Twenty Years of Congress Volume Ii Part 21

Mr. Evarts offered further on behalf of the President, "to prove that at the meeting of the Cabinet, at which Mr. Stanton was present, held while the Tenure-of-office Bill was before the President for his approval, the advice of the Cabinet in regard to the same was asked by the President and given by the Cabinet, and thereupon the question whether Mr. Stanton and the other Secretaries who had received their appointment from Mr. Lincoln were within the restriction upon the President's power of removal from office created by said Act, was considered, and the opinion was expressed that the Secretaries appointed by Mr. Lincoln were not within such restrictions." The Chief Justice decided "that this testimony is proper to be taken into consideration by the Senate sitting as a Court of Impeachment,"

whereupon Senator Drake of Missouri demanded that the question be submitted to the Senate, and by a vote of 26 to 22 the Chief Justice was again overruled and the testimony declared to be inadmissible.

On behalf of the President, Mr. Evarts then offered "to prove that at the Cabinet meetings between the pa.s.sage of the Tenure-of-office Act and the order of the 21st of February, 1868, for the removal of Mr.

Stanton, upon occasions when the condition of the public service was affected by the operation of that bill and it came up for consideration and advice by the Cabinet, it was considered by the President and the Cabinet that a proper regard for the public service made it desirable that upon some proper case a judicial determination of the const.i.tutionality of the law should be obtained." The Managers objected to the admission of the testimony, and the Chief Justice, apparently tired of having his decisions overruled, submitted the question at once to the Senate. By a vote of 30 to 19 the testimony was declared to be inadmissible. All the proffered testimony on these several points was excluded while the Hon. Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, was on the stand. He was to be the first witness to substantiate the offer of proof which the President's counsel had made; to be corroborated, if need by, by other members of the Cabinet--possibly by Mr. Stanton himself.

The testimony on both sides having been concluded, on the 22d of April General John A. Logan, one of the Managers on the part of the House of Representatives, filed his argument in the case. It was carefully prepared, well written, and throughout logical in its a.n.a.lysis. It was uncompromisingly pungent in tone and severe in its method of dealing with President Johnson. "The world," said General Logan, "in after times will read the history of the depth to which political and official perfidy can descend. His great aim and purpose has been to subvert law, usurp authority, insult and outrage Congress, reconstruct the rebel States in the interest of treason, and insult the memories and resting-places of our heroic dead."

Mr. Boutwell on the two succeeding days made a strong arraignment of the President. Indeed he made all that well could be made out of the charges preferred by the House. He exhibited throughout his address the earnestness and the eloquence which come from intense conviction. He believed that the President had committed high crimes and misdemeanors, and he believed that the safety of the Republic required his removal from office. With this belief his argument was of course impressive. "The House of Representatives," said he in closing, "have presented this criminal at your bar with equal confidence in his guilt and in your disposition to administer exact justice between him and the people of the United States. I do not contemplate his acquittal: it is impossible. Therefore I do not look beyond; but, senators, the people of the United States of America will never permit an usurping Executive to break down the securities for liberty provided in the Const.i.tution. The cause of the Republic is in your hands. Your verdict of _Guilty_ is PEACE to our beloved country." Mr. Nelson of Tennessee followed Mr. Boutwell with a long and earnest plea in behalf of the President, somewhat effusive in its character but distinguished for the enthusiasm with which he defended his personal friend.

Mr. Groesbeck next addressed the Senate on behalf of the President. He made a clear, forcible presentation of the grounds of defense. Mr.

Boutwell had a.s.serted "that the President cannot prove or plead the motive by which he professes to have been governed in his violation of the laws of the country. . . . The necessary, the inevitable presumption in law is that he acted under the influence of bad motives in so doing, and no evidence can be introduced controlling or coloring in any degree this necessary presumption of the law." In reviewing this position, Mr. Groesbeck reminded the Senate that President Lincoln had "claimed and exercised the power of organizing military commissions under which he arrested and imprisoned citizens within the loyal States. He had no Act of Congress warranting it, and the Supreme Court has decided that the act was against the express provisions of the Const.i.tution. According to the gentleman on the other side, then, Mr.

