Benjamin Wade - Impeachment of Johnson

Impeachment of Johnson

Wade, along with most other Radical Republicans, was highly critical of President Andrew Johnson (who became President after Lincoln's assassination). Wade supported the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills (which he succeeded in extending to the District of Columbia) and was a strong partisan of the 14th Amendment. He also strengthened his party in Congress by forcefully advocating the admission of Nebraska and Kansas. These actions made him so prominent that at the beginning of the 40th Congress (in 1867), Wade became the President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, which meant that under the law of that time he was next in line for the presidency (as Johnson had no vice president).

After many fallouts with the Republican-dominated Congress, the Judiciary Committee voted to impeach President Johnson (who had been a Democrat). When Johnson was impeached, Wade was sworn in as one of the senators sitting in judgment, but was greatly criticized because of his unseemly interest in the outcome of the trial. Although most senators believed that Johnson was guilty of the charges, they did not want the extremely radical Wade to become acting president. One newspaper wrote, "Andrew Johnson is innocent because Ben Wade is guilty of being his successor."

According to John Roy Lynch (R-MS, 1873–77, 1882–83), one of the twenty-two African Americans elected to Congress from the South during Reconstruction, in his book Facts Concerning Reconstruction:

It was believed by many at the time that some of the Republican Senators that voted for acquittal did so chiefly on account of their antipathy to the man who would succeed to the presidency in the event of the conviction of the president. This man was Senator Benjamin Wade, of Ohio, President pro tempore of the Senate who as the law then stood, would have succeeded to the presidency in the event of a vacancy in the office from any cause. Senator Wade was an able man … He was a strong party man. He had no patience with those who claimed to be Republicans and yet refused to abide by the decision of the majority of the party organization … the sort of active and aggressive man that would be likely to make for himself enemies of men in his own organization who were afraid of his great power and influence, and jealous of him as a political rival. That some of his senatorial Republican associates should feel that the best service they could render their country would be to do all in their power to prevent such a man from being elevated to the Presidency … for while they knew he was an able man, they also knew that, according to his convictions of party duty and party obligations, he firmly believed he who served his party best served his country best…that he would have given the country an able administration is concurrent opinion of those who knew him best.

In 1868, then-presidential candidate Ulysses S. Grant was urged by his fellow Republicans to choose Wade as his vice presidential running mate; but he refused, instead choosing another radical, Schuyler Colfax, who coincidentally married Wade's niece, Ellen Maria Wade, shortly after the election. After being defeated in the 1868 elections, Wade returned to his Ohio law practice. Though no longer in politics, Wade continued to contribute to the world of law and politics. He became an agent of the Northern Pacific Railroad, continued his party activities, became a member of the commission researching the likelihood of the purchase of the Dominican Republic in 1871 and served as an elector for Rutherford Hayes in the election of 1876. He died on March 2, 1878, in Jefferson, Ohio.