Tag Archives: Reconstruction

That These Dead Shall Not Have Died in Vain: The Impeachers

16 Monday Dec 2019

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Review: The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation, by Brenda Wineapple
Random House, 2019. 514 pp. $32

In May 1868, the Senate voted to acquit President Andrew Johnson of the articles of impeachment Congress had brought against him. Tradition holds that the acquittal quashed a vicious vendetta against a defeated, broken Confederacy, and that Johnson stood for the peaceful reconciliation that the postwar nation needed above all. But as Wineapple proves in this riveting, brilliantly researched (and timely) book, tradition is plain wrong.

Rather, the former Confederacy was doing its best to continue the war by other means — killing thousands of African-Americans and Union sympathizers; attempting to regain control of governmental and administrative bodies denied them as former rebels; and clamoring for readmission to the Union without having to fulfill the conditions set forth by Congress in the Reconstruction Acts. As for Andrew Johnson, he tacitly encouraged the racial violence; vetoed the Reconstruction Acts, though he knew he’d be overridden; refused to convene Congress for months, during which he pardoned former Confederates by the carload; restated his ironclad belief that the country “was for white men”; and removed Unionist Reconstruction officials, putting former planters in their place.

Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, Pennsylvania Republican, believed that Andrew Johnson had betrayed the Federal cause in the Civil War and those who’d died for it (courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, via Wikimedia Commons)

Consequently, when Thaddeus Stevens, Radical Republican power in the House, and Charles Sumner and Benjamin Wade, his Senate allies, moved for impeachment, theirs was no vendetta. They believed that Johnson had transgressed the constitutional separation of powers to serve a policy that rendered moot the sacrifices of the Civil War and promised further racial violence and political division. Their ideal — which is why they were called Radicals — was political equality for all Americans, especially the franchise, without which an unjust society would never heal or change.

Wineapple details how the effort to impeach came up short, and what that meant for the South and the country at large. She focuses on the combination of racism, self-interest, lack of principle, and political chicanery that shaped the Senate vote, including, almost certainly, outright bribery. The removal of a president unfit to serve (a characterization that even his allies would have agreed with) further stumbled because of the plaintiffs’ murky legal approach. But, as the author astutely mentions in her introduction, even the concept of impeachment was (and, presumably, is) hard to swallow, admitting as it does that our national myths of triumphant democracy need revision, and that we’re capable of electing dysfunctional leaders.

Consider, for instance, her description of Johnson’s leadership style:

Andrew Johnson was not a statesman. He was a man with a fear of losing ground, with a need to be recognized, with an obsession to be right, and when seeking revenge on enemies — or perceived enemies — he had to humiliate, harass, and hound them. Heedless of consequences, he baited Congress and bullied men, believing his enemies were enemies of the people. It was a convenient illusion.
Those closest to him were unsure of what he might do next.

If that summary rings any bells, no wonder. But are those impeachable offenses, then or now? Wineapple doesn’t speak of current politics, but she doesn’t have to. The correspondences are there, but, more importantly, so are the historical lessons. Even with a substantial Senate majority to work from, the impeachers failed — and not for want of passion or skill. Among the obstacles? Benjamin Wade was president pro tempore of the Senate, and since there was no vice president anymore, he’d take office if Johnson fell. And Wade, radical of Radicals, believed in votes for women as well as for African-Americans.

Nothing less than the nation’s soul was at stake, the ideals of liberty on which we pride ourselves. That alone would make a good story. But Wineapple also has the congressional leaders, Ulysses S Grant, Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, and a host of other larger-than-life characters, any one of whom would make a fitting protagonist for a novel, let alone a player in a historical drama like this.

I wish that Wineapple had explained how Johnson was able to keep Congress from meeting for so many months. I also confess that the actual trial bored me, in parts, but only because the attorneys droned on so long that even the Senate galleries emptied, when tickets had once been so hard to come by. But otherwise, The Impeachers makes a thrilling narrative. Wineapple has researched her ground so thoroughly with private letters and archival papers that she seems to have listened in on public and private conversations from 150 years ago.

Read The Impeachers and be amazed. And, in case you’re interested, the current president pro tempore of the Senate, third in line for the presidency of these United States, is Orrin Hatch of Utah.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

A Life Not Lived In: High Rider

17 Monday Aug 2015

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Review: High Rider, by Bill Gallaher
Touchwood, 2015. 263 pp. $16

In 1867, John Ware, a young black man of strong character and dignity, realizes that he has no future in his native South Carolina. His new freedom will mean nothing, so long as any white man with a gun or length of rope may use them on him with impunity. Since Ware has always loved horses and can tame even the most ornery mule, he dreams of being a cowboy. So he sets off for Texas, on foot. It’s a thousand miles across the Deep South, and should the Klan find him, he won’t get there–not to mention that he can’t be sure anyone will hire him. Of course, someone does, and Ware eventually becomes famous as a rancher–in Canada.

John Ware, his wife, Mildred, and two of their children, 1890s (Courtesy blackpast.org).

John Ware, his wife, Mildred, and two of their children, 1890s (Courtesy blackpast.org).

Unfortunately, Gallaher lets this excellent premise–and character background–get away from him. The scenes of slavery speak loudly of cruelty, viciousness, and the struggle to maintain dignity when one is powerless. However, the tendentious commentary, which reminds me of voiceovers in language Ware would never use, undercuts the effect. For example: “Therefore, it was time to go, to leave behind this land of cruel deeds committed by heartless, single-minded people.”