Lincoln must be convicted. . . . The gentleman seems to acknowledge that there must have been a motive. There can be no crime without motive; but when the party comes forward and offers to prove his motive, the answer is, 'You shall not prove it.' When he comes forward and offers to prove it from his warm, living heart, the answer is, 'We will make up your motive out of the presumptions of law and conclude you upon that subject. We will not hear you.'"

Mr. Boutwell renewed with vigor the argument that the exception made in the Tenure-of-office Act, in regard to members of the Cabinet, did not give the President power to remove Mr. Stanton. "We maintain,"

said Mr. Boutwell, "that Mr. Stanton was holding the office of Secretary of War for and in the term of President Lincoln, by whom he had been appointed. . . . It was not a new office; it was not a new term. Mr. Johnson succeeded to Mr. Lincoln's office and for the remainder of Mr. Lincoln's term of office. He is serving out Mr.

Lincoln's term as President."

Mr. Groesbeck's reply on this point was effective: "The gentleman has said this is Mr. Lincoln's term. The dead have no ownership in offices or estate of any kind. Mr. Johnson is President of the United States with a term, and this is his term. _But it would make no difference if Mr. Lincoln were living to-day. If Mr. Lincoln were the President to-day he could remove Mr. Stanton. Mr. Lincoln would not have appointed him during this term. It was during Mr. Lincoln's first term that Mr.

Stanton received his appointment, and not this term; and an appointment by a President during one term, by the operation of this law, will not extend the appointee during another term because that same party may happen to be re-elected to the Presidency. Mr. Stanton therefore holds under his commission and not under the law_."

Mr. Thaddeus Stevens attempted to address the Senate, but found himself too much exhausted and handed his ma.n.u.script to General Butler, who read it to the Senate. The argument had many of the significant features of Mr. Stevens's style, but lacked the vigor which in the day of his strength he had always shown. He was rapidly failing in health and was then within a few weeks of his death. Hon. Thomas Williams of Pennsylvania followed Mr. Stevens with a written argument, rhetorically finished and read with great emphasis. It presented in new and attractive form the arguments already submitted, but towards the close contained the imprudent expression that "the eyes of an expectant people are upon the Senate."

Mr. Evarts followed with an argument of great length, reviewing every phase and feature of the case and making a remarkably effective plea on behalf of his eminent client. It was as strong in its logic as it was faultless in its style. The concluding portion of the address was especially eloquent and convincing. "We never dreamed," said he, "that an instructed and equal people, with a government yielding so readily to the touch of popular will, would have come to the trial of force against it. We never thought that the remedy to get rid of a ruler would bring a.s.sa.s.sination into our political experience. We never thought that political differences under an elective Presidency would bring in array the departments of the Government against one another to antic.i.p.ate by ten months the operation of the regular election. And yet we take them all, one after another, and we take them because we have grown to the full vigor of manhood. But we have met by the powers of the Const.i.tution these great dangers--prophesied when they would arise as likely to be our doom--the distractions of civil strife, the exhaustions of powerful war, the intervention of the regularity of power through the violence of a.s.sa.s.sination. We could summon from the people a million of men and inexhaustible treasure to help the Const.i.tution in its time of need. Can we summon now resources enough of civil prudence and of restraint of pa.s.sion to carry us through this trial, so that whatever result may follow, in whatever form, the people may feel that the Const.i.tution has received no wound? To this court, the last and best resort for its determination, it is to be left."

Mr. Stanbery, unable to deliver his well-prepared argument, employed one of the officers of the Attorney-General's department to read the greater part of it. During his service as Attorney-General he had become personally and deeply attached to the President, and now made an earnest plea in his behalf. "During the eighty years of our political existence," said Mr. Stanbery, "we have witnessed the fiercest contests of party. . . . A favorite legislative policy has more than once been defeated by the obstinate and determined resistance of the President, upon some of the gravest and most important questions we have ever had or are ever likely to have. The Presidential policy and the legislative policy have stood in direct antagonism. During all that time this fearful power of Impeachment was in the hands of the legislative department, and more than once a resort to it has been advised by extreme party men, as a sure remedy for party purposes; but happily that evil hitherto has not come upon us."

