USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 4 > Part 50
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55
Senator Trumbull's bill to extend the powers of the Freed- men's Bureau (created by the Act of March 3, 1865) and
556
RECONSTRUCTION
granting military protection to the Negroes passed both Houses overwhelmingly; but it was vetoed by the President early in 1866, and barely failed to pass over the veto. Thad- deus Stevens, the Republican leader, then reported to the House from the committee of fifteen, of which Mr. Boutwell of Massachusetts was a member, a joint resolution providing that no Senator or Representative from any of the eleven insurgent States should be admitted until Congress should declare such State entitled to such representation. This res- olution passed both Houses overwhelmingly and virtually made the President's proclamations of no effect.
March 27, 1866, President Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Bill, conferring full civil rights upon the enfranchised slaves, which was one of Sumner's pet measures, and the bill was promptly passed over the veto, as was also later a new Freed- men's Bureau Bill, both of the Massachusetts Senators and all the Massachusetts Representatives voting against the Presi- dent. The latter injured himself and his policies with the Massachusetts public by a stump speech from the White House steps, in which he denounced Charles Sumner and Wendell Phillips as traitors to their country.
In August, 1866, a "national union convention" was held by the President's friends at Philadelphia, at which General Couch of Massachusetts is said to have marched arm in arm with Governor Orr of South Carolina. To offset this move- ment, a convention of anti-Johnson soldiers was held at Pittsburgh, where another Massachusetts soldier, General Ben- jamin F. Butler, advocated the hanging of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.
THE RECONSTRUCTION YEAR (1867)
In December, 1866, Sumner's bill granting Negro suffrage in the District of Columbia was passed over the President's veto, and was quickly followed by a bill enfranchising the black man in the Territories, which became a law without the executive approval. In speaking in favor of Thaddeus Steven's reconstruction bill providing for unlimited military control, Representative Boutwell of Massachusetts, who had become Stevens' first lieutenant, declared that eight million
557
JOHNSON'S IMPEACHMENT
Negroes were "writhing under cruelties nameless in their character, because sitting enthroned in the executive depart- ment there was one who guided the destinies of the Republic in the interest of rebels."
In his Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Life Bout- well asserts that in December, 1866, Secretary Stanton sent for him and told him that the President had issued orders to the Army unknown to him or to General Grant, and that he apprehended an attempt by the President to assemble a Con- gress of his own, composed of members from the seceding States and Democratic members-elect from the North who were under his dictation. Boutwell immediately drafted an amendment to the Army Appropriation Bill, which Stevens in- corporated in the bill, making it a misdemeanor for the President to transmit orders to any officer of the Army ex- cept through the General of the Army. The President ap- proved the bill, but filed a protest that the amendment was unconstitutional, in which contention he was undoubtedly correct.
MASSACHUSETTS ON JOHNSON'S IMPEACHMENT (1867-1868)
The feeling in both Houses of Congress against the Presi- dent rapidly grew more and more bitter. In the Senate, Sumner likened Johnson to Jefferson Davis and in a letter to General Grant said: "You have already conquered the chief of the rebellion. I doubt not you will conquer his successor also." In the House, upon the reading of the President's veto of the supplementary Reconstruction Bill giving military governors the right to remove civilian officials, Representa- tives Boutwell and Butler of Massachusetts in vigorous speeches called for the impeachment of the President. That these Massachusetts statesmen voiced the prevailing senti- ment at home is evidenced by the attitude of the Atlantic Monthly, which in its issue for November, 1867, character- ized Johnson as "a spiteful, inflated and unprincipled egotist," and advocated impeachment as a means of removing him from the office he had been "too long allowed to dishonor." Even the Springfield Republican, which had vehemently protested against the radical doctrines of disfranchisement and punish-
558
RECONSTRUCTION
ment of all who had taken part in the Rebellion and the con- fiscation of their property as advocated by Boutwell and Butler and urged by such papers as the New York Tribune, nevertheless supported Congress in its contest with Johnson, even approving the enactment as permanent legislation of the Tenure of Office Act, which provided that no government of- ficial could be removed during the term for which he was ap- pointed without the consent of the Senate. Although at first unfavorable to the idea of impeachment proceedings, when Johnson undertook to remove Secretary of War Stan- ton in violation of the Tenure of Office Act, the Republican came out strongly for impeachment and, even after his ac- quittal by the Senate, declared him guilty and deserving of conviction.
