USA > Washington DC > Washington DC > Washington : the capital city and its part in the history of the nation > Part 15
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contemptuously ignored hier act of secession, and later had proved his stalwart and aggres- sive loyalty by bringing her back into the Union. Indeed, it was his record as military governor of Tennessee that pointed him out to Lincoln as the War Democrat who could best serve the Union cause, not only in the Presiden- tial contest, but in another and not less impor- tant way. Recognition of the Confederacy by France and England was a grave peril in the last years of the war, and it was the President's belief that to elect a man to the Vice-Presidency from a reorganized rebellious State would most effectually prevent such recognition. And so the Baltimore convention, yielding to Lincoln's wishes, put aside Hamlin and made Johnson its candidate.
The careers of Lincoln and Johnson had run in closely parallel lines. Both were of humble origin. Lincoln became a farm-hand and coun- try store-keeper, while Johnson mastered the trade of tailor and followed it for years. Before Lincoln moved from Kentucky to Illinois John- son passed from North Carolina across the moun- tains to Tennessee. Both entered politics at about the same time, Lincoln as postmaster of
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New Salem and Johnson as mayor of Greenville. Lincoln was elected to the Legislature of Illi- nois in 1834, and Johnson a year later to that of Tennessee. Johnson entered Congress in 1843 and Lincoln in 1849. In 1855 Johnson was sent to the Senate, and in 1858 Lincoln made his campaign against Douglas for a seat in that body. Finally, in 1860, Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency by the Republicans, while Johnson was an aspirant for the Democratic nomination and in the Charleston convention received the vote of Tennessee. There was, however, the widest possible difference in the manner and temper of the two men. Johnson had won his way by native pugnacity and force of character; a resolute spirit that knew not how to compromise was written in every line of his rugged, clean-shaven face, and he had none of the political astuteness of Lincoln or the latter's genius for understanding and per- suading men. These qualities, or the want of them, as the sequel showed, were too heavy a handicap in the task before him.
Johnson, when Lincoln died, was lodged at the Kirkwood House in Washington, and there, on the morning of April 15, 1865, he was sworn
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into office by Chief Justice Chase. A few weeks later, with his wife and daughters, he took up his residence in the White House. His daily life as President was a simple and laborious one. He arose at six in the morning, and at eight breakfasted with his family. Going into liis office at nine o'clock, he remained there until four in the afternoon, engaged in conference with members of his Cabinet, with his corre- spondence, and with the reception of visitors. At four he joined his family, dined an hour later, and after dinner took a walk or a carriage- drive. Then he received visitors until eleven, when he retired for the night. Mrs. Johnson had been long an invalid, and her place as mis- tress of the White House was taken by the President's eldest daughter, Martha, the wife of David T. Patterson, a newly elected Senator from Tennessee. Mrs. Patterson had been care- fully educated at the Academy of the Visitation in Georgetown while her father was in the Senate, and was, besides, a woman of unusual mental and social endowments. Inheriting all of her father's force of character with a gentle- ness all her own, she filled as few could have done a most difficult position. She stood in the
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breach between seemingly irreconcilable ele- ments, which she brought together by her tact, kindliness, and keen insight into human nature; and it is not too much to say that her gracious fulfilment of the duties which fell to her left behind it memories which have not yet been obliterated by the changes which so rapidly suc- ceed each other in the official life at the capital.
The social centre of Washington during the Presidency of Johnson, however, was the home of General Grant, whose duties as general of the army made him a resident of the capital, and who, with his wife and growing children, occupied a large house in what was known as Minnesota Row. Here he and Mrs. Grant gave weekly receptions, to which flocked Cabinet offi- cers, justices of the Supreme Court, members of Congress, officers of the army and navy, diplomats, residents, and visiting strangers. All who came received a cordial and unaffected wel- come, but the general's warmest greetings were reserved for those who brought with them mem- ories of earlier and humbler days, and he liked nothing better than a quiet chat with some old friend or comrade. He also found delight in solitary strolls about Washington, pacing slowly
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with cigar in mouth, and never failing to return the salutations of those whom he met on the way. Indeed, Ben. Perley Poore describes this period as the happiest of Grant's eventful life. He was in the flush of mental and physical vigor, with his children growing up about him; he was general of the army, with freedom to retire without diminution of pay, and he was a na- tional hero with all that carried with it of ad- miration and respect. And as yet, conscious of his unfitness for a political career, he had not yielded to the solicitations of the politicians who saw in him an irresistible candidate for Presi- dent. Had he persevered in his purpose not to leave the army the story of his last days would have been a different one, and, doubtless, he would have lived and died a happier man.