Hon. John A. Bingham summed up the case on behalf of the House and reviewed all the charges against the President, answering point by point the argument of his counsel. "I ask you, senators," said Mr.

Bingham, "how long men would deliberate upon the question of whether a private citizen, arraigned at the bar of one of your tribunals of justice for criminal violation of law, should be permitted to interpose a plea in justification of his criminal act that his only purpose was to interpret the Const.i.tution and laws for himself, that he violated the law in the exercise of his prerogative to test its validity hereafter, at such day as might suit his own convenience, in the courts of justice. Surely, senators, it is as competent for the private citizen to interpose such justification in answer to crime as it is for the President of the United States to interpose it, and for the simple reason that the Const.i.tution is no respecter of persons, and vests neither in the President nor in the private citizen judicial power. . . . For the Senate to sustain any such plea would in my judgment be a gross violation of the already violated Const.i.tution and laws of a free people."

When the counsel on both sides had finished, a certain period was allowed for senators to prepare and file their opinions on the case.

This was done by twenty-nine senators(4) and the question was thus re-argued with consummate ability, for the Senate contained a number of lawyers of high rank and long experience at the bar. On the 11th of May the Senate was ready to vote, and the interest in the result was intense. There had been much speculation as to the position of certain senators, but as all the members of the body had maintained discreet silence during the trial, it was impossible to forecast the result with any degree of certainty. The only judgment that had the least significance was founded on the votes given to admit or to reject certain testimony proposed by the President's counsel. This of course gave no certain indication of the vote of senators; though the general belief was that the Impeachment would fail. The transfer of the entire House to the floor of the Senate, the galleries crowded with citizens from all parts of the Republic, the presence of all the foreign ministers in the Diplomatic Gallery eagerly watching the possible and peaceful deposition of a sovereign ruler, the large attendance of the representatives of the press,--all attested the profound impression which the trial had made and the intense anxiety with which its conclusion was awaited.

By an order of the Senate the first vote was taken on the last Article, which was a summary of many of the charges set forth at greater length in some of the preceding Articles of Impeachment. Upon the call of his name each senator was required to rise and answer "Guilty" or "Not guilty." The roll was called in breathless silence, with hundreds of tally-papers in the hands of eager observers on the floor and in the gallery, carefully noting each response as given. The result, announced at once by the Chief Justice, showed that _thirty-five_ senators had declared the President "_guilty_" and _nineteen_ had declared him "_not guilty_."(5) As conviction required two-thirds the Impeachment on the Eleventh Article had failed. A debate then arose on a proposition to rescind the resolution in regard to the order in which the vote should be taken upon the other Articles of Impeachment, but without reaching a conclusion, the Senate as a Court of Impeachment adjourned, on motion of Mr. Cameron of Pennsylvania, until Tuesday the 26th day of May.

During the intervening period of fifteen days the air was filled with rumors that the result would be different when the Senate should come to vote on the remaining Articles. A single senator changing against the President would give _thirty-six_ for conviction, and leave only _eighteen_ for acquittal. This would be fatal to the President, as it would give the two-thirds necessary for conviction. But it was not so ordained. When the Senate re-a.s.sembled on the 26th, the vote was taken on the Second Article, and then upon the Third, with precisely the same results as was previously reached on the Eleventh Article.

When Mr. Ross of Kansas answered "_Not guilty_," there was an audible sensation of relief on the part of some, and of surprise on the part of others, showing quite plainly that rumor had been busy with his name as that of the senator who was expected to change his position.

Satisfied that further voting was useless, the Senate abandoned the remaining Articles, and as a Court of Impeachment adjourned _sine die_.

The great trial was over, and the President retained his high office.