On the other hand, Governor Andrew of Massachusetts approved Johnson's policy and was strongly opposed to the suggestion of impeachment. In a letter to his friend John Binney, in September, 1867, he wrote: "I utterly reject the doctrine of impeachment ... as yet; while he has done many undignified and irritating things, nothing has been done or said which can be constitutionally regarded as impeachable."
Although the best constitutional lawyers in Massachusetts agreed with Andrew, nevertheless the radical Republicans were determined to get rid of Johnson; and as early as Nov- ember, 1867, Representative Boutwell of Massachusetts, for the Committee on the Judiciary, reported a resolution in favor of impeachment, alleging in twenty-seven separate counts that the President had been guilty of undoubted usurpation of power and repeated violations of law. This resolution was defeated by a vote of 108 to 57. Later, on February 13, 1868, the Committee on Reconstruction voted 6 to 3 against a similar impeachment resolution, Boutwell being one of the three minority members. Finally, February 24, 1868, the House passed a resolution in favor of impeachment by a vote of 126 to 47, all ten of the Massachusetts Representatives voting "aye." Representative George S. Boutwell was ap- pointed a member of the committee to prepare articles of im- peachment.
Boutwell reported to the House, February 29th, ten articles of impeachment which he had drafted, the only substantial
-
From a sketch in Harper's Weekly
Hamilton Ward James F. Wilson George S. Boutwell Thaddeus Stevens John A. Bingham John A. Logan
George W. Julian
THE IMPEACHMENT COMMITTEE AT WORK
559
MASSACHUSETTS ON IMPEACHMENT
charge being the fact that the President had attempted to re- move Secretary Stanton, and had named Lorenzo Thomas as Secretary of War, ad interim. On motion of Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, an eleventh article was added, de- claring that the President by his speeches delivered at Wash- ington, Cleveland, and St. Louis "had attempted to bring into disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and reproach the Congress of the United States and the several branches thereof," and was therefore guilty of "high misdemeanor." Both Boutwell and Butler were appointed on the board of managers on the part of the House, the former being chosen chairman, but resigning in favor of Representative Bingham of Ohio. To Butler was assigned the task of making the opening and Bout- well was chosen to make one of the four closing arguments for the prosecution.
SHARE OF MASSACHUSETTS IN THE IMPEACHMENT (1868)
March 3, 1868, in the absence of the senior Representative, Washburn of Illinois, Dawes of Massachusetts, supported by the clerk and doorkeeper of the House, led the procession of the board of seven managers to the Senate Chamber, where the articles of impeachment were formally presented. Sen- ator Wilson of Massachusetts was appointed one of the three members of a committee to wait upon Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who under the provisions of the Constitution was to preside over the trial, and escort him to the chamber. Accord- ing to Oberholtzer, "it was the madly hostile Sumner who asked the question whether, after the trial had begun, the Senate should hold its customary relations with the President arraigned at our bar in the name of the people of the United States, or should it adopt a system of non-intercourse until the trial is brought to a close."
Before commencing his opening address, Manager Butler asked that, in accordance with English parliamentary practice and the precedent established at the trial of Judge Samuel Chase in the early days of the Republic, President Johnson be brought before the bar of the Senate; but, as he expresses it in his autobiography, his fellow managers were "too weak in the knees or back to insist upon this," and the President did not attend the trial.
560
RECONSTRUCTION
Butler's opening occupied two hours. Although he makes the statement in his autobiography that he made up his mind "to try the case upon the same rules of evidence and in the same manner as he would try a horse case," nevertheless he contended that the Senate was utterly unlike a court of justice and that it was the duty of Senators to their States and constituents to determine the question as they would any matter of legislation. Although most of his argument was directed to the articles which referred to the real offense charged (viz., the violation of the Tenure of Office Act), he spent about a quarter of his time upon the article of which he himself was the author, and quoted at great length from Johnson's speeches in the famous "swinging around the circle" in which the President had made personal attacks upon various Senators. According to James Ford Rhodes, this part of his speech was most ineffective and, if a vote had been taken upon this article at the end of the trial, there would have been at least 24 votes against conviction.
