidency, and its leaders were
not in position to check his course, either by organized remonstrance
or by legislative interposition; the rebels who had been denouncing
him savagely were prompt to flatter his vanity and to offer promises
of support; and, as a result, when the Thirty-ninth Congress met on
December 4, 1865, the break between the President and the Republican
party had passed beyond mending. Mr. Johnson entered at once upon
that shameful course, which included the betrayal of those who had
trusted him and the disgrace of his high office by lamentable public
exhibitions of passion and boorishness, and which led to great and
durable public injury by trebling the difficulties surrounding the
delicate and important work of reconstructing the "Confederacy." Mr.
Chandler's distrust of the President commenced with his change of tone
in regard to the punishment of treason and with the first manifestation
of his intention to assume full control of reconstruction and to
practically restore the rebels to power in the subdued States. They
had one stormy interview at the White House, in which Mr. Chandler,
after touching upon the implicit character of his confidence in the
President during their senatorial service, denounced his new course as
a violation of his sacred pledges and a base surrender to traitors, and
left him indignantly and forever. From that time he regarded Andrew
Johnson as a public enemy, whose opportunities for evil were to be
lessened by every possible lawful restriction. He did not oppose the
efforts made by his more hopeful associates in December, 1865, to
re-establish harmony between the Capitol and the White House, but he
predicted their failure. All the legislation which diminished Johnson's
power for harm he ardently supported. The bills to admit Nebraska and
Colorado (the Colorado bill failed at this time) he was especially
active in pushing, from a belief that it was important to increase the
Republican ascendency in the Senate while there was an uncertainty as
to how much strength the "Johnson men" proper (Senators Doolittle,
Dixon, Norton, and Cowan) might develop. It was largely through Mr.
Chandler's untiring exertions, also, that the Fortieth Senate elected
Benjamin F. Wade as its President, and thus made him the acting
Vice-President of the United States, a position of the very highest
responsibility in the then critical state of national affairs.
Mr. Chandler aided in shaping and passing the reconstruction measures
of 1866-'67-'68, not for the reason that they precisely embodied his
ideas of the true method to be pursued, but because they presented a
plan upon which the Republicans could be united, which was practicable,
and which promised to reorganize the Southern States on the basis of
the supremacy of the loyal elements in their population. When Andrew
Johnson took the first step in unfolding his "policy" (by his general
amnesty proclamation and by the appointment of a provisional governor
for North Carolina, both acts bearing the date of May 29, 1865) the
"Confederacy" had ceased to exist, its chieftain was a captive, its
armies were prisoners of war on parole, its capacity for resistance had
been consumed in the furnace of battle, but its bitterness still glowed
and the prejudices and ambitions which gave it being were undestroyed.
The amnesty proclamation relieved, with a few exceptions, those who
bore arms against the government and the most virulent supporters of
rebellion who remained at home from all pains and penalties on the sole
condition that they should subscribe to an oath of future loyalty.
The provisional government proclamations permitted all persons thus
amnestied, who were voters according to laws of the States previous
to the rebellion, to elect delegates to conventions to amend the
local constitutions and restore the States to their "constitutional
relations with the federal government." By this process the loyal
colored men of the South were denied the right to participate in the
work of reconstruction and the entire machinery of reorganization was
placed in the control of men whose hands were yet red with Union blood.
Their discretion was only hampered by three conditions, compliance
with which was made essential to the presidential approval of their
work. They were required to annul the secession ordinances, to formally
recognize the abolition of slavery, and to repudiate all debts created
to promote rebellion. Beyond this, the disloyal classes of the South
were left in undisputed mastery of the situation. The control of the
insurgent States, and of the lives and fortunes of the loyalists,
white and black, were surrendered absolutely to the men who but a few
weeks before had been wrecked in the catastrophe which overwhelmed the
rebellion. That they were prompt to improve this unexpected, undeserved
and mistaken leniency need not be said. Their use of their new power
was both presumptuous and intolerant. In elections, which proscribed
Union men as unworthy of trust, conventions were chosen which accepted
ungraciously the mere fact of emancipation, and which repudiated
the rebel debts only under repeated presidential compulsion. State
governments were then organized, which placed men whose disloyalty had
been conspicuous in responsible positions, and which sent unamnestied
leaders of the rebellion in the field and in council to Washington as
claimants of Congressional seats. The State legislation which followed
embodied in shameful laws the unquenched diabolism of the slave power.