In the ranks of the more radical portion of the Republican party there was an outbreak of indignation against the Republican senators who had voted "_Not guilty_." In the exaggerated denunciations caused by the anger and chagrin of the moment, great injustice was done to statesmen of spotless character. But until time had been given for reflection on the part of the excited ma.s.s of disappointed men, it was idle to interpose a word in defense, much less in justification, of the senators who had conscientiously differed from the main body of their political a.s.sociates. While, however, the majority of Republicans shared in the chagrin caused by the defeat of Impeachment, a large and increasing number of the cool-headed and more conservative members of the party rejoiced at the result as a fortunate exit from an indefensible position, which had been taken in the heat of just resentment against the President for his desertion of those important principles of public policy to which he had been solemnly pledged.

Still another cla.s.s, even more numerous than the last-named, took a less conscientious but more sanguine view of the situation--rejoicing both in the act of Impeachment and in the failure to convict. Their specious belief was that the narrow escape which the President had made would frighten him out of all mischievous designs for the remainder of his term; while the narrow escape which the party had made, left to it in the impending Presidential contest all the advantage of a political power so firmly held by Congress, and at the same time imposed upon the Democrats the responsibility for a discredited and disgraced Administration of the Government.

The sober reflection of later years has persuaded many who favored Impeachment that it was not justifiable on the charges made, and that its success would have resulted in greater injury to free inst.i.tutions than Andrew Johnson in his utmost endeavor was able to inflict. No impartial reader can examine the record of the pleadings and arguments of the Managers who appeared on behalf of the House, without feeling that the President was impeached for one series of misdemeanors, and tried for another series. This was perhaps not unnatural. The Republicans had the gravest cause to complain of the President's course on public affairs. He had professed the most radical creed of their party, had sought their confidence, had received their suffrages.

Entrusted with the chief Executive power of the Nation by Republican ballots, he professed upon his accession to office the most entire devotion to the principles of the party; but he had, with a baseness hardly to be exaggerated, repudiated his professions, deserted the friends who had confided in him, and made an alliance with those who had been the bitterest foes of the Union in the b.l.o.o.d.y struggle which had just closed.

In the outraged and resentful minds of those who had sustained the Union cause through its trials, the real offenses of the President were clearly seen, and bitterly denounced:--his hostility to the Fourteenth Amendment; his unwillingness to make citizenship National; his opposition to all efforts to secure the safety of the public debt, and the sacredness of the soldier's pension; his resistance to measures that would put the rebel debt beyond the possibility of being a burden upon the whole nation or even upon the people of the Southern States; his determination that freedmen should not be placed within the protection of Organic law; his eagerness to turn the Southern States over to the control of the rebel element, without condition and without restraint; his fixed hostility to every form of reconstruction that looked to national safety and the prevention of another rebellion; his opposition to every scheme that tended to equalize representation in Congress, North and South, and his persistent demand that the negro should be denied suffrage, yet be counted in the basis of apportionment; his treacherous and malignant conduct in connection with the atrocious ma.s.sacre at New Orleans; his hostility to the growth of free States in the North-West, while he was constantly urging the instant re-admission of all the rebel States; his denial of a morsel of food to the suffering and starving negro and white Unionist of the South in their dire extremity, as shown by his veto of the Freedmen's-bureau Bill; his cruel attempt to exclude the colored man from the power to protect himself by law, in his shameless veto of the Civil Rights Bill; and last, and worst of all, his heartless abandonment of that Union-loving cla.s.s of white men in the South who became the victims of rebel hatred, from which he had himself escaped only by the strength of the National arms. In recounting all the acts which made up the roll of his political dishonor, Johnson had, in Republican opinion, committed none so hideous as his turning over the Southern Unionists to the vengeance of those who, as he well knew, were incapable of dealing with them in a spirit of justice, and who were unwilling to show mercy, even after they had themselves received it in quality that was not strained.

Could the President have been legally and const.i.tutionally impeached for these offenses he should not have been allowed to hold his office for an hour beyond the time required for a fair trial. But the Articles of Impeachment did not even refer to any charge of this kind, and a stranger to our history, in perusing them, could not possibly infer that behind the legal verbiage of the Articles there was in the minds of the representatives who presented them a deadly hostility to the President for offenses totally different from the technical violation of a statue, for which he was arraigned,--a statute that never ought to have been enacted, as was practically confessed by its framers, when, within less than a year after the Impeachment trial had closed, they modified its provisions by taking away their most offensive features.

