Such as that noted Confederate-apologist Democrat historian, and Secretary of the Navy to Presidents Lincoln and Johnson, Gideon Welles.
"The disputed question of suffrage he [President Andrew Johnson] carefully weighed and investigated, reviewed the whole subject, and while, like Mr. Lincoln, he felt as a man kindly disposed toward the colored race, and would have been gratified even to give them qualified suffrage if were they possessed of capacity, like President Lincoln he came to the conclusion that the subject belonged exclusively to the States and the people of the States respectively, and that the Federal Government had no logal power or legitimate control over it."
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"The views of President and President Johnson were identical; yet an organized opposition was immediately commenced against President Johnson for the honest and conscientious discharge of his constitutional duty, which pursued him with vindictive and unrelenting ferocity during his whole Administration, and malignantly and without cause or justification attempted his impeachment. Other pretexts, frivolous and false, were assigned, but the real and true cause of assault and persecution was the fearless and unswerving fidelity of the President to the Constitution, his refusal to proscribe the white people in the rebel States and the States themselves by ex post facto laws, his opposition to central Congressional usurpation, and his maintenance of the of the States and of the Executive Department of the Government against legislative aggression.
"Of the manner in which he met his assailants, and the wisdom of all that was said and done on either side during that extraordinary conflict -- which was carried on by a fragment of Congress that arrogated to itself authority to exclude States and people from their constitutional right of representation, against an Executive striving under infinite embarrassments to preserve State, Federal, and Popular rights, to restore peace and promote national union -- it is unnecessary to speak at this time, further than to say that his motives were as pure as the principles which governed both him and Abraham Lincoln were constitutional and correct.
"In this matter of extending suffrage to the colored race and of proscription of the whites, the President and most of his Cabinet were opposed to any and all oppressive measures, and to any general subversion of the laws, usages, institutions, traditions, and customs of the States respectively, excepting so far as to rid them of slavery, the radical error which had caused our national trouble and led to the arbitrament of arms. That had been by common consent on both sides in issue, and was determined by the war. Emancipation was in issue; negro suffrage was not. That was an afterthought -- a new contest, introduced after hostilities had ceased, and terms had been granted and accepted. The doctrine, recognized throughout the civilized world, that all laws not inconsistent with those of the conquerors remain in force till changed to the conquered, the centralists would not concede to the Southern States, composed of people who were their countrymen, living under the same Constitution, and like themselves amenable to existing Federal laws. They were sheltered by no treaty, and were denied the legal rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all citizens. Had the war been carried on with a foreign power, there would have been peace when hostilities ceased and the conquered party had submitted and accepted terms; but such was not the case in this instance. The defeated States were protected by no treaty, and the conquerors refused to recognize or be governed by existing laws towards the conquered. American citizens who resided at the South during the rebellion were not allowed the rights conceded to aliens if they continued to reside in that section. Leading minds in Congress and the country exerted their influence to prevent harmony and reconciliation. Hatred and revenge were cherished and inculcated towards all indiscriminately who lived in the rebel States, whether they had been actors or not, willing or involuntary, Union men or otherwise. While the Radicals did not propose to hang or imprison all, or perhaps any considerable portion, of the Southern people, all who continued to reside within the limits of any of the rebel States were to be unrepresented, to be classed as rebels, and robbed of their rights. Their fidelity to the Union during the war, and their surrender and submission, were not sufficient -- the white people, loyal and disloyal, who continued to reside South, were denied rights reserved and secured to them by the fundamental law -- rights inherent in the people of each State as distinct communities, and which were never ceded away, granted to or conferred upon the Federal Government, or in any manner parted with. All were subjected to arbitrary military rule, no further restrained under the laws which Congress proceeded to enact than the military commander placed over them might, in his own voluntary pleasure, tolerate and permit. It was a war against States as much as against persons, for not one of the thousands who fled into the Northern States was disfranchised or molested. There seemed an unreasoning fanaticism on the subject of the rights and privileges of the colored race with some, who in their zeal persuaded themselves that the cause of liberty was with the negro, not with the white man. Negro suffrage and negro supremacy over the whole South became with these men the one great absorbing idea. Others less sincere than the fanatics, but who had party, personal, and mercenary ends in view, and central principles to promote, allied themselves with the fanatics against the President, in the confident expectation that, by the aid of negro votes, the party of centralists would secure and maintain ascendancy in the General Government. This party, which soon assumed the name of Radical, scouted at all legal restraints upon their schemes against the States and against white men, and did not hesitate to disregard and break down all constitutional barriers which were in their way, although but few had the frankness of their chief leader, Thaddeus Stevens, to declare they were independent of and outside the Constitution."
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"It is also worthy of observation that Messrs. Sumner and Colfax and others took no exception to the plan or policy of reconstruction instituted by President Lincoln and adopted by President Johnson; but they, with Mr. Stanton, undertook to assist the President, and shape and perfect the Executive Order to meet their peculiar views. When however, President Johnson declined, as President Lincoln had declined, to intermeddle with the subject of suffrage, he was accused of 'high crimes and misdemeanors' for the steps which he had taken to reconstruct the States and resume the national authority."
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While I think that our friend nolu chan has the better of you by exposition of Gideon Welles's memorandum of Radicalism, I tend to agree with you that an elevation of Beast Butler would have been more.......clarifying........
Civilized men act in a civilized manner and look for laws to obey. What Welles describes is the spirit of ideological extremism, new to the world when he wrote, but wearily familiar to us both in its intellectual and moral seaminess and in its massively bloody consequences. It is the spirit of the adept thug, the bully, and the self-justifying murderer.
It would have been priceless to see Thaddeus Stevens argue that secession was lawful. If Stevens were to have defended Jefferson Davis, he would have had to so argue as directed by the client. Not to worry, Charles O'Conor had it covered and there was no way the government was going to take the case to trial.
[GOP] Much better [as Lincoln's choice for VP] would have been Hannibal Hamlin again or even Lincoln's first choce, who turned him down -- Ben Butler.
In his time of need, Lincoln could indeed, have sought Thurlow Weed, or even William Tweed.
"Spoons" Butler was only a petty thief compared to those New York Yankee big-leaguers.
In Lowell Butler studied at Lowell High School; he also established a practice of stealing items from rooms of the boarding house tenants while they were at work according to one of Butler's biographers [Chester G. Hearn, When The Devil Came Down to Dixie: Bent Butler in New Orleans (1997), pp. 8-9]. Hearn goes on to suggest that Butler's early proclivities were life-long:
Butler died on January 11, 1893, an immensely wealthy man whose estate topped $7million. Nobody has ever been able to explain how Butler, who came from simple means and spent the bulk of his career alternating between law and politics, amassed so huge a fortune (Ibid., p. 6).