The reader can tell right away who’s good and who’s not. The people who welcome Ware do so with open arms, with nary a conflict thereafter. Those who’d just as soon spit on him lose no time doing so. As a result, there’s little tension, and whatever happens feels utterly predictable, if not ordained. The only character in this novel, black or white, who has the least shade of gray to him is a disabled Confederate veteran who rows him across a river solely because he needs the toll money.

As for the setting, Gallaher describes interiors meticulously, giving you a snapshot of everyday objects. But he rushes through the outdoor scenery, which leaves me wanting a sense of place, particularly the magnificent Alberta landscape that moves Ware to put down roots in Canada.

What a shame, for High Rider could have been so much better. Comparing it to Paradise Sky (July 13), whose hero resembles Ware, underlines the point. I don’t mean that High Rider could or should have been picaresque and funny like Paradise Sky, only that the latter book explored its protagonist’s inner life and emotional transitions. By contrast, we’re informed that Ware longs to settle down and marry, and that he feels ashamed, a little, to visit prostitutes. But I don’t see him wrestling with that shame, or with what settling down means, maybe trying to imagine what it would feel or look like, how he views that next to what his parents had, and so forth. We’re also told his resentment of bigotry–not exactly news, there–or how tired he is of having to prove himself over and over and over before his white colleagues will accept him. Again, however, Gallaher never takes that anywhere, as if these observations were enough and bear repetition. It’s as if Ware never inhabits his skin, even though his skin has determined his life path.

The only quirk Ware has is a passion for breaking horses, at which he excels beyond compare. (The scene I liked the most was the prologue, in which he goes to fantastic lengths to tame a particularly unruly one.) Reading this, I wondered at the metaphor here, of a former slave asserting his mastery over an animal, who’d then be his servant–one lovingly treated, like a friend, but still. I wish Ware had pondered that parallel, or other aspects of his fascinating life. Too bad he doesn’t, and that High Rider never really gets off the ground.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Laughter and Pain: Paradise Sky

13 Monday Jul 2015

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Review: Paradise Sky, by Joe R. Lansdale
Mulholland/Little, Brown, 2015. 400 pp. $26

Now, in the living of my life, I’ve killed deadly men and dangerous animals and made love to four Chinese women, all of them on the same night and in the same wagon bed, and one of them with a wooden leg, which made things a mite difficult from time to time. I even ate some of a dead fellow once when I was crossing the plains, though I want to rush right in here and make it clear I didn’t know him all that well. . . . it all come about by a misunderstanding.

 

So begins Paradise Sky, as darkly funny, searing, and engaging a tall tale as you could want. The narrator is Willie, growing up in Reconstruction-era Texas, a dangerous, terrifying place for a young black man. Willie’s troubles begin when his eyes linger on a white woman’s rear end while she’s hanging up the wash: Her husband, a homicidal fool named Ruggert, proclaims that Willie raped her and should swing for it. Willie wants to laugh it off, and if he were white, he could have, particularly given the woman involved. But the situation is deadly serious, and if there’s a lesson in this novel, it’s that the Ruggerts of the world are unreachable (a painful fact underlined by the recent murders in Charleston). Innocent people die because of Ruggert’s mania, including Willie’s father, and the young man must flee.

However, the charm of this novel is that no matter how bleak, or even tragic, the circumstance, humor’s never far behind, sometimes neck-and-neck. I can’t remember the last time a novel made me laugh so hard. Earthy metaphors flavor the narrative, as with one description of Ruggert, “who latched on to notions like a thirsty tick and wasn’t happy until he had sucked all the blood out of them.” Another character smelled of onions, liquor, and “mating skunk,” while a third was such a gifted tracker, he could “follow a ghost in moccasins.” But the funniest part is the dead-pan absurdity. I knew I wanted to be a writer when, as a teenager, I read James Thurber. Lansdale’s got a different sensibility, yet his characters share one Thurberesque quality: They swim in their sense of the ridiculous, as though it were perfectly natural.

But back to our story. Willie finds a haven in an unlikely place, a farm belonging to a former preacher who served in the Confederate Army alongside Ruggert. But Nate Loving, the farmer, is himself unusual, having decided that a belief in racial superiority makes no more sense than the Scripture commonly cited to justify it, and so has no further use for either. Nate teaches Willie everything he knows about riding, shooting, gardening, and the constellations, which is, as Nate might say himself, a pretty fair piece of knowledge. However, Ruggert eventually catches on where Willie has gone, and so the fugitive flees once more, taking the name Nat Love as tribute to the white man who was like a father to him.

The real Nate Love, the inspiration for the novel (Courtesy blackpast.org).

The real Nate Love, the inspiration for the novel (Courtesy blackpast.org).

Nat learns many trades during his adventures, none of which he might have figured on as a career–soldier, bouncer, spittoon-emptier, and rat-killer, to name some. He befriends Wild Bill Hickok, enters a shooting contest, and falls in love–and all three activities are related. But Nat’s fame and accomplishments can’t protect him from the race prejudice that’s all around, or Ruggert’s tireless efforts to track him down.

If you read Paradise Sky–and of course, I recommend that you do–don’t read the jacket flap, which is practically a complete synopsis. And ignore the discussions about religion, which, though they fit the time and story, can be tendentious, especially if you’re not Christian. Luckily, they’re brief.

Disclaimer: I obtained my copy of this novel from the public library.