The charges on which the House actually arraigned the President were in substance, that he had violated the Tenure-of-office Act; that he had conspired with Lorenzo Thomas to violate it; that he had consulted with General Emory to see whether, independent of the General-in-Chief, he could not issue orders to the army to aid him in his determination to violate it; and lastly, that he had spoken of Congress in such a manner as tended to bring a co-ordinate branch of the Government into "disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt, and reproach." The charge of conspiring with Lorenzo Thomas, as well as that in respect to General Emory, appeared in the end to be not only unsustained, but trivial.

The President had conspired in precisely the same way with General Sherman when he urged him to accept the post of Secretary of War as Mr.

Stanton's successor. The charge that he had attempted to bring Congress into "disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt, and reproach," was laughingly answered in popular opinion, by the fact that he not been able to say half so many bitter things about Congress as Congress had said about him; and that, as the elections had shown, Congress had triumphed, and turned the popular contempt and ridicule against the President. Besides, the offense charged against the President had been committed nearly two years before, and seemed to be recalled now for popular effect in the construction of the Articles of Impeachment.

This charge richly deserved the satire it received at the hands of Judge Curtis when he spoke of "the House of Representatives erecting itself into a school of manners, and desiring the judgment of the Senate whether the President has not been guilty of an indecorum; whether he has spoken properly?" . . . "Considering the nature of our government," said Judge Curtis, "and the experience we have had on this subject, that is a pretty lofty claim!"

In fact there was but one charge of any gravity against the President --that of violating the Tenure-of-office Act. But on the charge there was a very grave difference of opinion among those equally competent to decide. Mr. Fessenden, one of the ablest lawyers, if not indeed the very ablest that has sat in the Senate since Mr. Webster, believed on his oath and his honor--an oath that was sacred and an honor that was stainless--that the President had a lawful and Const.i.tutional right to remove Mr. Stanton at the time and in the manner he did. Mr. Trumbull, whose legal ability had been attested by his a.s.signment to the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, believed with Mr. Fessenden, as did Mr. Grimes of Iowa, one of the strongest members of the Senate, and Mr. Henderson of Missouri, whose legal attainments have since given him a high professional reputation. Let it be frankly admitted that lawyers of equal rank conscientiously believed in the President's guilt. This only proves that there was ground for a substantial and fundamental difference of opinion, and that it could not therefore with certainty be charged that the President, "unmindful of the high duties of his office, did this act in violation of the Const.i.tution of the United States." This was the very question in dispute,--the question in regard to which lawyers of eminent learning and impartial mind, members of the Republican party and zealous opponents of the President's policy, radically differed in judgment. Opinions of distinguished lawyers on the Democratic side of the Senate, like Reverdy Johnson, are not quoted, because partisan motives would be ascribed to their conclusions.

Perhaps the best test as to whether the act of the President in removing Mr. Stanton was good ground for impeachment, would be found in asking any candid man if he believes a precisely similar act by Mr. Lincoln, or General Grant, or any other President in harmony with his party in Congress, would have been followed by impeachment, or by censure, or even by dissent. It is hardly conceivable, nay, it is impossible, that under such circ.u.mstances the slightest notice would be taken of the President's action by either branch of Congress. If there was a difference of opinion as to the intent and meaning of a law, the general judgment in the case supposed would be that the President had the right to act upon his own conscientious construction of the statute. It might not be altogether safe to concede to the Executive the broad scope of discretion which General Jackson arrogated to himself in his celebrated veto of the Bank Bill, when he declared that "The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Const.i.tution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Const.i.tution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others." But without approving the extreme doctrine which General Jackson announced with the applause of his party, it is surely not an unreasonable a.s.sumption that in the case of a statute which has had no judicial interpretation and whose meaning is not altogether clear, the President is not to be impeached for acting upon his own understanding of its scope and intent:--especially is he not to be impeached when he offers to prove that he was sustained in his opinion by every member of his Cabinet, and offers further to prove by the same honorable witnesses that he took the step in order to subject the statute in dispute to judicial interpretation.