In statutory phraseology these enactments declared, "politically and
socially this is a white man's government," and, impudently asserting
that Congress was without any power over the matter, the men who had,
in form, admitted the death of slavery proceeded to establish peonage
in its stead. No body of laws adopted by any civilized nation in
this century has equaled in studied injustice and cruelty those by
which the "Johnson governments" of 1865 and 1866 sought to prevent
the freedmen from rising from the level of admitted and hopeless
inferiority, and to convince the blacks that in ceasing to be slaves
they had only become serfs. Colored people were denied the right to
acquire or dispose of public property. It was made a crime for a negro
to enter a plantation without the consent of its owner or agent.
Freedmen were declared vagrants, and punished as such for preaching
the gospel without a license from some regularly organized church.
Colored men failing to pay capitation tax were declared vagrants and
the sale of their services was permitted as a penalty. Black persons
were prohibited from renting or leasing lands except in incorporated
towns or villages. Their owning or bearing arms was declared to be a
violation of the peace. For a negro to break a labor contract was made
an offense punishable by imprisonment. Colored laborers on farms were
prohibited from selling poultry or farm products, and it was made a
misdemeanor to purchase from them. This class was also denied the right
of forming part of the militia, and it was made an offense for any
freedman to enter a religious or other assembly of whites, or go with
them into any rail car or public conveyance. White persons "usually
associating themselves with freedmen, free negroes, or mulattoes"
were also declared to be vagrants in the eye of the law. The colored
people were prohibited from practicing any art, trade or business
except husbandry, without special license from the courts. And most
infamous of all were the statutes for the compulsory apprenticeship
of colored children with or without the consent of parents, which
practically re-established over the next generation of the freed people
slavery with the whipping-post and overseer's lash. One State by joint
resolution tendered thanks to Jefferson Davis "for the noble and
patriotic manner in which he conducted the affairs of _our_ government
while President of the Confederacy," and other resolutions were adopted
declaring that "nothing more is required for the restoration of law
and order but the withdrawal of federal bayonets." [The fell spirit
and tendency of the reaction which was thus revealed found still more
significant expression in the revolting butchery in and around the
Mechanic's Institute of New Orleans on the 30th of July, 1866.] Some
of these infamous measures were adopted in all the insurrectionary
States, others in only some of them, but without exception the new
Southern governments which Andrew Johnson's "policy" created were
founded upon the traditions of the slave system and the memories of
"the lost cause." The objection that the President had, in thus taking
the work of reconstruction into his own hands, usurped authority
devolved upon Congress by the constitution, was a strong one, but it
received but little popular attention. Anger at the results of that
"policy" obscured the mere disapproval of its methods. When it was seen
that the rebellion had merely changed its theater of action, and that
what it lost on the battle-field it proposed to secure by legislation,
there was but one opinion among the masses of the people who had
heartily supported the war and were sincerely anxious to preserve its
fruits. Their emphatic demand was that the illegal and reactionary
governments set up by the President should be overturned, and the South
reconstructed in the interests of loyalty and liberty. Congress, as
part of its stubborn contest with Andrew Johnson, undertook this work.
It refused to recognize the pretended State governments or to admit
their Congressmen. It divided the territory of the conquered States
into five military districts, and placed it under the control of the
army until a juster system of reconstruction could be applied. It then
provided that in the calling of conventions to frame new constitutions
colored men should be permitted to vote; that those revised instruments
must confer the elective franchise upon all loyal colored people
and all whites not disfranchised for rebellion; that the work of
the conventions must be submitted to the colored and white people
not disfranchised for approval; that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth
Amendments to the national constitution must be ratified; and that
the State constitutions so adopted must be submitted to and accepted
by Congress. Upon this general plan the South was reconstructed, not
without much friction, not wholly to the satisfaction of the men who
marked out this course of procedure, but with the faith (or at least
the trust) on their part that it would restore that section to the
Union with genuinely free institutions, that it would protect the
emancipated slave in his rights, and that it would substitute for
disloyal communities States controlled by those whose interests and
traditions lay with the national cause. The reconstruction laws were
not vengeful in character; the aim of the men who passed them was not
retaliation, not even retribution except in so far as the application
of mild penalties to treason might increase the security of the future.
To prevent a repetition of the terrible struggle which had just closed
was the aim; that a political system had been devised, which both
recognized human rights, and by its natural operations would exclude
from political power the men who had plunged the country into civil
war, was the hope. Within ten years the scheme failed utterly, and what
it was designed to prevent had been accomplished upon its ruins. No
body of laws can maintain itself in the face of organized murder and
terrorism which authority refuses to either punish or prevent.