According to Oberholtzer, another historian of the period, Butler's opening was "but a hectic mingling of the hyperbolic party-campaign harangue with quarter-sessions billingsgate." Secretary Stanton, however, was loud in its praise and wrote to Butler, under date of March 31st: "The world to all time is enriched by it. As an American citizen and as your friend I rejoice at the mighty blow you struck against the great enemy of the nation." It seems to be the general consensus of opinion that both Butler's opening and the manner in which he conducted his cross-examination of the witnesses for the defense damaged the cause of the prosecution. The New York Nation of April 16, 1868, asserted that his method of cross-examining witnesses made him feared in the criminal courts but not greatly respected elsewhere, and accused him of "playing to sixty writers in the press gallery and through them to the country at large, before which he strutted day by day." At the conclusion of the trial, the same paper on May 21, 1868, declared that Butler's "want of manners or rather want of decency throughout the case gave the President a constant advantage which increased up to the very last day." As one specific instance of Butler's conduct of the trial, Secre- tary Welles in his diary states that he objected to a reasonable
561
DEFENSE OF JOHNSON
request for a brief postponement made by counsel for the defense in "a violent, indecent, party harangue which dis- graced the Senators who failed to call him to order."
MASSACHUSETTS' DEFENCE OF JOHNSON (1868)
In striking contrast to this severe criticism of the Massa- chusetts Representative who took the most prominent part against the President is the universal praise accorded to an- other Massachusetts citizens who was one of his chief defend- ers. Benjamin R. Curtis was admittedly one of the great lawyers of his day and generation, and a man of the utmost courage. As an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, his dissenting opinion in the famous Dred Scott case was highly praised throughout the North. Three years later he advocated the repeal of the Massachusetts Personal Liberty Act, which nullified the Fugitive Slave Act and was therefore plainly unconstitutional. In 1861 he spoke in Faneuil Hall in favor of the Crittenden Compromise, and in the fol- lowing year vehemently opposed the Emancipation Procla- mation and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus as un- authorized usurpations of executive power. Curtis was the first choice of the President and his Cabinet as counsel to assist Attorney-General Stanbery in conducting the case for the defense; and associated with him was William M. Evarts, the son of a Massachusetts missionary. According to his son and biographer, Judge Curtis had no personal acquaintance with President Johnson, no interest in his political fortunes, and nothing but a sense of duty to lead him to accept the responsible position of leading counsel for the defense in this great trial. Moreover, as the President was unable to offer any compensation to his lawyers and Judge Curtis was busily engaged in a very lucrative private practice, his acceptance in- volved a great financial sacrifice.
Judge Curtis realized thoroughly the difficult task which confronted him and in a letter to his friend George Ticknor, two weeks before the trial, he wrote: "There is not a decent pretense that the President has committed an impeachable offence. The party is in a condition to demand his removal from power and does demand it." His opening argument
562
RECONSTRUCTION
occupied four hours on two successive days, and was a master- piece. Even Butler, his chief opponent, considered his pre- sentation of the case so exhaustive that, although much was said by his colleagues, including the able Evarts, nothing more was added in the President's behalf during the whole course of the trial. Oberholtzer says that "in chaste words and learned phrase, with calmness, moderation, and dignity, he presented the cause," and that his "courtliness and grace seemed to belong to some other time and place." According to J. B. Stillson, the Washington correspondent of the New York World, Judge Curtis made a tremendous impression upon those who heard him. "His manner was an incarnation of dignity, self-possession, repose. The clearness of his state- ments, the accuracy of his logic, and the precision and steadi- ness with which he advanced from every premise he established to conclusions, needed in fact no fiery oratory to enhance the effect. . . . It is generally conceded that the speech is an original and invincible effort."
In a letter to Mrs. Curtis written the same day, Miss Harriet B. Loring, who was present in the Senate Chamber, thus described her impression: "For power and condensation of thought and for dignity and persuasiveness of delivery, it was indeed a glorious effort. . . . Even political antagonists con- fess the greatness of the argument: indeed it seems to bring back the times when 'there were giants on the earth'."
