THE THREATENED IMPEACHMENT OF ANDREW JOHNSON

By Senator Shelby M. Cullom.

SENA TOR CULLOM, from whose "Fifty Years of Public Service" this account is taken, by permission of A. C. McClurg & Company, was a member of Congress from Illinois at the time impeachment proceedings were brought against President Andrew Johnson.

Leading up to the threatened impeachment of Johnson, which was averted in the Senate by the narrow margin of one vote less than the two-thirds necessary, Congress had repassed several bills over the President's veto. In August, 1867, Stanton was displaced by General Grant as Secretary of War. A month later Congress refused to ratify Stanton's suspension, whereupon Grant resigned and Stanton resumed his post. Early in 1868 Johnson again removed Stanton, and put General Lorenzo Thomas in his place, thereby provoking the historic impeachment proceedings, which Cullom supported.

AS I look back now over the vista of the years that have come and gone, it seems to me that I entered the Lower House of Congress just at the beginning of the most important period in all our history. The great President had been assassinated; the war was over; Andrew Johnson, a Union Democrat, was President of the United States. Reconstruction was the problem which confronted us, how to heal up the nation's wounds and remake a Union which would endure for all time to come. These were the difficult conditions that had to be dealt with by the Thirty-ninth Congress.

Andrew Johnson was the queerest character that ever occupied the White House, and, with the exception of Lincoln only, he entered it under the most trying and difficult circumstances in all our history; but Lincoln had, what Johnson lacked, the support and confidence of the great Republican party. Johnson was never a Republican, and never pretended to be one. He was a lifelong Democrat, and a slaveholder as well; but he was loyal to, the Union, no man living more so. As a Senator from Tennessee, alone of all the Southern Senators, he faced his colleagues from the South in denouncing secession as treason. His subsequent phenomenal course in armed opposition to the Rebellion brought about his nomination for the Vice-Presidency as a shrewd stroke to secure the support of the War Democrats of the North and the Union men of his State and section.

The scene which took place in the Senate chamber when Johnson was inducted into office as Vice-President; the exhibition he made of himself at the time of taking the oath of office, in the presence of the President of the United States, and the representatives of the governments of the world all this, advertised at the time in the opposition press, added to the prejudice against Johnson in the North and made his position more trying and difficult.

There were two striking points in Johnson's character, and I knew him well: first, his loyalty to the Union ; and, second, his utter fearlessness of character. He could not be cowed; old Ben Wade, Sumner, Stevens, all the great leaders of that day could not, through fear, influence him one particle.

In 1861, when he was being made the target of all sorts of threats on account of his solitary stand against secession in the Senate, he let fall this characteristic utterance : "I want to say, not boastingly, with no anger in my bosom, that these two eyes of mine have never looked upon anything in the shape of mortal man that this heart has feared." This utterance probably illustrates Johnson's character more clearly than anything that I could say. He sought rather than avoided a fight. Headstrong, domineering, having fought his way in a State filled with aristocratic Southerners, from the class of so-called "low whites" to the highest position in the United States, he did not readily yield to the dictates of the dominating forces in Congress.

Lincoln had a well-defined policy of reconstruction. Indeed, so liberal was he disposed to be in his treatment of the Southern States that immediately after the surrender of Richmond he would have recognized the old State Government of Virginia had it not been for the peremptory veto of Stanton. Congress was not in session when Johnson came to the Presidency in April, 1865. To do him no more than simple justice, I firmly believe that he wanted to follow out, in reconstruction, what he thought was the policy of Mr. Lincoln, and in this he was guided largely by the advice of Mr. Seward.

But there was this difference. Johnson was, probably in good faith, pursuing the Lincoln policy of reconstruction; but when the legislatures and executives of the Southern States began openly passing laws and executing them so that the negro was substantially placed back into slavery, practically nullifying the results of the awful struggle, the untold loss of life and treasure, Mr. Lincoln certainly would have receded and would have dealt with the South with an iron hand, as Congress had determined to do, and as General Grant was compelled to do when he assumed the Presidency.

From April to the reassembling of Congress in December, Johnson had a free hand in dealing with the seceding States, and he was not slow to take advantage of it. He seemed disposed to recognize the old State governments ; to restrict the suffrage to the whites ; to exercise freely the pardoning power in the way of extending executive clemency not only to almost all classes, but to every individual who would apply for it. The result was, it seemed to be certain that if the Johnson policy were carried out to the fullest extent the supremacy of the Republican party in the councils of the nation would be at stake.