It is to be noted that in the progress of the trial the Managers on the part of the House and the counsel of the President proceeded upon entirely different ground as to what const.i.tuted an offense punishable with impeachment. General Butler, who opened the case against the President with circ.u.mspection and ability, took care to exclude the idea that actual crime on the part of the officer was essential to justify impeachment. Speaking for all the Managers he said, "We define an impeachable high crime or misdemeanor to be one in its nature or consequences subversive of some fundamental or essential principle of government _or highly prejudicial to the public interest; and this may consist of a violation of the Const.i.tution, of law, of an official oath, or of duty, by an act committed or omitted; or, without violating a positive law, by the abuse of discretionary powers from improper motives or for any improper purpose_." This of course would give great lat.i.tude in proceedings against the President. It would challenge his discretion, erect sins of omission into positive offenses, and make inquest of his motives and purposes. There has not been an occupant of the Executive Chair since the organization of the Government, who did not at some period in his career commit an act which in the judgment of his political opponents was "highly prejudicial to the public interest," and therefore if his opponents should happen to be in the majority they might impeach him, simply for disagreement upon an issue of expediency upon which men equally competent to judge might reasonable and conscientiously hold different opinions. This was in effect the same position a.s.sumed by Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, that "in order to sustain impeachment under the Const.i.tution it is not necessary to prove a crime as an indictable offense, or any act _malum in se_. It is a purely _political_ proceeding." The counsel for the President dissented altogether from this definition of the grounds of Impeachment as given by the Managers. Judge Curtis declared that "when the Const.i.tution speaks of treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors, it refers to and includes only high criminal offenses against the United states, made so by some law of the United States existing when the acts complained of were done. .

. . _Noscitur a sociis_. High crimes and misdemeanors! so high that they belong in this company with _treason_ and _bribery_." The position of Judge Curtis was fortified by the fact that in the five cases of Impeachment trial before the President was accused--the cases of Blount, of Pickering, of Chase, of Peck, and of Humphries--the charges preferred by the House involved criminality.

Outside of professional opinion there was supposed to be a popular demand, so far as the Republican party represented the people, for the President's conviction--a demand found to be based, when a.n.a.lyzed, upon other acts of the President than those for which he was arraigned in the Articles of Impeachment. The people in this respect followed precisely in the line of their Representatives. It was certainly not a praiseworthy procedure that this supposed popular wish should have been mentioned at all as an argument for conviction. The most dignified of the many comments which this feature of the trial elicited was by Senator Fessenden, in the official _opinion_ which accompanied his vote:--"To the suggestion that popular opinion demands the conviction of the President on these charges, I reply that he is not now on trial before the people, but before the Senate. In the words of Lord Eldon, upon the trial of the Queen, 'I take no notice of what is pa.s.sing out of doors, because I am supposed const.i.tutionally not to be acquainted with it. . . . It is the duty of those upon whom a judicial task is imposed to meet reproach, and not to court popularity.' . . .

_The people_ have not taken an oath to do impartial justice according to the Const.i.tution and the law. _I have_ taken that oath."

The trial of President Johnson is the most memorable attempt made by any English-speaking people to depose a sovereign ruler in strict accordance with all forms of law. The order, dignity and solemnity which marked the proceedings may therefore be realized with pride by every American citizen. From the beginning to the end there was no popular menace, or even suggestion of disturbance or violence, let the trial end as it might. If the President had been convicted he would have quietly retired from the Executive Mansion and Benjamin F. Wade, President of the Senate, sworn by the Chief Justice in the presence of the two Houses of Congress, would have a.s.sumed the power and performed the duties of Chief Magistrate of the Nation. During the original agitation of Impeachment in the House of Representatives some imprudent expressions had been made by hot-headed partisans, in regard to the right of the President to disperse Congress and appeal directly to the people to vindicate his t.i.tle to his office. But these declarations were of no weight and their authors would have promptly retracted them in the hour of danger.

