Reconstruction and the Gilded Age 163impeachment; and on March 2 the committee brought in nine charges.
These articles dealt mainly with alleged violations of the Tenure of Of-
fice Act, but they also included accusations of a conspiracy by intimida-
tion and threats to prevent Stanton from holding office. The following
day the House added two more articles: one accusing the President of
“violent utterances” and the other a catchall called the omnibus article.
Seven members were appointed to prosecute the charges in the Senate;
the most prominent of these were Ben “Beast” Butler, Thaddeus Ste-
vens, George Boutwell, and John A. Bingham.
Opening statements by the members before the Senate began on
March 30 with Chief Justice Salmon Portland Chase presiding. But
the prosecutors merely harangued the senators and assumed that the
ultimate verdict was a foregone conclusion. They did not offer tangible
evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
On May 16 the senators voted the omnibus article first, and Johnson
escaped removal by a vote of 35 in favor to 19 opposed, just one vote shy
of the required two-thirds necessary for conviction. The nineteen in-
cluded seven Republicans and twelve Democrats. Senator Edmund G.
Ross of Kansas, a Radical Republican, showed courage and conviction
by voting for acquittal. When several more articles failed to convict
Johnson, the Senate on May 26 adjourned as a court of impeachment.
When Stevens was informed of the verdict, he cried out, “The country
is going to the devil.” He died shortly thereafter. When asked about
the court’s decision, Senator James Grimes of Iowa declared that they
had been asked to make a decision based on politics. “I can not agree to
destroy the harmonious working of the Constitution for the sake of
getting rid of an unacceptable President.”
The decision marked the end of the kind of presidential power exer-
cised by Abraham Lincoln. Johnson had tried and failed to control
Reconstruction. By its actions, Congress had assumed command of
national policy in restoring the Union. This is the way it should be,
insisted Senator John Sherman of Ohio: the executive “should be sub-
ordinate to the legislative branch,” just as the found ers intended.
Shortly afterward, the Republican national nominating con-
vention met in Chicago and on the first ballot chose Ulysses S. Grant as