Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy (33 page)

Ward was so elated by his escape from Butler’s clutches that he wrote an audacious letter proposing that Butler drop the investigation, apologize to Woolley, and introduce legislation to pay the president’s legal fees. Whatever Butler missed, it may have been why Ward said that in his whole life, he was “proudest of the part I took in defeating the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.”

For all of Butler’s industry, though, he seemed to pull some of his punches, chasing less promising leads while failing to follow up on others. To begin with, he concentrated on securing the testimony of Woolley, the least well-connected member of the Astor House group. He meticulously traced Woolley’s financial transactions during those critical weeks of the trial, ultimately placing some $45,000 in Woolley’s hands. Other witnesses declined to answer questions, were evasive, or were contradicted by competing evidence, yet Butler gave those other witnesses a pass. The House manager freely allowed witnesses to revise their testimony after the fact, sometimes in significant ways. Some witnesses were questioned informally, not under oath. General Alonzo Adams, who originated one bribery scheme, claimed he could not even recall when he had become a General of the Army. He was deemed by the committee “utterly false and untruthful.” Yet Butler took no action against him.

Was Butler merely putting on a show of pursuing the truth? He likely realized soon enough that he could not gain great political advantages from the investigation. Neither the House nor the Senate intended to deal with impeachment any more. Johnson’s term in office would end on March 4, 1869, which was drawing ever closer.

Butler evidently sought to uncover only certain truths, those that would serve his political goals, which involved inflicting the maximum possible damage on the president and the Democratic Party, while reinforcing the Grant-Colfax ticket for the fall election. Also high among Butler’s priorities was any development that would increase his own power and influence. With these goals, Butler found it awkward, at best, that so much evidence seemed to implicate Kansas Senator Pomeroy, who had been a firm vote to convict the president but also had a most checkered reputation. Butler’s ability to attack others was limited by his need to whitewash Pomeroy, despite evidence so incriminating that the Kansan testified four times in a desperate search for a satisfactory narrative for his conduct. Postal agent Legate went through a three-hour preparation session in Pomeroy’s committee room to ensure that he did not irretrievably implicate his fellow Kansan.

In the final committee report, Butler cried out in frustration that the only senators named by the Astor House group as potential bribe-takers were Republicans who voted “guilty,” including Pomeroy, Nye of Nevada, Anthony and Sprague of Rhode Island, and Morton of Indiana. What else did Butler expect his political enemies to say? After all, he spent no effort investigating allegations about those other Republicans and chose to focus on Woolley, the only Democrat in the Astor House group.

Butler hurried the report into print on July 3. He wanted to thwart President Johnson’s quest for the Democratic nomination for president. That party’s convention was meeting in New York the following week. The report, though, was an anticlimax. As with the preliminary report, only Butler signed it. The proof still failed to place dollars in the pocket of any senator. In a letter to his father, Thomas Ewing, Jr. scorned the committee’s claim that it lacked only a link or two in proving that Charles Woolley bribed Senator Ross: “That is, they can’t tell who got [the money] from Woolley or who paid it to Ross!”

Still, Ross, Henderson, and Fowler—the defectors most suspected of selling their votes—blistered the report in speeches on the Senate floor. Ross’s denunciation was particularly vigorous, referring to Butler’s “well-known groveling instincts and proneness to slime and uncleanness.” Denials, most politicians learn, have less force than accusations. Though that truism can be unfair, it also reflects human experience. As Henderson himself argued several years later, when he was prosecuting Whiskey Ring defendants, anyone capable of committing a crime is capable of denying it.

For eighteen months after the impeachment trial ended, one newsman fitfully tried to answer the questions that Butler’s report raised. A native of Massachusetts, Henry Van Ness Boynton was not a man to trifle with. Made a general of Ohio Volunteers during the Civil War, he earned the Congressional Medal of Honor at the battle of Missionary Ridge, where he was severely wounded. Writing for the
Cincinnati Gazette
, Boynton quickly established himself as a leading Washington correspondent. Though a firm Republican, he was nonpartisan in ferreting out official misconduct.

In reports published in late December 1869, Boynton identified three schemes to use cash to influence the impeachment vote. The first involved an offer that agents of certain Republican senators should wager $50,000 (at least $700,000 in today’s dollars) that the president would be acquitted. Once those senators voted to ensure acquittal, the bet would be paid off. Though this proposal was supported by two Cabinet members (Seward and Postmaster General Randall), Boynton concluded that the scheme was not implemented. The second plan was the one designed by Cornelius Wendell at the request of Seward, Randall, and Treasury Secretary McCulloch. Boynton found that $150,000 (over $2 million in current value) was raised for payoffs, but he could not establish that the funds were paid to senators. Most likely, he thought, middlemen like Fuller and Legate siphoned off most of the money. The third scheme, according to Boynton, was Butler’s attempt to induce Wendell to reveal scheme number two in return for $100,000 (worth at least $1.4 million today).

To Boynton, Ben Butler was the worst rascal in the crowd. Butler’s pursuit of Charles Woolley, the correspondent concluded, was a smokescreen behind which all other scoundrels were able to retreat. Boynton was disgusted by Butler’s failure to publish key testimony from the investigation (only a few transcripts survive from Butler’s inquiry). Wendell, Randall, and Seward aide Erastus Webster all gave testimony that was never disclosed. Boynton did not know what Butler was hiding but was sure the congressman was hiding something. Having expected to prove the perfidy of the president’s defenders, Boynton concluded that Johnson’s pursuers were no better.

In response to Boynton’s articles, Cornelius Wendell gave an intriguing newspaper interview. He confirmed Boynton’s reporting about the proposed wager on the verdict, and the acquittal fund. In a public exchange with Senator Ross, Wendell said he did not know of money that was paid to Ross. Wendell added that several thousand dollars had been offered to Perry Fuller to influence Ross, but Fuller declined it.

