The Radical Republicans

The Radical Republicans

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

It would be worthwhile to take a closer look at the Radical Republicans.  They wielded tremendous power in their party. They were not only abolitionists, but, like most other Republicans of their day, they tended to support higher taxes (in the form of high tariff rates), subsidies and land grants to certain big businesses, and the expansion of the federal government's size and power. Southern leaders consistently opposed these policies. Most Radical Republicans made no secret of their hatred of the South. Southern leaders suspected that some of the Radicals didn't really care about the slaves but were using slavery as an excuse to crush and subjugate the South. The harsh, illegal Reconstruction program that the Radical Republicans in Congress imposed on the South after the war led many people, in all sections of the country, to believe this suspicion was justified. Even President Andrew Johnson said in an official message that the Reconstruction regime that the Radicals wanted to impose on the South was illegal, vengeful, and despotic (Lloyd Paul Stryker, Andrew Johnson: A Study in Courage, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1930, pp. 263-285; see also Johnson's veto message of the first Reconstruction act). Johnson tried to prevent the Radicals from imposing such harsh terms by vetoing their Reconstruction bill, but they had enough votes to override his veto. When Johnson persisted in opposing the Radicals, they indicted him and then tried to remove him from office on the basis of charges that can only be described as shameful, not to mention invalid (Stryker, Andrew Johnson, pp. 572-674; see also Randall and Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction, pp. 601-617).

Almost immediately after Lincoln was assassinated, Radical Republicans in Congress and in the War Department, along with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, falsely accused Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders of complicity in Lincoln's death. A War Department military tribunal and the House Judiciary Committee formally endorsed this claim. They based this accusation on information they knew was bogus. Some Radicals continued to repeat the accusation even after it became clear that it was false. Cooper notes that most people came to reject the claim that Davis was involved in Lincoln's death:

In the immediate aftermath of Lincoln's assassination . . . the War Department, with Secretary Stanton's enthusiastic endorsement, claimed that Davis was intimately involved in the conspiracy that resulted in Lincoln's murder as well as other failed intrigues. . . . In subsequent investigations this supposedly crystal-clear certainty turned murky. A few officials clung to the theory of Davis's responsibility, but most observers found the evidence flimsy, even fraudulent. (Jefferson Davis, American, pp. 582-583)

The story of the Radical Republicans' attempt to convict Jefferson Davis of involvement in Lincoln's death is one of the most shameful episodes in American history, and it says a lot about how utterly lawless and corrupt some Republicans were.  I'm unaware of a single textbook that says anything about the Radicals’ unethical conduct in the affair. Therefore, I'd like to devote a few paragraphs to examining some aspects of their attempt to frame Davis for Lincoln's death. One of the best treatments of the subject is Seymour Frank's booklet The Conspiracy Against Jefferson Davis (Biloxi, Mississippi: The Beauvoir Press, 1987). The booklet originally appeared as an article in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review (March 1954) under the title "The Conspiracy to Implicate the Confederate Leaders in Lincoln's Assassination." In his foreword to Frank's booklet, historian James West Thompson discusses some aspects of the attempt to blame Davis for Lincoln's murder:

A surprise witness at the Lincoln conspirators' trial was a man who identified himself as Henry Von Steinacker, who claimed to have attended a meeting of Confederate officers who were planning Lincoln's murder. Shortly after his testimony, defense counsel learned that Von Steinacker had been a member of the Union Army and had been arrested while attempting to desert. Sentenced to death, he had escaped while awaiting execution. Joining the Confederate forces of General Edward Johnson, he had been assigned to headquarters as a draftsman, but he was arrested by the Confederates and accused of theft and of abuse of prisoners. Again he escaped. Defense Attorney Clampitt was denounced by General Lew Wallace . . . for stating these facts. Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt [who headed the Bureau of Military Justice] hypocritically stated that he would be happy to return "Von Steinacker" to the courtroom if only he could be found. It later developed that when "Von Steinacker" testified, he had been a Federal prisoner named Hans Von Winklestein and was serving a sentence for desertion. He had, with the full knowledge of the prosecution, been allowed to testify to lies under a false name, and he was then released from prison immediately afterwards as a reward for his lies.

