Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,417

This is the grave of William Fessenden.

Born in Boscawen, New Hampshire in 1806, Fessenden actually grew up as a child of unwed parents, which wasn’t necessarily uncommon at that time, but certainly was not likely to rise in society, despite his parents being from pretty wealthy families. But he ended up at Bowdoin after being mostly raised by his grandparents and graduated from that college in 1823. He stayed in Maine and immediately got involved in social change issues, becoming an early leading temperance advocate in the state most committed to it. He passed the bar in 1827 and worked for his father, who in addition to being a lawyer was a staunch critic of slavery. Fessenden would follow his father’s footsteps on that matter.

In 1832, Fessenden was elected to the Maine legislature. He was a strong Whig who believed in the conservative economic vision of that party. He was in the legislature on and off for while and became a leading state Whig. The party tried to get him to Congress a few times before he finally accepted a nomination, in 1840. He served one term and then went back to his law offices. He was active during that term, especially attacking the gag rule on slavery, but it was very common for politicians, especially in the North, to cycle through Congress all the time, which helps explain why there were a few real titans of Congress in these years–they were the only ones to stick around. Over the next decade, he was in and out of the state legislature, gave anti-slavery speeches, and became a prominent enough lawyer that he argued cases before the Supreme Court.

Fessenden’s career as a major politician really began in 1854, when the Maine legislature decided to send him to the U.S. Senate after leaving the seat vacant for over a year because they didn’t get around to selecting anyone. This was after the decline of the Whigs nationally and state party politics was a mess. Fessenden technically was an independent until 1860, but he effectively was a Republican in the Senate. Now, early in his Senate career, Fessenden became famous for his brutal attacks on the Slave Power, his opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, his attacks on the Lecompton Constitution that attempted to railroad Kansas into the Union as a slave state even the large majority of the people who actually lived in Kansas did not want that, and his criticisms of the Supreme Court after the Dred Scott decision. He was right there with William Seward and Salmon Chase as the big early leading Republicans/slave opposition figures and when he finally fully joined the Republican Party in 1860 (the Whigs were still viable in Maine after 1854 so this had something to do with his late joining of the Republicans), he became a national leader. While originally a senator who sought peace with the South, after secession, he was a full fledged prosecutor of the war and became head of the Senate Finance Committee after the South seceded and Republicans controlled the Senate. He was known for an intense work ethic and short temper with his colleagues and he put both of those to work for him during his years helping to figure out how to finance the war.

So Fessenden was really pretty good. But that started to change. In 1864, when Chase tried to railroad Abraham Lincoln out of the nomination and have himself installed as the nominee instead, the egotistic Secretary of Treasury had to resign after Lincoln played him like a fiddle. Lincoln kicked Chase upstairs to the Supreme Court. He then named Fessenden to replace him as Secretary of the Treasury. There’s little question that from a financial management standpoint, it was a good choice. Chase had left the coffers pretty empty and Fessenden worked out a complicated bond issue that helped fund the last year of the war. But having that level of power seems to have brought out the conservative old school Whig side of him, while also depressing his ardor for fighting for Black rights. He didn’t stay long–preferring the Senate. But in his year in the job, he really did solve some financial problems and helped the Union stay afloat.

But when he returned to the Senate in 1865, the old slavery hating Fessenden was replaced with a new Fessenden concerned about Radical Republican overreach and a preference for focusing on free trade economics to justice for the newly freed slaves. As a newfound moderate, Fessenden headed the Joint Committee on Reconstruction from 1865 to 1867, which tried to work with Andrew Johnson on the issue. They didn’t really agree on much in terms of who should control the process. Fessenden rejected Johnson’s attempts to railroad Reconstruction through on a pro-Southern basis, but he also rejected Sumner’s attempts to punish the South. What Fessenden did believe in was congressional authority over the process.

Then, Fessenden led Republican opposition to convicting Johnson in his impeachment trial. A small minority of Republicans was enough to end that attempt to get rid of the odious president. There were a few reasons for Fessenden’s decision. One was that the idea of the radical Ben Wade becoming president was anathema to him. Couldn’t have anyone who actually wanted to prosecute Black rights as president! But second is that Johnson and Fessenden agreed on free trade economics and so that was enough. I wonder if the Fessenden of 1857 would have recognized the Fessenden of 1868. But then the real anti-slavery people in Congress were the disaffected Democrats more than the old Whigs, most of whom in their hearts really did care more about capitalism than slavery anyway.

If one single additional Republican had voted yes, Johnson would have been out. Whether that would have really led to a better Reconstruction is a question on which I have some skepticism; it was just too late and as we would soon see in the Grant administration, the desire for real aggressive Reconstruction just didn’t have much in the way of legs by 1869, at least outside of eliminating the Ku Klux Klan. But still, the idea of not convicting Johnson, boy I don’t know. There was a committee in the aftermath, led by the all time political chameleon Benjamin Butler to investigate whether those Republicans who voted no were bought off and there is plenty of evidence that some were, but not Fessenden, at least not to my knowledge. He just believed in Johnson, even if he personally disliked him, as did basically everyone. Also, it just seems that Fessenden was pretty racist in the end. There’s a famous exchange between he and Charles Sumner in 1867 over a bill that would have granted free homesteads to freed slaves. Fessenden was outraged, saying in exasperation “That’s more than we do for white men!” Sumner’s response, “White men have never been in slavery!” brutalized Fessenden but probably didn’t make much difference at the time.

Fessenden was still a Republican and he helped get Grant elected in 1868. He probably would have continued to be more and more annoying, as were so many finance-first Republicans as the Grant administration went on. But we’ll never know because he dropped dead in 1869. Not exactly sure what it was, but it was unexpected. He was 62 years old. His defenders make the case today that is he among the most unknown of the giants of the Senate. That’s a fair thing to say–he was hugely important, there’s no question about that. It’s just that he got worse as time went on and there’s a reason we honor Sumner today while forgetting about Fessenden.

William Fessenden is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Portland, Maine.

If you would like this series to visit other senators selected in the 1854-55 cycle, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. William Gwin, who was a real bastard, is in Oakland, California and David Levy Yulee, a senator from Florida, is in Washington, D.C. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.