Boynton’s investigation certainly reinforces suspicions of corruption in the Senate vote. So does a letter that Wendell wrote the day before Johnson left office in March of 1869. In it, Wendell requested the president’s help in recovering $10,000 paid for “expenses attending the impeachment trial.” The costs, Wendell explained, were incurred “at the instigation and by the direction of [Postmaster General] A. W. Randall, E[dmund] Cooper, and E[rastus] D. Webster.” Randall and Wendell had managed to raise $1,500 of the amount, but the balance remained unpaid. Without directly asking for payment, Wendell told the president, “You can judge the object of this note.”

With evidence that is both untidy and incomplete, definitive pronouncements are difficult to make about bribery and the impeachment vote. Operating without modern tools for investigating public crime—such as coercive grants of witness immunity, ready access to sophisticated banking records, or the threat of long prison terms for perjury and official misconduct—Butler still turned up intriguing evidence, significant chunks of which can be confirmed. That Butler was not exclusively interested in the truth makes the historical riddle yet more challenging. Still, some points can be stated.

The president’s partisans assembled at least one war chest, and probably more, to buy senators’ votes. They entered into substantive negotiations with numerous parties claiming to represent senators interested in selling their votes—General Alonzo Adams, postal agent James Legate, Indian trader Perry Fuller, Willis Gaylord (Pomeroy’s agent), Senator Pomeroy himself, and possibly others who managed to cover their tracks more effectively. Legate described a concerted effort to sell senators’ votes, which Fuller confirmed in substantial part. Indeed, Legate claimed eighteen months after the trial that John Henderson of Missouri received $50,000 at New York’s Astor House for his vote, and that Gaylord received $25,000 that had been raised for the impeachment but was diverted to a futile attempt to purchase Collector Smythe’s confirmation as American minister to Austria. Sixty thousand dollars, Legate explained, was paid for yet another senator’s vote, and $25,000 went to Senator Waitman Willey of West Virginia, who double-crossed his bribers by voting for conviction but keeping the money. Though many elements of Legate’s tale are not confirmed, Perry Fuller had to have very good reasons for paying off Legate’s mortgage in return for the postal agent’s papers and his hasty departure from Washington. And then Fuller burned Legate’s papers.

Were any votes actually sold? With no solid proof, only probabilities can be offered. A number of clever and powerful people worked hard to purchase votes. Virtually all contemporaries defended the honor of Senators Fessenden, Grimes, and Trumbull. In doing so, most made clear that they were not so sure about the other four defectors. At least three of those others—Ross, Fowler, and Henderson—cast votes that were contrary to their prior statements and to their immediate political advantage as Republicans. And what of the two or three additional Republicans who were expected to vote for acquittal if their votes were needed? Were arrangements (that is, payments) made with them, also?

Then there was Ross’s double game before the May 16 vote. The Kansan argued that he should not be suspected of corruption merely because he changed his mind about how to vote. That’s a fair point. His actions might be explained as reflecting genuine uncertainty. But they are explained equally well, even better, as the efforts of a man holding out for the best offer. For a man whose companions in the hours before he voted were Perry Fuller, the embodiment of corruption in 1868, and Thomas Ewing, Jr., another leading political manipulator, that explanation has great power.

Selling a vote in the first presidential impeachment would have been a dazzlingly craven act, but not inconsistent with the ethics of the era. House Speaker Colfax and a fistful of congressmen took railroad stock in return for supporting the Union Pacific Railroad. A secretary of war, William Belknap, would be forced to resign in 1872 for taking kickbacks from military contractors, while President Grant’s chief of staff would be linked to the Whiskey Ring. Were senators’ votes purchased to preserve Johnson’s presidency? Admitting a lack of certainty, the verdict here is that it is more likely than not.

Though he kept some distance from the grimy details of the campaign to save Johnson by all possible means, Secretary of State Seward plainly inspired and set in motion much of the effort. Many of the schemers who planned the political deals, bribes, and patronage payoffs were Seward men, from Thurlow Weed to William Evarts, from Sheridan Shook to Erastus Webster to Ransom Van Valkenburg. Seward, who had accepted Johnson as Lincoln’s true heir, drew no ethical lines in the desperate battle to preserve Johnson’s presidency.

Secretary of State William Henry Seward, staunch Johnson loyalist.

Then arises the more modern question: What did President Johnson know and when did he know it? Was he aware of the war chests assembled to buy senators on his behalf? Did he know of the bargaining with supposed agents for senators willing to be corrupted? The president’s men were generally careful to absolve Johnson of having any knowledge of their activities in trying to buy impeachment votes. Johnson made several statements to staff members that he would not buy senators’ votes. Are they, and he, to be believed?

Here again, only probabilities can be stated, but they are strong. Edmund Cooper of Tennessee, Johnson’s friend and companion, touched every corrupt scheme. Other senior officials were deeply involved in the vote-buying efforts. From the Cabinet—Secretary of State Seward, Treasury Secretary McCulloch, and Postmaster General Randall. From the White House staff—Colonel William Moore and William Warden. Is it possible that all of them engaged in such high-risk activity without telling the boss? Is it possible that none of them ever mentioned their activities to the president with a passion for micromanagement, who kept a list of senators on his desk and reviewed with newspaper correspondents how they would vote? A truism for corruption investigations in the modern era is that when there is widespread cheating, the top official knows. Indeed, the corruption cannot happen unless that person approves. People are not so foolish as to undertake high-risk behaviors like bribery without being certain that their superiors approve. That lesson rings even more true for powerful people like Cabinet members who are jealous of their public reputations. President Johnson knew.