Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy by David O. Stewart

for official actions he might have blamed on Johnson. And Stanton commanded broad support in the Republican Congress.
    Yet Stanton’s ability to confound Johnson also came from his peculiar personal style. Stanton’s breathtakingly bad manners could give him the initiative in conversations, shielding him from the awkwardness that a situation would create for more sensitive mortals. Stanton’s infrequent fits of charm could seem all the sweeter to those bruised by his customary disdain. By whatever means, the war secretary gained the upper hand, and kept it for a long time, over the strong-willed president he was supposed to serve.
    As the months marched on, even Stanton grew sensitive to the charge of disloyalty to the president, but he never loosened his hold on his office. He professed to fear any successor who might be appointed by the president, who was “led by bad passions and the counsel of unscrupulous and dangerous men.” Johnson’s pro-South leanings, his indifference to the freedmen’s condition, his dedication to the states’ rights principles that supported secession in the first place—all persuaded Stanton that Johnson was a dangerous, dangerous man. Pledging to remain at his post until he died “with harness on,” Stanton insisted the nation was in greater peril with Johnson in office than it ever had been during the Civil War.
     
     
    In the second half of 1866, Johnson wielded a sort of reverse Midas touch. One by one, his political schemes turned to dross until the fall elections delivered a crushing rejection of him and his policies.
    First came the National Union Convention in Philadelphia. Convention managers provided high theater on the first day, August 12, when a Massachusetts delegate linked arms with a South Carolinian to lead a procession 7,000 strong. Despite the unifying symbolism, the meeting fell flat. The Republicans and Democrats could not agree on enough to support a new political party. The president blamed the failure on his old colleagues, the Democrats. They could not overlook his wartime alliance with the Republicans. Johnson realized he would have to go it alone, a man without a party in a time of intense party loyalties. To save his policies and his career, Johnson decided to break many of the prevailing rules of presidential deportment.
    The president came out swinging. When the official proceedings of the Union convention were presented to him, his remarks challenged Congress yet again. “We have seen hanging upon the verge of the government,” he announced, “a body called, or which assumes to be, the Congress of the United States, while, in fact, it is a Congress of only a part of the states.” He predicted that “every step” taken by Congress would “perpetuate disunion” and even “make a disruption of the states inevitable.” He accused a minority in Congress of seeking to establish “despotism or monarchy itself.”
    Having denied the legitimacy of Congress, Johnson set out on an unprecedented appeal to the people of the North. Nineteenth-century candidates for president rarely campaigned openly. Rather than stump for election, most candidates sat placidly at home while a team of agents spoke for them around the country. Even more, sitting presidents did not engage in active politicking to bring policy issues to the people. Johnson resolved to change all that. He was certain the people would support him once he explained the issues to them—the need to protect the sovereignty of the states, to uphold the “Constitution as it is.” His strength as a politician had always been his power as a public speaker. He would apply that strength to the struggle with Congress.
    Johnson agreed to speak at a ceremony in Illinois to honor the late Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democrat who lost to Lincoln in the 1860 presidential race. The president used the trip as the pretext for a three-week “Swing Around the Circle” through the vote-rich states of the