Washington during the war period, when its roll of correspondents included such men as Carl Schurz, Henry Villard, Horace White, Samuel Wilkeson, Joseph Medill, Uriah H. Painter, George W. Adams, Whitelaw Reid, Joseph B. McCullagh, John Russell Young, and George Alfred Townsend, and the Chronicle, edited by John W. Forney and transformed into a daily, held a place among the great journals
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of the land, had been in an especial sense the news centre of the nation. So it continued dur- ing the Administration of Johnson. Newspaper Row was daily and nightly visited by those prominent and potential in public affairs, and the strongest and most noted men of the Senate and of the House were frequent and welcome visitors in the Washington offices of the leading journals of the country. President Johnson was also keenly alive to the value of the press, and, perhaps, did more than any other man to give the newspaper interview its present form. Both of his private secretaries were working journalists, and he had as one of his most trusted advisers Simon P. Hanscom, a former abolition leader, who as editor of the National Republican devoted its columns to fervent and unflagging, if not always judicious, support of the measures and policy of his chief. Johnson, moreover, found another stalwart and aggres- sive organ in the National Intelligencer, which upon the death of William W. Seaton, in 1866, passed to the editorship of John F. Coyle. The days of the Administration organ and of the prosperity of the National Intelligencer, how- ever, ended with Johnson. Coyle and his asso-
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ciates, in 1869, sold it to Alexander Delmar, who united with it the Express, an evening pa- per established in 1866; but the venture did not prosper, and in January, 1870, the National Intelligencer disappeared from Washington journalism. Since then no President has com- manded a newspaper mouth-piece at the capital.
Schuyler Colfax continued to serve as Speaker of the House and Ben Wade presided over the Senate during the Johnson Administration. New members of the House, or others who at this time returned to it after long absence, included Benjamin F. Butler and Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts; William H. Barnum, of Connecticut ; Luke Poland, of Vermont, whose dress and speech recalled the statesmen of an earlier time; James Brooks and Fernando Wood, of New York, both conspicuous figures on the Democratic side; Austin Blair, who had been war governor of Michigan; Thomas W. Ferry, of the same State, who later was to win a seat in the Senate; Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, fresh from service in the field and little dreaming that the Presidency was to come to him within a dozen years; Michael C. Kerr, of Indiana, a man of rare purity and worth;
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John A. Logan, soon to become a Senator from Illinois; Shelby M. Cullom, Norman B. Judd, and John Wentworth, of the same State; Grenville M. Dodge, of Iowa; Philetus Sawyer, a keen-witted Wisconsin lumberman, whose ser- vices in House and Senate were to cover a period of twenty-four years; George H. Wil- liams, of Oregon, who was to leave Congress to become Grant's Attorney-General ; and James B. Beck and Proctor Knott, of Kentucky.
Butler and Beck demand more than a pass- ing word. Butler sat ten years in the House, and during that time he was always a potential and interesting personality, though he failed to link his name with any great legislation. He proved himself, however, one of the strongest and ablest champions of the negro race accord- ing to the lights of the time, and he had few equals and no superiors in rough and ready de- bate. His keen and often ferocious wit never failed him, and he was always sure to call up the retort best suited to the occasion. An Ohio member who had long sought an opportunity to attack Butler one day secured the floor and gave forth a torrent of abuse so vulgar that it would have provoked unalloyed disgust had it
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not been for the speaker's peculiar gestures, which tempered the disgust with mirth. He had a fashion of raising his arms high above his head, and then wringing his hands as if engaged in a mad attempt to wring them off. Butler sat unmoved through the speech, but when it was finished rose and stood in the aisle. For half a minute he said nothing. Then he began : " Mr. Speaker." Another long pause, at the end of which Butler raised his arms in exact reproduction of the gestures of his assailant. Then his arms fell and for another half-minute he stood silent. "That is all, Mr. Speaker," said he. "I only wanted to answer the gentle- man from Ohio."
