The Impeachment of Adelbert Ames

The impeachment of Republican governor Adelbert Ames spanned from January to March 1876. Following the Republican Party’s defeat during statewide elections in 1875, the Democratic Party controlled both chambers of the state legislature. They initiated multiple impeachment inquiries against leading Republicans in the state, including the governor. Ames himself faced more than twenty separate charges. By late March, multiple officials had been removed from office, resulting in Ames’s legal team proposing a compromise. Ames agreed to resign if his Democratic political adversaries dropped all charges against him. After reaching this agreement, the Ames’s impeachment trial stopped, and the governor left office on 29 March 1876.

Adelbert Ames had been heavily involved in Mississippi politics after the Civil War. He was a former Union general who had served as Mississippi’s military governor prior to its readmittance into the Union. Reconstruction required formerly rebellious states to ratify new constitutions and to accept the new constitutional amendments that ended slavery and protected civil rights. Mississippi effectively reentered the Union on 23 February 1870. The Republican Party grew in strength and prominence in the state during this process due to support from freedmen. It was at this time that Ames transitioned from military governor to US senator representing Mississippi. In 1873, he ran as a Republican in Mississippi’s gubernatorial race. He defeated a coalition of conservative Republicans and former Confederates leading the Democratic Party and became governor following a major victory. Ames’s policies were aligned with the Republican platform, which polarized the anti-Reconstruction forces in the state called “Redeemers.”

The Democratic Party, and paramilitary allies, used violence, intimidation, and political maneuvering to terrorize freedmen and gain a competitive advantage in the state’s upcoming 1875 midterm elections. Although Ames and Republicans stuck a bargain with Democratic leadership that no violence would occur at the polls, Redeemers threatened freedmen and Republican voters before election day to circumvent the deal. As a result, on 3 November 1875, the Democratic Party won a resounding victory. They claimed both the Mississippi House and Senate. Redeemers intended to use their newly acquired power to impeach Republican leaders and jettison them from statewide politics.

Democrats began the process of impeaching Ames and influential Republicans as soon as they assumed control over the legislature in January. A five-man committee interviewed forty-five witnesses over thirty-eight days to scrounge up negative testimony against Ames. The four Democrats on the committee advocated impeachment, while the lone Republican, Frederick Parsons, argued that every charge was unjustified. On February 22, the committee produced twenty-one articles of impeachment. Representative Winfield S. Feathersone, a Democrat who led the impeachment managers, presented nine charges related to judicial appointments, three charges related to Treasury Department corruption, two charges addressing financial gains made in offices because of a penal work program, and the rest claimed that Ames disrupted peace within the state by advocating violence.

Ames’s impeachment trial was not the only one levied against Republican officials in the state. Lieutenant Governor Alexander K. Davis was found guilty of five charges related to bribery and other malfeasance. He was removed from office. State Superintendent of Education Thomas W. Cardozo faced twelve articles related to misappropriating funds, but he was allowed to resign from office. Davis’s and Cardozo’s guilt swayed public opinion against Ames. They believed the governor was corrupt by association. Ames’s trial commenced at noon on 16 March 1876.

Associate Justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court Horatio F. Simrall presided over the hearing. Ames’s legal team was led by Thomas J. Durant and Roger Atkinson Pryor. The governor chose to stay out of the courtroom and not testify in person. His lawyers received an extra week to prepare, and they began to make their case before the Mississippi Senate on March 22. The charges related to judicial corruption were easily debunked. Durant and Pryor proved that Ames had the ability to appoint justices, and he did not do so outside the limits of his executive power. After addressing the charges related to the judiciary, Ames’s legal team produced documents that refuted allegations that he made money from using penal labor and misappropriating state funds.

Before the session ended on March 22, Ames’s lawyers began to address charges related to Ames inflaming civil unrest. The impeachment managers claimed that he stoked racial tensions and created disturbances. Ames’s lawyers argued that instead of inciting violence and tension, Ames worked to maintain peace. As governor, he tried to quell the turmoil by supporting local law enforcement and legally raising a militia.

The impeachment trial adjourned until March 25. Despite the evidence provided by Ames’s defense team, the impeachment managers received support to continue the hearings. On March 27, the impeachment managers returned with new charges. The two additional impeachment articles increased the number of charges to twenty-three. Both were inflammatory and were related to bribery and the pardon of a man who sexually assaulted a young girl. The managers did not produce any affidavits or noncircumstantial evidence to boost their claims.

Ames’s team asked for a postponement until March 28. Unwilling to admit any guilt, Ames and his lawyers got an idea from Ames’s wife, Blanche. She suggested that if the governor resigned, the legislature could drop the charges so Ames would not have to assume guilt. The impeachment managers and the Mississippi Senate agreed with the proposal. On the afternoon of March 29, Ames’s resignation became official.

The aftermath of Ames’s trial and resignation resulted in the end of Reconstruction in Mississippi. Redeemers across the South used the same tactics and methods demonstrated in Mississippi to end Reconstruction in other states. The impeachment of Adelbert Ames was a political effort to paint Ames and Reconstruction negatively to impede postwar changes taking place in the former Confederacy.