What Can We Learn From the Only Cabinet Member Ever Impeached?

With Republicans in the House of Representatives determined to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, to punish him for his immigration policies, the press has done a reasonably good job of pointing out the extraordinary nature of this effort. Commentators normally note that if the GOP somehow succeeds in voting articles of impeachment in this case it will constitute the first time in more than a hundred years that this has happened to any member of a president’s cabinet—but this observation, if anything, understates the rarity of the situation.

In the whole history of the Republic, only one cabinet member has ever been impeached and that proceeding occurred 148 years ago. What’s more, the long-ago dispute concluded with the Senate hearing the testimony of 40 witnesses, but ultimately acquitting the embattled official of the Grant administration on all five of the articles of impeachment filed against him. Understanding this singular but ignoble precedent should help today’s Congress in placing the Mayorkas situation in a more constructive context.

William Belknap grew up in a patriotic military family, with a father who had distinguished himself with service in both the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War. After graduating from Princeton and studying law in the nation’s capital, young Belknap moved to Keokuk, Iowa to establish himself in what then seemed to be one of the “rising states of the west.” There, he launched his legal practice, won election to a single term in the state legislature as a Democrat, and earned the rank of captain in the local militia. He enlisted to defend the Union in the early months of the Civil War and impressed his colleagues with his natural leadership abilities and his charismatic presence as “a fine type of Saxon-American manhood.” Standing six feet tall and weighing more than 200 pounds, he boasted a flourishing, blonde, Old Testament beard and a booming voice which, combined with his uncanny courage under fire, enabled him to rise to the rank of Brevet Major General by the war’s end.

Back home in Iowa, he won federal appointment as Collector of Internal Revenue for the state’s first district, until his former comrade-in-arms, William Tecumseh Sherman, urged President-elect U.S. Grant to appoint General Belknap as Secretary of War.

With his glamorous and striking, Kentucky-born second wife (the first Mrs. Belknap had died after eight years and one child), the new cabinet member cut a commanding figure in Washington society. They hosted lavish entertainments that welcomed as many as 1,200 guests to their rented home that had previously been occupied by Secretary of State William Henry Seward. The extravagant hospitality they extended raised inquiries about the Belknaps' ability to manage their expenses on his modest government salary of $8,000 a year. However, his charming wife Carita demonstrated not only her proficiency in hosting stylish parties but also her financial acumen. In 1870, she made a secret arrangement with a shady operator named Caleb Marsh, promising him exclusive rights to operate a hugely profitable trading post at the newly established Fort Sill in Oklahoma’s Indian Territory.

This arrangement compelled both soldiers and the local tribes to do all their shopping at the store sanctioned by the  War Department,  which featured wildly inflated prices but also offered the Belknaps generous, quarterly-delivered, and blatantly illegal bribes.

Carita could enjoy this arrangement for only a few months before she died of tuberculosis after childbirth. Stricken with grief, pressed by his War Department responsibilities and struggling to provide for his family, the Secretary continued the deal after he married his late wife’s younger, widowed sister, another celebrated beauty named Amanda, but universally addressed with the feline designation “Puss.”

Under the direction of the third Mrs. Belknap, the arrangement that later became known as “The Indian Ring” became even more profitable, with prospects of opening new stores on military property across the western frontier.

This comfortable but illicit situation continued until February of the Centennial Year of 1876 when a Democratic Congressman with the distinctive name Hiester Clymer, heard rumors about the Secretary of War receiving a major share of the bountiful profits from Army trading posts. Congressman Clymer had been a classmate of Belknap’s at Princeton, and for a time they even roomed together, but politics and Civil War had ruined their friendship. Clymer proudly championed white supremacist views, opposed Lincoln’s fight to save the Union, and dedicated his endeavors in Congress to combat the efforts of President Grant and his cabinet to provide civil rights to former slaves. In this context, Belknap seemed a particularly vulnerable target and a congressional investigation exposed the tawdry details of the Indian Ring.

On March 2, 1876, just minutes before the House of Representatives was scheduled to vote on articles of impeachment, Belknap rushed to the White House and demanded to see the president. Waiting till Grant had finished his breakfast, the Secretary of War silently handed him a one-sentence resignation letter and then burst into tears.

The Democratic House proceeded with its impeachment plans nonetheless, eager to do as much political damage as possible to the Grant administration that was nearing the conclusion of its second term. The vote for the articles of impeachment passed unanimously, blaming Belknap for “criminally disregarding his duty as Secretary of War and basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain.”

The Senate voted to go ahead with its impeachment trial in early April, despite Belknap’s resignation. The two-thirds majority required by the Constitution for conviction, translated to 40 votes, but on none of the five counts against the accused could the hostile Democrats muster more than 37. The opposition to conviction relied largely on the fact that Secretary Belknap had tendered his resignation moments before the formal vote for impeachment, and that resignation had been promptly accepted by President Grant, so the argument held that the Senate had no jurisdiction to even conduct a trial, let alone convict the accused.

After his public disgrace, Belknap fled Washington to establish a new law firm in Philadelphia, serving mostly corporate clients, including major railroads. After returning to Keokuk, his one-time home base, he continued to work frequently in New York City.  Meanwhile, his wife “Puss” traveled extensively in Europe with the children and visited favorite American resorts, particularly in the Catskills.

In 1890, General Belknap—who wanted to be remembered for his Civil War service, rather than his work on President Grant’s cabinet—succumbed to a massive heart attack at age 61. He’s buried in Arlington National Cemetery where nine lines of commemoration on his gravestone refer to his military service, but only one cites his role as Secretary of War.

How does this sad, brief biography relate to the current attempts to make Alejandro Mayorkas the first cabinet member ever to be impeached, convicted and removed from office?

For one thing, the Belknap impeachment focused on clearly criminal behavior, not policy differences—coming much closer to the Constitutional standard of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors” as the basis for removal from office than any of the charges against Mayorkas.

The story of William Belknap also emphasizes the difficulty in Congress removing any Cabinet member—or president, for that matter—even where the evidence of wrong-doing is beyond dispute. The Founders made the process almost impossibly difficult, in the hopes that it wouldn’t be trivialized (or “weaponized” as we now say)—which is why no cabinet member or president has ever been convicted in a Senate trial and stripped of the authority the Constitutional processes have bestowed.

The impeachment of a member of the cabinet is a particularly dubious undertaking because it involves a complicated, challenging ordeal involving both House and Senate, to achieve a change of personnel that a president can achieve on his own, at a time and for reasons of his choosing. It makes sense that the chief executive who selects a cabinet member is also empowered to replace him or her, as President Trump did so frequently during his brief presidency.

For the health and effective functioning of our Republic, there’s an obvious way to replace a failing or wayward presidential appointee that doesn’t require political paralysis or distraction from the normal business of government. It’s a change that can be managed by a one-sentence letter of resignation, and its presidential acceptance, Belknap style, promptly, one can hope, right after breakfast.