To express it in a word, the motive of the opposition to the Johnson plan of reconstruction was the firm conviction that its success would wreck the Republican party, and by restoring the Democrats to power bring back Southern supremacy and Northern vassalage. The impeachment, in a word, was a culmination of the struggle between the legislative and the executive departments of the Government over the problem of reconstruction. The legislative department claimed exclusive jurisdiction over reconstruction; the executive claimed that it alone was competent to deal with the subject.

It was at once determined by the Republican majority in Congress that the representatives of the eleven seceding States should not be admitted. The Constitution expressly gives to the House and Senate the exclusive power to judge of the admission and qualification of its own members.

We were surprised at the moderation of the President's message, which came in on Tuesday after Congress assembled. In tone and general character the message was wholly unlike Johnson. It was an admirable state document, one of the finest from a literary and probably from every other standpoint that ever came from an executive to Congress. It was thought at the time that Mr. Seward wrote it, but it has since been asserted that it was the product of that foremost of American historians [George] Bancroft, one of Mr. Johnson's close personal friends.

There existed three theories of dealing with the Southern States; one was the President's theory of recognizing the State governments, allowing the States to deal with the suffrage question as they might see fit; the Stevens policy of wiping out all State lines and dealing with the regions as conquered military provinces; and the Sumner theory of treating them as organized territories, recognizing the State lines.

What determined Johnson in his course, I do not know. It was thought that he would be a radical of radicals. Being of the "poor white" class, he may have been flattered by the attentions showered on him by the old Southern aristocrats. Writers of this period have frequently given that as a reason. My own belief has been that he was far too strong a man to be governed in so vital a matter by so trivial a cause. My conviction is that the radical Republican leaders in the House were right; that he believed in the old Democratic party, aside from his loyalty to the Union; and was a Democrat determined to turn the Government over to the Democratic party, reconstructed on a Union basis.

I cannot undertake to go into all the long details of that memorable struggle. As I look back over the history of it now, it seems to me to bear a close resemblance to the beginning of the French Revolution, to the struggle between the States General of France and Louis XVI. Might we not, if things had turned differently, have drifted into chaos and revolution? If Johnson had been impeached and refused to submit, adopting the same tactics as did Stanton in retaining the War Department; had Ben Wade taken the oath of office and demanded possession, Heaven only knows what might have been the result.

But reminiscing in this way, as I cannot avoid doing when I think back over those terrible times, I lose the continuity of my subject. An extension to the Freedman's Bureau bill was passed, was promptly vetoed by the Executive, the veto was as promptly overruled by the House, where there was no substantial opposition, but the Senate failed to pass the bill, the veto of the President to the contrary notwithstanding.

I had not the remotest idea that Johnson would dare to veto the Freedman's Bureau bill, and I made a speech on the subject, declaring a firm conviction to that effect. A veto at that time was almost unheard of. Except during the administration of Tyler, no important bill had ever been vetoed by an executive. It came as a shock to Congress and the country. Excitement reigned supreme. The question was, "Should the bill pass the veto of the President regardless thereof?"

Not the slightest difficulty existed in the House; Thaddeus Stevens had too complete control of that body to allow any question concerning it there. The bill, therefore, was promptly passed over the veto of the President. But the situation in the Senate was different. At that time the Sumner-Wade radical element did not have the necessary two-thirds majority, and the bill failed to pass over the veto of the President. The war between the executive and legislative departments of the Government had fairly commenced, and the first victory had been won by the President.

The Civil Rights bill, drawn and introduced by Judge Trumbull, than whom there was no greater lawyer in the United States Senate, in January, 1866, on the reassembling of Congress, was passed. Then began the real struggle on the part of the radicals in the Senate, headed by Sumner and Wade, to muster the necessary two-thirds majority to pass a bill over the veto of the President.

Let me digress here to say a word in reference to Charles Sumner. . . . It was his mission to awake the public conscience to the horrors of slavery. He performed his duty unfalteringly, and it almost cost him his life. Mr. Lincoln was the only man living who ever managed Charles Sumner, or could use him for his purpose. Sumner's end has always seemed to me most pitiful. Removed from his high position as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, followed relentlessly by the enmity of President Grant, then at the very acme of his fame; drifting from the Republican party, his own State repudiating him, Charles Sumner died of a broken heart.

But to return to the struggle between the President and Congress. Trumbull, Sumner, Wade and the leaders were bound in one way or another to get the necessary two-thirds. The vote was taken in the Senate : "Shall the Civil Rights bill pass the veto of the President to the contrary notwithstanding?" It was understood the vote would be very close, and the result uncertain.