The reconstruction measures, while they commanded Mr. Chandler's
general assent, were laxer in details than he would have made them.
He felt, as Thaddeus Stevens said, that much that they ought to
have contained was "defeated by the united forces of self-righteous
Republicans and unrighteous Copperheads," but held that the bills
which were passed deserved support as a whole on the ground that it
was not wise to "throw away a great good because it is not perfect."
Schuyler Colfax closed one of his speeches upon this subject as
follows: "Loyalty must govern what loyalty preserved." Mr. Chandler
complimented him warmly and said, "You got it all into one sentence,"
and that doctrine and the belief in equal rights for citizens of
every color guided his share of the work upon all measures affecting
reconstruction. His chief regret was that the process of this
reorganization was not prolonged until the loyal sentiment of the South
had become strong enough and intelligent enough to maintain itself. If
his wishes had prevailed, the provisional governing of that section
would have been continued until the education of the blacks, the death
of the rebel leaders, and the extinguishment by time of the prejudices
and animosities of the war had accomplished such a wholesome revolution
in sentiment throughout that section as would in itself have been a
loyal and durable reconstruction. As this was not possible, he spared
no effort to make successful the experiment which was attempted; if
others had been as resolute and faithful as he, it would not have
failed. He did not share in the disposition of so many Republicans to
abandon what had been just commenced because of the imperfection of its
first fruits. He stood manfully for the maintenance by Northern opinion
and by the aid of the United States of the loyal State governments
of the South, not claiming they were faultless, but because they
were based on justice and were far better than that which would take
their place if they fell. When they were assailed by assassination,
by massacre, and by systematic terrorizing, he believed that it was
the duty of the general government to use all its authority and all
its force to protect its citizens in their rights and to prevent the
harvesting by unpunished traitors of the fruits of atrocities as
brutal and bloody as Saint Bartholomew. The policy of political murder
triumphed finally at the South, not through any weakness of such men as
he, nor through any failure upon his part to denounce that vast crime.
He labored strenuously to kindle Northern opinion into such a flame
of just wrath as would have made impossible that victory of organized
brutality.
Mr. Chandler, was often described by political opponents as "the
relentless enemy of the South;" nothing was farther from the fact.
That small minority of the Southern people, who ruled that section
with oligarchical power before and during the war, who organized and
led the rebellion, and who have now regained supremacy by outrage and
murder, he always distrusted and attacked. But the great majority of
the people of the South--the blacks whom those men rob of their rights
and the whites whom they mislead--he profoundly pitied, and their
cause he espoused. For them he demanded equal rights before the law, a
free ballot box, the common school, and an opportunity to prove their
manhood. Those who resisted a policy so just and civilizing he was
quick to denounce in unstinted terms, and upon them he did not waste
conciliation. They--not "the South"--found him the inappeasable, but
still "the avowed, the erect, the manly foe."
In the elections of 1866 the issues were chiefly those connected with
reconstruction, and Mr. Chandler as usual spoke in his own and other
Western States, exposing the malign results of Mr. Johnson's "policy"
and in advocacy of the Congressional plan and the Fourteenth Amendment.
The general tenor of his speeches will appear from this extract from an
address delivered at Detroit, at the close of the political campaign:
These perjured traitors are permitted to live here, but we say
to them they can never again hold office unless Congress by a
two-thirds vote shall remove the disability; why, a man who has
committed perjury alone, right here in Michigan, you would not
allow to testify before a justice of the peace in the most petty
case. But we forget the perjury of the rebels which would send them
to the State prison, we forget the hanging which follows treason,
and say to them simply, that for the future they can never hold
office. Personally I am not in favor of the last clause of this
section which gives Congress the power to remove this disability by
a two-thirds vote. I would have let this race of perjured traitors
die out, out of office, and educate the rising generation to
loyalty. But it is in the amendment and I advocate its adoption as
it is.
