JFK's Hero: Senator Edmund G. Ross of Kansas

by JFK

Kennedy, John F. Profiles in Courage. NY: Harper & Row, 1956. Pp.111-132.

"In a lonely grave, forgotten and unknown, lies 'the man who saved a President,' and who as a result may well have preserved for ourselves and posterity constitutional government in the United States -- the man who performed in 1868 what one historian has called 'the most heroic act in American history, incomparably more difficult than any deed of valor upon the field of battle' -- but a United States Senator whose name no one recalls: Edmund G. Ross of Kansas.

President Andrew Johnson was determined to carry out the policies of Lincoln, to reconcile with the defeated South, while the radical members of his own party intended to use the southern states as conquered lands, stripped of all rights by the loss of the war.

Johnson the executive, was untactful, and considered a drunkard. He had courage, though: he'd been the only southern member of congress who would not vote to secede along with his state.

Lincoln's approach was clear when he was killed. When the radical leaders presumed to proceed with an opposite agenda, Johnson not only blocked the way, but opposed the majority belligerently.

Ross entered congress in 1866, when Johnson was in process of repeatedly vetoing bills he thought were unconstitutional, including martial law over the south and interference with the authority of the executive branch by the legislature. Johnson's vetoes were the first ever overridden, thus law was being dictated by the legislative branch over the head of the president.

Some of Johnson's vetoes were being upheld, however, and as a result the radicals turned a rage on him that exceeded what they were directing at the defeated military enemy. Impeachment was coming. The only question was whether the two-thirds majority necessary to convict and remove the president was present.

The effort to form a certain two-thirds radical majority was determining every move the Senate made, from the admission of new states and readmission of former confederate states to very shady games in denying senatorial seats to pro-Johnson electees.

Kansas was one of the most radical states. Their senator Jim Lane had gone against the sense of his constituency in voting to uphold a Johnson veto and again supporting Johnson in recognizing Arkansas as a new state. Kansans had held a mass demonstration in Lawrence, condemning Senator Lane so viciously that the hated man broke under the strain, committing suicide on July 1, 1866.

Edmund Ross had been the very man to lead the attack on Lane in Lawrence, and radicals were delighted when Ross was chosen to succeed to the vacated Senate seat.

Ross had been a fervent abolitionist all his adult life, rescuing fugitive slaves in his home state of Wisconsin and joining the flood of activists who moved to "bleeding" Kansas in 1856 to keep it a free territory. He had fought for the Kansas Free State Army to drive out the proslavery forces invading the territory before the Civil War. By 1862 he was a major in the Union Army.

His opposition to Lane seemed to confirm his support for the anti-southern agenda dominating congress after the war.

August 5, 1867, President Johnson demanded the resignation of Secretary of war Edwin M. Stanton, who plainly sought to rule the south as a dictatorship. Stanton defied the order, but Johnson replaced him with General Grant, who was the one man Stanton dared not resist.

The Senate insisted on Stanton's reinstatement in early 1868 and Grant vacated the office. Stanton was now barred from Cabinet meetings and forbidden to associate with former colleagues in the executive branch. Johnson again ordered Stanton removed from his position in February.

Stanton barricaded himself in his office. Public opinion was very much against the president. The resolution to impeach was passed and the fanatical leader of the House, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, warned that anyone who opposed would suffer heavily in person and in the eyes of history.

The impeachment, or indictment, operated as a trial on various charges, presided over by the Chief Justice. Johnson never attended a session.

The oath of "impartial justice" was even sworn to by angry radical Benjamin Wade, senator from Ohio and President Pro Tempore of the Senate, thus next in line for the Presidency.

The galleries held 1000 witnesses every day.

The prosecution, led by former general Benjamin butler, "the butcher of New Orleans", proceeded from March 5 to May 16. The main charge was a catch-all, to permit those unwilling to identify their specific grievances to vote against the president anyway.

The defense asserted that Stanton must vacate office, then sue to be replaced in the courts.

Fairness was not a problem. Evidence in the President's favor was arbitrarily excluded. Prejudgment was openly announced by most of the jury, or Senate. Bribery and threats were the chief lines of "debate". The legal process was not an issue; only the gathering of votes necessary to convict.

There were 27 states in the Union, excluding the South. 54 Senators sat on the jury, of whom 36 would be required to form the two-thirds necessary to remove Johnson.

The 12 democratic votes were with Johnson. The 42 Republicans needed to secure 36 votes from among their number. Somehow, six Republican senators stood up against their party's agenda. The other 36 had to stand firm or lose at this major turning point in history.

The only Republican who would not announce his verdict preliminary to the trial was Ross. His extreme anti-Johnson constitutuency was outraged that he could so much as entertain any doubt. Ross was warned not to turn "against his country".