Beck came to America from his native Scot- land when just past his majority, and as over- seer on a Kentucky plantation earned the money with which he prepared for the bar. His suc- cess as a lawyer was immediate, and for some years before the war he was the partner of John C. Breckinridge. When the latter joined the Confederate army Beck remained at home, and it was to his watchful shrewdness that Breckin- ridge owed the competency which he enjoyed in his declining years. Beck never held office II .- 21
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until he entered the House in 1867. He carried with him to that body, where he served eight years, the resolute will and unflagging industry that characterized him in private life, and long before he took the seat in the Senate which he held until his death he had come to be recog- nized as one of the ablest disputants of either branch of Congress. Tall and large, square- featured, heavy-browed, shock-headed, and an- gular in outline, his arguments were always of the sledge-hammer order, and, as he never spoke without careful preparation, few there were who cared to stand against him. His death in 1890 was a distinctive loss not only to his State and party but to the nation.
Roscoe Conkling and Justin S. Morrill were promoted from the House to the Senate in 1867, and at about the same time Simon Cameron and Reverdy Johnson returned to that body. Other new Senators of the John- sonian period were Theodore Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, a member of a family long emi- nent in political affairs; William Pinkney Whyte, of Maryland, a managing politician, clever and adroit at bargains; John M. Thayer, of Nebraska, who had behind him a brilliant
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record as a volunteer general; and Samuel J. Kirkwood, of Iowa, who had been the war governor of his State and who was to end his public career as Garfield's Secretary of the Interior. The ablest of the new Senators were Oliver P. Morton, of Indiana, and George F. Edmunds, of Vermont. Morton's services as war governor of Indiana had made him one of the chief figures of a great historic period, and in the Senate he at once took and held until the last a foremost place. Though he was al- ready in the grip of a mortal disease when he became Senator, his acute and powerful intellect was as vigorous as ever, his activity incessant, and no man did more to shape the legislation of the reconstruction period.
Edmunds was thirty-eight years old when he entered the Senate; he left it voluntarily at the age of sixty-three. During the twenty-five years which intervened he stood in the front rank of Republican Senators. He made few formal speeches, and seldom, if ever, took notes, but he was withal one of the most instructive speak- ers in the Senate, for his compact remarks were always full of keen reasoning, rare wit, and solid sense, guided by great knowledge of the
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law and of public affairs. Edmunds's rule of official conduct was peculiar to himself. His cardinal aim was ever to be the servant of the people, and while other Senators sought to serve their own States and sections first and only, he gave his unremitting care to questions affecting the general good. His leadership was often irk- some and even despotic, but he always led, and in leading sought the welfare of the government and the country.
Still another new Senator was Edmund G. Ross, of Kansas, who, in 1866, succeeded to the seat made vacant by the suicide of James H. Lane. A native of Ohio, Ross had early gone from the printer's case to the editor's desk, and thence to a command in a border regiment dur- ing the war. He was one of its youngest mem- bers when he took his seat in the Senate, and he was always a silent one, but the conditions of a troubled era were to bring him enduring fame, for it was his vote that saved President Johnson from impeachment, and changed the course of history. The attempted impeachment of the President was the inevitable issue of a three years' quarrel with Congress over the question of reconstruction. Lincoln's views
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as to the best means of rehabilitating the Union had become well known before his death. It was his contention that so long as there remained a fraction of loyal people in the Southern States, those States, though dormant, were still vital constituents of the Union and the body politic, and that, slavery being dead, that loyal fraction, and all others who might desire to re- habilitate their several States as members of the Union, should be permitted to do so upon their own motion and on any terms not inconsistent with the new order of things.
