At the outset the Evening Post and the Times were irritated by two assertions of the anti-Johnson radicals. The first was that the President might and should be suspended from office pending the outcome of the trial. Not only was there no constitutional warrant for such action, wrote Bryant, but the question had been discussed in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and it had voted that Congress should have no such power of suspension. The Tribune held also that if the Senate, sitting as a High Court upon the President’s disobedience to the Tenure of Office Act, declared the act unconstitutional, then its decision became forever binding. The Supreme Court would have no authority to pass upon the constitutionality of the act, and if it presumed to do so and to differ from the High Court, Congress would be justified in impeaching or removing the judges. This was too much for the Nation as well as the Evening Post, and Godkin promptly demolished the assertion. It should be said that Greeley at this time was absent in the West, and the Tribune was under the charge of John Russell Young, whose harshness Greeley later disapproved.
On Feb. 27, three days after the impeachment, the Evening Post declared that “the general impression is that the case is essentially prejudged, and that Mr. Johnson will be removed by the Senate.” This was the opinion of all the city’s organs, from the radical Nation on the one side to the World on the other. The World, in fact, made an appeal for a fund of $10,000,000, with which to bribe those Senators who could hardly hope for reëlection anyhow; and while this was a bit of humor—the Tribune alone took it seriously—its point lay in the World’s conviction that the Republican Senators were all so prejudiced that only millions could win over a few of them. Like the Nation, the Post devoted an editorial to a scrutiny of the qualifications of Benjamin Wade, who as President pro tem. of the Senate would succeed Johnson. Bryant admitted Wade’s honesty, courage, and frankness, but regretted that in impetuosity, narrowness, and prejudice he would be too much like the man he replaced. His manners, too, must be mended, for he recalled a Scotch lady’s remark: “Our Jock sweers awfu’, but nae doot it’s a great set-off to conversation.”
As the trial progressed the Evening Post was gratified to find that the case was much less nearly prejudged than it had supposed. Disappointed by the lack of eloquence on both sides, it was pleased by the efficiency of Evarts, Stanbery, and others of the President’s counsel in displaying the strength of their case. They made it plain that Johnson’s intention in dismissing Stanton had not been to defy Congress and the law wantonly, but to obtain a judicial test of the Tenure of Office Act. They showed also that some anti-Johnson Senators had, while the Act was pending, expounded the view that it did not protect men held over from Lincoln’s Cabinet, like Stanton. The Post on April 22 credited the Senate with having dealt fairly with the accused and having admitted all the evidence in his favor.
The breakdown of the case against Johnson was gall and wormwood to the more bitter newspaper partisans of Congress. Theodore Tilton’s Independent read Chief Justice Chase, who impartially presided over the trial, out of the party. The Tribune was trembling for “the very existence of the government.” Never noted for gentleness of retort, it now accused Horatio Seymour of “gigantic, deliberate, atrocious lies”; the Herald of “falsehoods”; the World of “dodges and prevarications”; and the Times and Post again of being “copperhead.” The Times remonstrated. Pointing out that Greeley was to preside at the Dickens dinner, as the representative of the American press, it said that he should remember that it was not in the dignity of a gentleman to use the word “liar.” Greeley replied that the truth was not a question of taste, but of flat morality, and that he would never be mealy-mouthed in its defense.
The seven Republican Senators who finally determined to vote against conviction were Fessenden, Lyman Trumbull, Henderson, Fowler, Van Winkle, Grimes, and Ross. It is the belief of all later historians that their courageous and just action is one of the finest episodes of the sordid reconstruction period. But a storm of anger broke upon them in Washington. It was on May 16 that the voting began. Four days earlier the Tribune, flying into a panic, declared that a hundred men had been under pay in Washington since the trial began to cry down impeachment and bet against conviction. It accused Lyman Trumbull of being to blame, and insinuated that his motives were venal: “but a few weeks ago he was paid $5,000 for arguing the constitutionality of the Reconstruction laws.... Republicans ask to-night what the guerdon is for defending the President in the impeachment trial.” Let President Johnson, the incarnation of Treason and Slavery, be acquitted, it added, and he becomes King; as yet he could be removed by law, but “your next attempt will be a revolution.” Next day, May 13, the Tribune headed an editorial attack upon Senator Grimes, who had defended Johnson, “Judas’s Thirty Reasons,” and concluded: “We have had Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Jefferson Davis, and now we have James W. Grimes!” It categorically accused Senator Fowler of accepting a bribe, and it called Henderson and Ross suspect.
Perhaps the best retort was that of the Times, in an editorial debating the question who was the most colossal criminal of the century, and concluding that Senator Ross closely resembled Sennacherib. But a serious answer was necessary, and a dozen indignant journals, including the Nation and Harper’s Weekly, replied to this temporarily misguided oracle of a half-million readers. The Post’s editorial of May 13 was headed, “Coercing a Court”; and in it and an editorial of the next day it graphically described the pressure brought to bear upon the independent Senators, and condemned the attacks against them as undermining both the impartiality of judicial tribunals, and the principle that an accused man shall be believed innocent until proved guilty. It anticipated the verdict of history:
With whom is the sober second thought of the people most likely to agree—with the Tribune and Gen. Butler, or with such men as Trumbull, Grimes, Fessenden, and Henderson? It is plain that these gentlemen perform a duty in many ways painful to themselves; they are driven reluctantly to act in opposition to their own wishes; their verdict is given in favor of a man whom they consider unwise, and whose occupancy of the Presidential chair they believe has brought evils upon the country. Is it not honorable to them that their sense of justice and duty impels them to disappoint the demands of their party?
A scene of eager excitement and tension presented itself outside the office of every evening newspaper in New York on May 16, crowds packing the space before the bulletin boards. The vote was thirty-five for conviction and nineteen for acquittal, or one less than the number needed to depose the President. The Evening Post was outraged by the fact that the first vote was taken on the eleventh impeachment article, that being considered the strongest and the impeachment managers fearing the moral effect of a defeat on the weak early articles; and by the Senate’s immediate adjournment for ten days, which the Post believed a maneuver to permit more pressure to be brought upon the seven independent Senators. “The verdict of acquittal gives general satisfaction,” it said; “it is felt that a conviction, under the circumstances, would have had no moral force, and would only have injured the party....” Like every other decent organ, it condemned as “disgraceful” Senator Wade’s vote against Johnson and in favor of his own elevation to the Presidency, cast at a time when he and others believed that a single ballot would sway the issue. For that act the public never quite forgave Wade.
The Times, Herald, and World equally rejoiced in the acquittal, and the Sun accepted it with a milder approval. The Nation found “several reasons” for regretting it, and the Tribune was inconsolable. But the anger of the radicals was more intense than long-lived. In 1884 one of the editors of the Evening Post, Horace White, was attending the Chicago Convention which nominated Blaine. The name of ex-Senator Henderson was reported for the permanent chairmanship. “The assembled multitude,” wrote White, “knew at once the significance of the nomination, and gave cheer after cheer of applause and approval. It was the sign that all was forgiven on both sides.”