Strange, since Ross had declared allegiance to Radical Republican policy and voted without comment for all their moves. He did not like President Johnson personally, nor support him politically. He supported the contested removal of Stanton. He stood with the majority on everything.

Still, somehow, he declined to surrender his vote as demanded, so that the whole national struggle suddenly turned on the vote of this one man, Ross. Where for others the question was one of allegiance, for Ross the issue had been, since the day of the impeachment, the need for a fair trial.

All seven independent-minded Republican senators were followed, pilloried in the press and threatened daily with assassination. The violent country had only recently been a slaughterhouse over this same split. A lot of people wanted the South to pay in the worst way.

Ross in particular was dogged mercilessly, like a hunted animal. His mind and body were a horrible crossroads where contending armies came together.

He had no independent means and would answer to the most radical state in the union. He was considered especially vulnerable to coercion, as such. Even so, his opinion was not known.

Powerful people waited at his door all night for an audience he did not choose to grant. His brother was offered $20,000 (millions in today's currency) to reveal his intentions. Prosecutor Butler asked "'How much does the damned scoundrel want?'"

The night before the critical vote on May 16, Ross received a telegram from "D.R. Anthony and 1,000 others" demanding he convict the president. On the morning of the vote, Ross replied "'To D.R. Anthony and 1,000 Others: I do not recognize your right to demand that I vote either for or against conviction. I have taken an oath to do impartial justice according to the constitution and laws, and trust that I shall have the courage to vote according to the dictates of my judgment and for the highest good of the country.'" (120)

He was warned ten minutes before the vote by Kansas' other senator that he would be ruined by any means necessary if he did not do the majority's will.

The House adjourned and its 250 members flooded into the senate chamber. All the Cabinet Officers were there. Even the morbidly sick Senator Grimes of Iowa was carried in.

The silence was described as "deathlike." Several legislators became ill from suspense. All movement ceased, down to the shuffling of feet. The first vote would be the deciding one, on the catch-all Eleventh Article, because it had the widest support and would, of itself, reveal the final outcome.

Ross' name was the 25th called by the Chief Justice. By that time, 24 had voted to remove Johnson. Ten more were certain to follow and one other almost certain. Only Ross was truly in question and no one in the room knew his intent.

The tremendous emotion of the moment was evident in the Chief Justice's voice as he put the question: "'Mr. Senator Ross, how say you?'"

Ross later said that his "'powers of hearing and seeing seemed developed in an abnormal degree.'" (122)

Looking around him, he saw some with hands raised as if to shield themselves from a blow. He thought the intensity in the faces was "almost tragic". Hate and hope passed across most faces in alternating waves. Ross said he had tried to get free of this position as he saw it coming, as if struggling to escape a nightmare. "'I almost literally looked down into my open grave. Friendships, position, fortune, everything that makes life desirable to an ambitious man were about to be swept away by the breath of my mouth, perhaps forever.'" Then he answered the question.

His voice had quavered, and did not reach the far side of the chamber. Senators on the far side of the chamber called for him to repeat what he had said. So he answered again, this time loudly and unmistakably:

"'Not guilty.'"

The trial was over, the President saved, the rest of the roll call unimportant. Conviction had failed by one vote and the Chief Justice announced the verdict as 35 for, 19 opposed. The greatest crisis in the history of the executive branch before Nixon was past. The will of congress had not been enough to overturn the role of the executive, in effect destroying the balance of power held by the framers to be essential to the rational operation of government.

During the ensuing ten-day recess, other issues were raised in an attempt to change votes on the remaining articles, but nothing could be done in that short a time. Ross remained the only uncommitted vote on the other articles, and was subjected to vilification including perjury by professional witnesses before the Senate. Ross returned to his function as Senator and even carried a few bills to the White House in his capacity as chairman of one committee.

When the impeachment proceedings reconvened, Ross alone among the "renegade" senators voted with the radicals on procedural matters. When the remaining articles of impeachment were read, with the greatest suspense again dominating the chamber, Ross again voted a calm "'Not guilty.'"

Ross still disliked Johnson. His motive was clear from his essays years later in Scribner's and Forum magazines. He had voted against "congressional autocracy... the worst element of American politics... .'" (124)

A justice of the Kansas supreme court urged Ross to follow Lane's example in committing suicide. A Kansas editor wrote that Ross had "'signed the death warrant of his country's liberty.'" (ibid.)

He had indeed been looking down into his open, political grave.

Stanton left office. Johnson served out his term and returned as a senator from Tennessee. His defenders were ruined. People avoided Ross on the street. The stories of the other senators who voted with him against the will of their party should be known.

All were retired by their electorates into infamy, low income and physical attack.

It is ironic that not a single law bears Ross' name. History books ignore him. Lists of the "great" senators make no mention of him. If not for his inclusion in JFK's Profiles in Courage, his story would be as good as forgotten.