After the Compromise of 1850 the South was forced to accept an uneven number of states in the United States Senate that were pro-abolition. There was the Fugitive Slave Act in the Compromise that allowed escaped slaves to be returned to their owners. However, the Southern states hoped to find a corresponding new state to bring into the Union that was pro-slavery. The one that they looked at was Kansas. But the population flooding in was mostly from the North. Many southern supporting Missourians began flooding in too.
Stephen Douglas created the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. He believed in "Popular" Sovereignty, and hoped that the Northern settlers would go into Nebraska, and the Southern ones into Kansas. It did not work that way. Bungling by the Pierce Administration led to the recognition of a pro-Southern government, and it led to bloodshed.
One leader was James Lane. A very unscrupulous and an ambitious fellow, Lane did not mind extreme violence to force out the pro-Southern settlers. In 1861 Kansas entered the Union. Lane became it's first Senator.
But he caused anti-abolitionist reprisals. The seeds of the sack of Lawrence by William Quantrell are due to the reaction to similar actions by Lane and others.
Things did not work out for Jim Lane. He was in Washington throughout the Civil War. With the intense guerrilla warfare in Missouri and Kansas, Lane expected his help would be sought. Lincoln and Stanton had his measure as a selfish politico who used people and left them to pay for his problems. When Quantrell hit Lawrence, and massacred about 200 - 300 men and boys, he knew Lane was at his home in the town. Lane somehow knew he was targeted, and hid in a nearby wheat field while his neighbors were murdered.
The war ended, and Lincoln was murdered. Lane thought he would have a better chance with Lincoln's successor Andy Johnson. For awhile this worked. Then, in July 1865 Anna Surratt came to the White House to see Johnson about getting him to reduce her mother's death sentence as one of the Lincoln Conspirators. Johnson was upstairs at the White House. On the staircase were Lane and Preston King. Lane and King took it upon themselves to block Anna from seeing Johnson. As a result, Mary Surratt hanged. This did not sit well with the public, and Johnson got criticized.
In November 1865 King jumped off a ferry boat in the Hudson River with a bag of shot around his neck and drowned.
The following July Lane was back in Kansas. His health was poor. His political foes began questioning some financial irregularities. Johnson was not friendly because of Surratt. The Radical Republican in the Senate and Congress looked at him as a turncoat. And his neighbors recalled him hiding one night in a wheat field while their male kin were slaughtered.
He put a gun to his head and fired - it took a week for him to die.
Samuel Pomeroy was the other Senator from Kansas and pushed the nomination of a young newspaper editor named Edmund Ross to fill out Lane's term. He was also elected to one of his own . The future looked rather bright for Ross, who was a committed Radical Republican.
Johnson had opposed a law called the Tenure of Office Act, which made it mandatory for a President who had succeeded to the office to get permission from Congress to remove a Cabinet official put in by his predecessor. Johnson felt this violated the division of powers in the Federal Government. He tried to remove Secretary of War Edwin Stanton because the latter was working with Johnson's enemies.
Committees in both houses formed to remove Johnson. The one in the House of Representatives was overwhelmingly ready for it, impeaching the President (thus earning Johnson his place in history as the first impeached President). The Senate had problems: Six Republican Senators were opposed to removing Johnson, and thus wrecking the Federal balance of power. Ross was apparently not committed one way or another.
The story of this dilemma is followed in a chapter in PROFILES IN COURAGE, and dramatized in this episode with Bradford Dillman as Ross. I can't recall much of the acting, except to show how Radicals like Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania used every pressure to force Ross to vote for conviction, for it literally got to only one vote between convicting or acquitting the President. Ross held against conviction. After his term in office ended he never held another elected office. He was later appointed Governor of New Mexico.
Kennedy suggests it was the bravest political sacrifice in our history, only pointing out that it is shared by the other six senators. None, Kennedy told us, were reelected to the Senate. Actually two died shortly afterward (one was already dying at the time of the vote). The remaining five never held elected offices again, although John Henderson became a prominent American legal talent (appearing in several cases against corrupt officials such as the Whisky Ring). Again, the issue is how much real damage was done by the political courage. Ross certainly was a casualty, but was he such a loss.
There were some comments by Johnson later that Ross seemed to come back after the trial ended expecting all kinds of government appointments for his friends. Also, if Ross was that hot, wouldn't he have re-arisen on his own? Future Senator and Secretarys of the Treasury and of State John Sherman wrote an interesting book of memoirs. He had considered voting to save Johnson, but thought the man was such a waste as President that he could not see throwing away his career to save him. Sherman certainly had a decent career. Maybe Ross should have thought again?
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