THE DISCONTENT WITH PRESIDENT JOHNSON
ON December 18, 1865, eight months after the death of Lincoln, the Thirteenth Amendment was proclaimed by Secretary Seward, it having received the indorsement of two thirds of all the States in the Union. Partly through my solicitation, President Johnson had used his great influence with the border States to gain their approval of emancipation. During the fight for the Thirteenth Amendment it was no secret that some of the leading Radicals in Congress were indifferent toward the abolishment of slavery at that time, as well as toward Mr. Lincoln’s scheme of reconstruction, out of the belief that those measures would make inevitable his renomination and election, which they did not favor. The Radicals had been sympathetic toward Andrew Johnson as senator and as military governor of Tennessee, on account of his vigorous antislavery views, but when he became President, and, as he believed, took up the work of reconstruction on the lines that Lincoln had begun, they at once realized that his success would frustrate their plans for the political domination of the South.
Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson
ANDREW JOHNSON
This portrait is from a photograph taken not long before his death.
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LARGER IMAGE
Senator Sumner’s theory of “State suicide” and Thad. Stevens’s idea of “conquered provinces,” became the basis of the Radical scheme of territorializing the South by keeping the States that had seceded under semi-military rule, and condemning them to a period of probation before they should be allowed to come back into the Union on terms of self-government.
Those of us in Congress who believed that Johnson’s policy was in the main in line with the right principles were nevertheless not in entire agreement with him. He felt that he was following precedent as far as Lincoln had established it, and that he was entitled to the confidence of the conservative Union element of the country; but he was hot-headed, and as the controversy with the Radicals in Congress grew, his attitude became more and more aggressive and irritating to the majority.
Early in 1866, Congress passed a bill enlarging the powers of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Johnson vetoed it, as well as a revised bill that followed, and the latter was enacted over his head. Congress soon after enacted a measure to fortify the rights of the Negroes, known as the Civil-Rights Bill, which he promptly vetoed, and which was as promptly passed over his head. Then, to prevent the President, who was now in open conflict with the Radical Republicans, from dispossessing the office-holders who were their friends, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in a form which most of the Radicals interpreted to mean that the President might not supplant even a member of his own Cabinet. As another weapon against the administration, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act, which designated as illegal the State governments which had been set up by Johnson in the South, and provided that those States should be ruled by military governors appointed by the President, but really under control of the head of the army. Both these bills were vetoed by the President and Congress promptly enacted them over his head.
The President’s official advisers, who, it should not be forgotten, were those who had formed Lincoln’s Cabinet, themselves strongly objected to the Tenure of Office Act, the President’s veto being drawn up by Seward and Stanton. The latter was most emphatic in declaring that the act was unconstitutional; but it was part of the irony of the situation that Stanton was the first to feel its effects, and thereafter to become active in maintaining its validity. With Stanton’s suspension and the appointment, first of General Grant, and then of General Lorenzo Thomas, as Secretary of War ad interim, the first practical move for impeachment may be said to have begun.