Representative Boutwell of Massachusetts made one of the four closing arguments for the prosecution. Although he was a violent partisan, he exhibited more restraint than Butler, and devoted himself more to the charges and the evidence and less to personal abuse.
ACQUITTAL OF PRESIDENT JOHNSON (1868)
Although the masterful argument of Judge Curtis pro- foundly impressed all of his hearers and caused seven Repub- lican Senators to brave political annihilation and vote in favor of the President's acquittal, which obtained by a single vote, it did not influence the vote of either of the Massachusetts Senators, both of whom evidently adopted Butler's view of their duty in the premises. Senator Wilson declared that, "if
Courtesy of Harvard College Library BENJAMIN R. CURTIS
563
ACQUITTAL OF JOHNSON
there were doubts to vex him in reaching a conclusion, his country should have the benefit of those doubts rather than the President"; while Sumner insisted that, regardless of the proceedings before the Senate, there had been "a moral judg- ment" against Johnson, and that he was "utterly unprincipled and wicked."
The radical Republicans, who controlled the House, were thoroughly enraged at their failure to get rid of the President; and on Butler's motion, the House managers were authorized to investigate alleged improper and corrupt means used to influence the Senate. In a speech delivered May 25, and in his report to the House, July 3, he indirectly charged with cor- ruption four of the Republican Senators who had voted for acquittal, and tried to incriminate the other three. None of his fellow managers, however, signed the report; and Rhodes ends his account of this episode by saying that "Butler's con- ception of humanity was so low that he could not conceive of men doing what was certain to lose them social consideration or political preferment unless they were paid for it in money." Oberholtzer says that "Butler's smelling committee had failed of its purpose; but in his report, which he alone signed, he suppressed the testimony or used only such parts as would serve his ends." Senator Henderson asserted that "Butler's report was not meant to vindicate truth, but to serve the selfish and malicious purposes of its contemptible author."
Thus ended the attempt of the leaders in the Fortieth Con- gress, overwhelmingly Republican in both branches, to get rid of a President whom they detested, in which controversy Massachusetts men played a prominent part. Although at the time public sentiment in Massachusetts and throughout the North was undoubtedly hostile to President Johnson and in favor of his impeachment, impartial historians have long since arrived at the conclusion that there were no sufficient grounds for his impeachment, and that Judge Curtis and the seven Senators who were persuaded by his argument to vote for acquittal performed a great public service. Within the past year, the Supreme Court of the United States has vindicated President Johnson by settling the question for all time that the President can remove any presidential appointee; and that
564
RECONSTRUCTION
an Act of Congress requiring the consent of the Senate to such removal is unconstitutional and void.
ATTITUDE ON RECONSTRUCTION ACTS (1865-1867)
By the theory of "State suicide," mentioned above, the seceding States by their rebellious conduct had forfeited their rights as sovereign States, and ipso facto were reduced to the status of Territories and therefore under the exclusive control of Congress. President Lincoln never accepted this doctrine, and in his message of December, 1863, proposed a counter plan for the recognition of State governments organized by persons then voters in any State, who should equal in number up to one tenth the number of votes cast in that State for President in 1860, and would take an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. This was referred by the House to a select Committee on Reconstruction, consisting of nine representatives, of which committee Representative Gooch of Massachusetts was a member.
February 15, 1864, this committee reported the first Recon- struction Bill "to guarantee to certain states whose government has been usurped a republican form of government." This bill denied the suffrage to certain civil and military officers of the Confederacy, and provided that no State government should be recognized until its new State constitution should be ap- proved by Congress. It passed the House, May 4, 1864, and the Senate, July 1st, all the Massachusetts Senators and Repre- sentatives voting in its favor; but it was "pocket vetoed" by President Lincoln.