These views Lincoln illustrated in his outline of the methods whereby the people of North Carolina were authorized to resurrect their State government. He proposed to restore and refill the Federal positions in that State, with a provisional governor to superintend the reinsti- tution of its domestic officials and economies, and to extend this plan to all of the States lately in rebellion as rapidly as due regard for the con- ditions of the times would permit. This was Lincoln's plan of reconstruction determined upon by him in the spring of 1865. in confident antici- pation that by the time Congress should re- assemble in the ensuing December reconstruction
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and reconciliation would have so far progressed that nothing would have remained but for the law-making body to endorse and supplement the President's work. Lincoln, had he lived to carry out his plan, would have provoked the opposition of the radicals, but there is little doubt that his popularity, coupled with his wisdom, his fine mercy, and the signal effectiveness of his plan, would have insured success.
Johnson, succeeding to the Presidency, es- sayed to carry forward on practically identical lines the work begun by Lincoln. He removed restrictions on internal and coastwise traffic in the South, opened most of its ports to commerce by Presidential proclamation, and on May 29, 1865, proclaimed amnesty to all citizens, except a few classes of leaders, to whom pardon was to be accorded on special application. The gov- ernments of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee had already been reorganized by the voters who could take the oath of Lincoln's amnesty proc- lamation. Provisional governors were promptly appointed in the States not yet reorganized, and the voters in those States who could qualify pro- ceeded forthwith to frame constitutions and erect governments under them, being assured
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of the President's recognition and support should they agree to the abolition of slavery by ratify- ing the Thirteenth Amendment and establish governments which seemed to him republican in form within the meaning of the Constitu- tion. So rapidly was the work of restoration proceeded with that by the autumn of 1865 the required processes were complete in all of the States except Texas, and their Senators and Representatives were ready to apply for admis- sion to Congress when that body should con- vene in December.
Johnson's efforts, however, were doomed to failure from the first. He entered office with the party which had elected him already inclined to suspect him, for, although a Union man, he had been a Democrat; and despite his repeated assurances that he was seeking in good faith to carry out Lincoln's policy of reconstruction as embodied in the North Carolina plan, he was at once assailed as one ready and willing to sur- render the fruits of the war. Moreover, most of the Republican leaders in Congress, in both of whose branches that party counted an over- whelming majority, held to the view that the States lately in rebellion had committed suicide ;
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that they were subject wholly to the will of the conquerors in all questions of rehabilitation, and that the law did not revive with regard to them until once more declared in force by Congress.
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This view, tempered by the irritating knowl- edge that the President had forestalled it in deal- ing with reconstruction, shaped the action of the law-making power when it assembled in Decem- ber. All of the seceded States were omitted in the roll-call of the two houses, and later in the session a joint resolution was adopted that neither Senators nor Representatives should be received from the Southern States until Con- gress should declare them entitled to represen- tation by full readmission to the Union. This checkmating of his plans was answered by the President with a speech in which he fiercely as- sailed Congress, ascribing to its leaders disloyal and even criminal motives. His intemperate and ill-timed utterances alienated most of the Republicans who were still friendly towards him, and when he vetoed a bill in the interest of the freedmen declaring "all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power," citizens and entitled to the same rights
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as white citizens in regard to property and con- tracts, the law to be enforced by federal courts, Congress promptly passed it over his veto. A little later it embodied the principles of the bill in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitu- tion, and made acceptance of this amendment by the revolted States a condition precedent to their recognition by Congress. Then it ad- journed, while the President, journeying lei- surely to Chicago, " swinging around the circle," as he termed it, bitterly and fiercely criticised its actions.
