Review: The Impeachers by Brenda Wineapple

The 13th amendment had some unintended consequences.  One was the abolition of the 3/5ths rule that counted slaves as only 3/5ths of a person for representation. That meant that when and if the southern states were readmitted to the union they instantly gained 20 more representatives and the opportunity to win back everything they had lost during the war.  Already, former slave owners and whites were attacking, beating, and killing any black who might venture onto the street, especially anyone they suspected of having been in the union army.  The Memphis, TN riots of 1866 were just a taste of what might be coming and Tennessean Andrew Johnson was no help at all. Conditions in the south had become intolerable as Johnson emissary, Carl Shurz, discovered to Johnson’s dismay.

The “cheerful” South of President Johnson was not the South described in German immigrant leader Carl Schurz’s report. The former Major General would report on a post-war region whose people alternated between depressed prostration at the hands of a conqueror and a desire for vengeance against blacks and Southern Unionists. Schurz wrote that even the shooting of uniformed United States soldiers was not “unfrequently” reported.

Worse was the situation of freedmen and the Northerners working with them. Officials from the Freedman’s Bureau were often mobbed and their contractors assaulted and murdered.  Blacks were expected to behave as slaves by 95% of the white Southerners Schurz talked to. One former slaveholder even suggested they should submit willingly to whippings by whites. Those that did not “act like slaves” were sometimes tortured or killed. Blacks who left the plantations where they had been enslaved were “shot or otherwise severely punished”, Schurz wrote. A diligent investigator, Schurz met with former slaves and examined the “bullet and buckshot wounds in their bodies”.

Brenda Wineapple has done a masterful job of describing the background of Johnson, his trial and the personalities of  the Senators involved.  There's no question that Johnson had no interest in helping former slaves gain an appropriate footing after decades of subjugation.  He certainly did not want them to have the vote and considered them subhuman. His only goal was getting the union back together and if that meant letting former slave owners back into positions of authority in the south, removing federal troops that were the only guarantee of protection for former slaves, and dismantling the Freedman's Bureau, well then, so be it.  His argument was that the Constitution had supported slavery so what was the big deal. In fact, he supported amendments to the Constitution that would have guaranteed the perpetual right to have slaves and another that would have made those amendments unamendable.  (Where he found that piece of idiocy in the Constitution I have no idea.)

Johnson famously said he believed in “government for white men”. Hundreds of African Americans died in riots in New Orleans and Memphis that showed the new freedoms would not be easily kept. Johnson’s supporters dismissed the scores of murders as “isolated incidents”. Johnson dismissed military leaders in the southern states and appointed governors who would support him.

Even though the book was written before the current impeachment crisis, similarities abound.  Johnson took a train around the country holding rallies to whip up support and making remarks such as  “I don’t care about my dignity.” Senator John Sherman of Illinois complained that Johnson had “sunk the presidential office to the level of a grog-house”.  No one it seems liked him. Wineapple highlights “the president’s morbid sensitivity, his need for absolute loyalty, and his wariness”. Johnson revered Andrew Jackson, another populist.  He hated elitists (i.e. lawyers) and plutocrats.

Clearly, Johnson was guilty of violating the Tenure of Office Act.  Johnson always claimed it was unconstitutional, and it probably was.  It certainly was according to the Supreme Court in 1926 that ruled a similar law unconstitutional.  The original had been repealed in 1887. But the article on which Johnson was most nearly convicted was the catch-all 11th article, which accused him of offenses including violations of the separation of powers but also of autocratic actions and other behavior inconsistent with the office.

The final tally in the Senate failed to convict by one vote and it's clear according to David Stewart that Ross's vote -- contrary to the hagiography in Profiles in Courage -- was purchased.

 

Excellent read.

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