Reference has also been made to the proclamations of Presi- dent Johnson granting amnesty to all persons formerly en- gaged in rebellion and providing for the recognition of State governments in all the Southern States. When the members elect of the Thirty-ninth Congress convened in December, 1865, the clerk of the preceding House of Representatives ex- cluded from the roll the names of members elect presenting credentials from the Southern States which in the meantime had been reorganized under the President's proclamations. Immediately upon the organization of the House without these men, Thaddeus Stevens, the Republican leader, offered a con- current resolution appointing a joint committee "to inquire
565
MASSACHUSETTS HOME POLITICS
into the condition of the States recently in rebellion and report whether any of them are entitled to be represented in Con- gress." This resolution passed both Houses overwhelmingly, and Representative Boutwell of Massachusetts was named as a member of this Committee on Reconstruction. In February, 1866, a second concurrent resolution provided that no Senator or Representative should be admitted to either branch of Congress from any of the lately rebel States until Congress should have declared such States entitled to representation. This resolution also received the support of all the Massachu- setts Senators and Representatives.
MASSACHUSETTS HOME POLITICS
The sentiment of the voters of Massachusetts was later voiced in the Congressional election of 1866, at which eight of the Massachusetts delegation, who had voted for these first three reconstruction measures in opposition to the policies of Presidents Lincoln and Johnson, offered themselves for re- election. Thomas D. Eliot, of New Bedford, was reelected by a vote of 8184 to 1539; Oakes Ames, of North Easton, by 9581 to 2456; Samuel Hooper, of Boston, by 7902 to 3183; Nathaniel P. Banks, of Waltham, by 10,075 to 3336; George S. Boutwell, of Groton, by 9847 to 2885; John D. Baldwin, of Worcester, by 9039 to 1901; William B. Washburn, of Greenfield, by 11,895 to 1668; and Henry L. Dawes, of Pitts- field, by 8125 to 4185. The two new Republican members- Ginery Twichell, of Brookline, and Benjamin F. Butler, of Gloucester-were elected by votes of 6084 to 2601, and 9021 to 2838, respectively. Moreover the latter, the most extreme radical of all, whose real home was at Lowell, was chosen from the Essex district, where he had his summer home, over Richard H. Dana, Jr., a man of great ability and learning, whose conservative views upon the issues of the hour proved to be utterly unacceptable to the rank and file of the voters.
This emphatic endorsement of the course of the Massa- chusetts delegation in Congress in following the lead of the radical Stevens against the more conservative policy of two Republican Presidents was rendered in spite of the protest of John A. Andrew, one of the leaders in the antislavery move- ment and the great war governor of the Commonwealth.
566
RECONSTRUCTION
Andrew never subscribed to the "State suicide" theory of his friend Sumner, and publicly defended President Johnson's plan of reconstruction, maintaining that the Southern States should return to the Union "under the leadership of the men who took them out." Moreover, he favored the most lenient treatment of former rebels, and an amendment to the Federal Constitution granting suffrage to all citizens who could read and write, without disfranchising existing white voters in the Southern States. But as Rhodes sums up this issue, "it was Sumner and not Andrew who was swaying public opinion," not only in Massachusetts, but throughout the North, and "at his back were the ministers and school teachers of New Eng- land and of the West where New England ideas held sway."
February 6, 1867, Thaddeus Stevens reported from the Joint Committee on Reconstruction to the House a bill "to provide for the more efficient government of the rebel States." This bill, which provided for the division of the "rebel States" into five military districts, was fittingly described by Garfield as "written with a steel pen made out of a bayonet." Sumner claimed the credit for the drastic provision in the bill granting suffrage to all male citizens irrespective of color. The bill passed both Houses overwhelmingly, was vetoed by President Johnson, and was passed over the veto by a vote of 135 to 48 in the House and 28 to 10 in the Senate, all the Massachusetts Representatives and both Massachusetts Senators voting in its favor.
The Springfield Republican severely criticized the provision of this drastic measure, which excluded the civil and military leaders of the Confederacy from the suffrage, maintaining that it meant the exclusion of the natural leaders of the South. The Republican declared that there could be "no real, no true, no lasting reconstruction in the South that does not include all classes of its people." In the meantime a supplementary reconstruction bill, much longer and providing more minutely for carrying into effect the drastic provisions of the first act, was passed over the President's veto and became a law on March 23, 1867, the solid Massachusetts delegation supporting it on every stage. April 20, the Republican again attempted to stem the tide of radical Republicanism by pointing out the mistake of giving the franchise to the great mass of ignorant
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.