There were three other "witnesses" who were the backbone of the trial and who supplied the basis of the verdict. All were perjurers for hire, and they were hired by Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt. Foremost was . . . Sanford Conover, alias James Watson Wallace, but whose true name was Charles A. Dunham, a totally unscrupulous New York lawyer. He brought together a group of minor characters whom he drilled in stories he wrote out for each one and drilled them in reciting the stories until they were letter-perfect. Then they gave the depositions of these stories to Judge Holt personally. Only he took their statements. Conover's testimony and that of his "witnesses" proved to be a mass of lies. But Judge Holt continued to use him and to pay him even after he had been thoroughly exposed. . . .

Second of these perjurers was a man who claimed to be Richard Montgomery. His real name was James Thompson, and he was a convicted New York burglar with a long record of felonies.

The third of these perjurers was known as Dr. James B. Merritt, who later confessed to a committee of the House of Representatives that his testimony had been a tissue of lies, for which the government had paid him $6,000. . . . It was on the basis of the lies of these men that Secretary of War Stanton was able to induce new President Andrew Johnson to issue his offer of rewards for the capture of Jefferson Davis and several other Confederates, accused of having plotted Lincoln's death. Stanton claimed that this was on the basis of evidence in the possession of the Bureau of Military Justice. Stanton knew that this was false, that no evidence was held, and that only unsworn, oral statements, never reduced to writing, had been obtained. (Foreword, The Conspiracy Against Jefferson Davis, pp. 5-6)

Time permits me to quote only a small part of Frank's analysis:

The news of President Lincoln's assassination came as a terrific blow to the people of the North. . . . Stanton immediately informed the stunned world that Lincoln's assassination had been the outcome of a general plot to murder the President, his cabinet, and leading Union generals. It was engineered, he charged, by Jefferson Davis and other Southern leaders. . . .

Through bribes and offers of rewards, Stanton's assistants were able to assemble a group of persons who seemed willing to perjure themselves to aid the Secretary in achieving his goal. . . .

In the trial before the military tribunal the prosecution had attempted to establish this complicity [of Davis in Lincoln's death] primarily by the testimony of three witnesses. This attempt had failed despite the fact that the military court, by its verdict, had indicated otherwise.

The three witnesses were Richard Montgomery, Dr. James B. Merritt, and Sanford Conover. By his own admissions, each had done much to discredit his story and to impeach his personal credibility. Holt knew that their stories would not stand public scrutiny and tried to keep their testimony secret. This endeavor had failed. . . . The entire evidence of the three was therefore given to the newspapers.

In early June [1865], this suppressed evidence appeared in the leading American and Canadian papers. Bitter denunciations, indignant denials, and angry countercharges followed. The witnesses had alleged that most of the plotting had occurred in Toronto and Montreal. The newspapers in both cities were swamped with letters and statements, all tending to establish that Montgomery, Merritt, and Conover were men of poor reputation and that their testimony was false. (The Conspiracy Against Jefferson Davis, pp. 11-12, 17-18)

Although President Johnson allowed several people to be tried and hung as conspirators in Lincoln's death, he came to realize that the "evidence" against Davis was false. Incredibly, when it became apparent that Johnson was not going to allow Davis to be brought to trial on the basis of this evidence, two Radical Republicans in Congress plotted with Sanford Conover to produce false evidence that would connect Johnson himself with Lincoln's assassination. Yes, two Republican members of Congress conspired to falsely accuse a sitting president with involvement in the previous president's murder. And, yes, they did so with the same Sanford Conover, one of the discredited Davis-conspiracy witnesses. The two Republicans were Representatives James Ashley and Benjamin Butler. The scheme failed because Conover, fearing the two Congressmen weren't keeping their part of the deal, decided to reveal the plot to Johnson; he turned over to the president several documents that exposed the plan. Needless to say, Johnson was shocked by this information, and he immediately had the documents published in major newspapers, including the New York Times (Frank, The Conspiracy Against Jefferson Davis, pp. 37-38).

The same Republican-controlled Congress that imposed Reconstruction on the South also sanctioned official discrimination against the American Indians in the West and permitted them to be segregated from the rest of society. One textbook, edited by Civil War scholar Bruce Catton and others, puts it this way:

The same Congress that devised Radical Reconstruction . . . approved strict segregation and inequality for the Indian of the West. (Catton et al, editors, The National Experience: A History of the United States, Second Edition, New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1968, p. 416)