The breach was now past healing, and when Congress reassembled in December, 1866, backed by a popular endorsement of its course at the autumn elections, and angered by the Southern States' successive rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment, it lost no time in formulating measures by which these States were to be forced to accept the amendments. But first, in order to deprive the President of the free hand afforded him by the long Con- gressional recess, a provision was adopted di- recting the next and succeeding Congresses to convene at the beginning of the term, March 4, while a rider to the army appropriation bill made
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General Grant, commanding the army, indepen- dent of and irremovable by the President. Then, to further nullify the President's powers, an act was passed over his veto which provided that no officer subject to confirmation by the Senate should be removed without the consent of that body; that during the recess the Presi- dent might suspend an official, but if the Senate at its next session did not consent to the sus- pension he should be restored to office. This gave the Senate the power of removal, hitherto a prerogative of the President. Removals by him contrary to this law were made misde- meanors. The Executive was effaced. Con- gress was the government, and the Republican caucus was Congress.
The way thus cleared, on March 2, 1867, the great Reconstruction Act became a law. This act divided the ten seceded States still unrepre- sented in Congress into five military districts, each to be commanded by an officer not below the rank of brigadier, whose duty it was to pro- tect all citizens, irrespective of race or color. Each State was to remain under military govern- ment until a State convention, chosen by voters without regard to race or color, should frame
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a constitution recognizing no race limitation on the franchise, and then when this constitution received the approval of Congress, and when the Legislature of the State ratified the Four- teenth Amendment, the State was to be restored to representation in Congress. Under these conditions-Tennessee had been readmitted in 1866-Arkansas, the two Carolinas, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana were restored to the Union before the end of June, 1868, while Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas, slower in ac- cepting the conditions, were readmitted early in 1870. Congress was dissatisfied with Georgia's attitude towards some provisions of the Recon- struction Act, and that State was not fully re- stored to representation until July, 1870. Then, for the first time since South Carolina withdrew in 1860, every State was represented in Con- gress, and the work of reconstruction was counted complete.
Congress, made still more aggressive by the President's repeated vetoes and his savage abuse of its members, meanwhile had pushed its policy of " Thorough" to the utmost limit. There had been some changes in the Cabinet which Johnson took over from Lincoln. Orville H. Browning,
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of Illinois, was now Secretary of the Interior; Henry Stanbery, of Ohio, who later gave place to William M. Evarts, of New York, Attorney- General; and Alexander W. Randall head of the Post-Office Department. However, Hugh McCulloch, of Indiana, who late in 1865 had succeeded Fessenden as Secretary of the Treas- ury, along with Seward. Welles, and Stanton, had been originally appointed by Lincoln. Stan- ton was hostile to Johnson's reconstruction pol- icy, and in August, 1867, the President sus- pended him from office; but when Congress reassembled, the Senate refused to sanction the removal. Thereupon Johnson, taking the ground that the tenure of office did not apply to Cabinet officers appointed by Lincoln, again removed Stanton, who refused to quit his office and appealed to the House for protection. The House, under the Constitution, has the sole power to impeach, and the Senate the sole power to try impeachment. Neither body now wasted time in carrying out its respective functions. On February 24, 1868, three days after Stan- ton's second removal, the House resolved to impeach the President for high crimes and mis- demeanors, and nine days later, with Chief
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Justice Chase presiding, the trial was begun in the Senate.
The articles of impeachment were eleven in number. The first eight dealt with the attempted removal of Stanton; the ninth alleged that the President had instructed General Emory that the act of Congress providing that orders and instructions to military commanders should be issued only through the general of the army was unconstitutional and void ; the tenth claimed that the President in his public harangues had attempted to bring Congress into general con- tempt ; and the eleventh charged that he had declared that the Thirty-ninth Congress was not a Congress duly authorized by the Constitution, that he was not bound by its acts, and that ac- cordingly he had disregarded them. The evi- dence adduced in support of these charges was weak and unconvincing, and it speedily became evident that the prosecutors were relying upon the anger and wounded pride of the party they represented to influence in part the judgment. A division of the Senate on strict party lines would assure conviction, for forty-two of the fifty-four Senators, six more than the necessary two-thirds, were Republicans. How many of
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