Often during the progress of the obstinate struggle between Andrew
Johnson and Congress his attempts to evade law and his encroachments
upon the powers vested in the legislative branch of the government led
to the serious consideration in the House of Representatives of the
question of impeachment. Several resolutions ordering the preferring
of charges against him at the bar of the Senate were presented without
action, but on the 7th of January, 1867, the Hon. J. M. Ashley of
Ohio offered a preamble, beginning, "I do impeach Andrew Johnson,
Vice-President and acting President of the United States, of high
crimes and misdemeanors. I charge him with usurpation of power and
violation of law in that he has corruptly used the appointing
power; ... corruptly used the pardoning power; ... corruptly used
the veto power; ... corruptly disposed of public property; ... and
corruptly interfered in elections." With this preamble was a resolution
referring the charges to the Judiciary Committee to inquire if the
President had been guilty of acts which were "calculated to overthrow,
subvert or corrupt the government." By a vote of 108 yeas to 39 nays
this reference was ordered, but no report was made until November
25, 1867, and then a resolution of impeachment was submitted by Mr.
Boutwell in behalf of the majority of the committee. On December 7,
this resolution was rejected by a vote of 57 to 108. Encouraged by
this result Mr. Johnson, who had suspended Edwin M. Stanton from the
Secretaryship of War during the Congressional recess of 1867, and whose
action had been disapproved by the Senate under the Tenure of Civil
Office act, undertook to force Mr. Stanton out by a second suspension
on February 21, 1868, accompanied by an order appointing Gen. Lorenzo
Thomas Secretary _ad interim_. Mr. Stanton declined to acknowledge the
President's power to take this step, refused to give place to General
Thomas, and for many days and nights remained in constant occupation
of the department offices. The House of Representatives at once
arraigned the President before the Senate for this attempted violation
of the Tenure of Office act, and his trial followed. Chief Justice
Chase presided; the proceedings lasted from February 25 until May 26,
1868; and in the end Mr. Johnson was acquitted, exactly the number of
Republican Senators necessary to defeat conviction voting with the
Democratic minority. These proceedings Mr. Chandler watched with the
liveliest interest, and the failure of the impeachment was one of
the most bitter disappointments of his political career. He sincerely
believed that Johnson's course fully merited a verdict of "guilty,"
and he felt that the great difficulties surrounding the problem of the
loyal reconstruction of the South would disappear if the executive
department of the government was administered with the Jacksonian vigor
and patriotism of Benjamin F. Wade. Mr. Stanton's refusal to permit the
President to displace him without the consent of the Senate he endorsed
with the utmost heartiness, and, while the Secretary remained in his
office to prevent its seizure by Mr. Johnson's _ad interim_ appointee,
Mr. Chandler spent night after night with him, and did all that was
possible to strengthen his resolution and to lighten his voluntary
confinement. On one occasion, when there were signs of an intention on
the part of the claimant to use force, Mr. Chandler, General Logan,
and a few others gathered together about a hundred trusty men, who
occupied the basement of the department, and there did garrison duty
until the danger was past. During Johnson's trial Mr. Chandler was not
forgetful of his position as a judge, and was an attentive listener to
the evidence and the arguments before and in the court of impeachment.
He was restive under the length of the proceedings, however, and did
advise the managers on the part of the House to push the case along
as rapidly as possible, urging that the public interest required the
ending of the general suspense. He felt then, and said afterward, that
the delay was used to effect combinations with, and apply pressure to,
individual Senators, which would induce them to favor acquittal. That
this was done he never doubted, and he repeatedly denounced in the
strongest terms, both in public and private, the action of the seven
Republicans (Senators Fessenden, Trumbull, Grimes, Henderson, Fowler,
Ross and Van Winkle) who voted "not guilty" with the Democrats and
the "Johnson men." He was especially indignant at the course of Mr.
Fessenden and Mr. Trumbull, and on several occasions in after years
came into sharp personal collision with them during the Senate debates.
The final failure of the impeachment movement he felt as a blow. One
who knew him well has said: "He believed that republican government was
at stake and impeachment a necessity. Never was there a time when he
came so near despairing of the republic as at that event."
The Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses remained in nearly continuous
session for over three years "watching the White House." Outside of
the exciting political topics which received so large a share of their
attention, they were compelled to deal with important financial,
commercial and material questions affecting vitally the general
interest. The currency and public debt demanded simplification; the tax
system was to be changed from a war to a peace footing; the commercial
wrecks of many years called for a bankrupt law; bounties were to be
equalized, pensions provided, and war claims adjusted on wise bases;
neglected internal improvements clamored for renovation and extension;
the ocean commerce required national care; and innumerable minor
interests, long neglected under the stress of civil war, needed instant
attention. Mr. Chandler worked with characteristic energy and practical
wisdom in all these branches of legislative activity, and rendered
public services of varied and permanent usefulness.