On April 11, 1868, the flagging public interest in the Senate’s Impeachment Trial of Andrew Johnson was revived as two generals, Lorenzo Thomas and William Tecumseh Sherman, were called to the stand to testify.
Lorenzo Thomas was one of the few high-ranking military men who continued to show political loyalty to Andrew Johnson in 1868. Sometimes accused of being mentally compromised by alcohol, Thomas often functioned as a co-conspirator with the president. The general had accepted Johnson’s appointment as acting Secretary of War, a post Ulysses S. Grant had eschewed because it violated the Tenure of Office Act and could be punished with a jail term. In fact, when Thomas’s attempt to eject Edwin Stanton had resulted in Thomas’s own brief imprisonment for trangressing the Act.
When Thomas testified for the defense, he told the Senate that the decision to try to take over the War Department by force had been his own, and not the president’s. On cross examination, Ben Butler tripped up Thomas into admitting that he had attended cabinet meetings as the Secretary of War that were presided over by Johnson. This contradicted the president’s legal team’s claim that Stanton had never been removed from office, and so no violation of the Tenure act could have taken place. Thomas’s stumbles on the witness stand led to laughter in the Senate gallery, but it may have convinced some Senators that Thomas had been acting as a loose cannon in the Stanton controversy.
Thomas was succeeded on the stand by Sherman, one of the most respected generals in the army. The defense wanted to use his testimony to show that Johnson had intended his removal of Stanton as a way to test the constitutionality of the Tenure of Office Act in the Supreme Court. Butler objected to Sherman testifying about what Johnson had said to him. If the words of the president were to be introduced as evidence, he argued, the defense should call the president himself to the stand.
Sherman was allowed to testify about what the president said to him, but he disappointed the defense legal team by denying that Johnson had ever told him that Stanton’s removal was merely a mechanism for bringing the Tenure of Office Act before the courts. According to Sherman, “Johnson “did not state to me, that his purpose was to bring [the dispute] to the courts directly; but for the purpose of having the office administered properly in the interest of the Army and of the whole country.” Contrary to what the defense had claimed, Sherman said that the move had been made to get rid of Stanton, not to make a constitutional point. Sherman did say that later on Johnson indicated a desire to challenge the Tenure of Office Act in court, but the implication was that he was covering up a perhaps illegal intention.
Sources: Stewart, David O.. Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy (p. 211). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition; and Wineapple, Brenda. The Impeachers (p. 309-310). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Note: The feature illustration is The Senate as a Court During the Johnson Impeachment.
Harpers Weekly April 11, 1868, pages 232-233.
