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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.

PREPARING FOR IMPEACHMENT

THUS the impeachment of Andrew Johnson was the culmination of political differences which had become increasingly strained in the disturbed conditions which followed the death of Lincoln. The trial has been wrongly described as a great judicial event, but in the strict sense it was not a judicial event, since it was without sound basis in law. It was the culmination of a struggle for political advantage. Still the Radicals who brought it about were intensely in earnest. They felt that the tendency of Johnson’s reconstruction policy was toward the return of the Democratic party to power, which would have the effect of neutralizing the political results of the Civil War.

The very nature of the so-called Court of Impeachment was a monstrosity, as several of the lawyers in that body perceived, for the Senate was to act both as judge and as jury. I made several motions or orders to separate the jurisdiction of the jury from that of the judge, but in vain. I wanted a judge, preferably Chief-Justice Chase, to decide the judicial points, as the Senate was like a mob, deciding everything for themselves.

SENATOR PETER G. VAN WINKLE OF WEST VIRGINIA