The time within which the trial of the President was comprised, from the presentation of the charges by the House of Representatives until the final adjournment of the Senate as a Court of Impeachment, was eighty-two days. Within that period the amplest opportunity was afforded to submit testimony and to hear the pleas of counsel. The gravity of the procedure was fully realized by all who took part in it, and no pains were spared to secure the observance of every Const.i.tutional requirement to the minutest detail. In conserving its own prerogatives Congress made no attempt to curtail the prerogatives of the President during his trial. The army and the navy were under his control, together with the power to change that vast host of Federal officers and employees whose appointment does not require the confirmation of the Senate. Confidence in the reign of law was so absolute that no one ever dreamed it possible for the President to resist the force of its silent decree against him if one more voice in the Senate had p.r.o.nounced him guilty.

The trial of Warren Hastings is always quoted as a precedent of imposing authority and consequence. But that was simply the arraignment of a subordinate official, upon charges of peculation and cruelty--misdemeanors not uncommon with the Englishmen of that day who were entrusted with Colonial administration. The great length of the Hastings trial, and especially the partic.i.p.ation of Edmund Burke as original accuser and chief manager, have given it an extraneous importance to students of English history and law. The Articles of Impeachment, drawn by Mr. Burke, were presented at the bar of the House of Lords in April, 1786. They were so elaborate as to fill a stately octavo volume of five hundred pages. Mr. Burke's opening speech was not made for two years thereafter, and his closing plea was made in June 1794. During these eight years his splendid eloquence was the admiration and pride of the English people, and gave to the arraignment of Hastings an extrinsic interest far beyond the real importance. It bore no comparison in any of its essential aspects with a change of Rulership in a Republic of forty millions of people. Scarcely an incident of Hastings' life in India would be known to the popular reader, except for the a.s.sociation of his name with the most celebrated period of Mr. Burke's majestic career. Baron Pla.s.sy, a far greater man in the same field of achievement, is, compared with Hastings, little known--the t.i.tle not being remembered even by the ma.s.s of his countrymen to-day as part of the reward to Robert Clive for founding the British Empire in India.

But the importance of the President's Impeachment does not depend upon the fame of his accusers or upon the length of his trial. The case in itself possesses intrinsic and enduring interest. It was not affected by fact.i.tious circ.u.mstances. It is notable especially because of the extreme tension to which it subjected the Const.i.tution, and the attestation it affords of the restraint which a free people instinctively impose upon themselves in times of public excitement.

It will be studied as a precedent, or as a warning, by the citizens of the Great Republic during the centuries through which, G.o.d grant, it may pa.s.s with increasing prosperity and renown. And it may well happen that in the crises of a distant future the momentous trial of 1868, though properly resulting in acquittal of the accused, will be recalled as demonstrating the ease and the serenity with which, if necessity should demand it, the citizens of a free country can lawfully deprive a corrupt or dangerous Executive of the office he has dishonored and the power he has abused.

Mr. Stanton promptly resigned his post when the Impeachment failed and returned to private life and to the practice of his profession. He was accompanied into his retirement by a vote of thanks from Congress for "the great ability, purity and fidelity with which he had discharged his public duties"; and in confirming his successor, the Senate adopted a resolution that Mr. Stanton was not legally removed, but had relinquished his office. He was broken in health and very keenly disappointed by the failure of the Impeachment. He supported General Grant for the Presidency and made one or two important public speeches in aid of his election. On the 20th of December, 1869, he was appointed by President Grant an a.s.sociate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. For many years of his eminent professional life this high judicial position was the one ambition which Mr. Stanton had cherished. But its realization came too late. His prolonged labors, his anxieties and his disappointments had done their work, and on the 24th of December, five days after he had completed his fifty-fifth year, he sank to his grave, after herculean labors for the safety and honor of his country.

General John M. Schofield was nominated by the President as Mr.

Stanton's successor and was confirmed by the Senate. He had an unexceptional record as a soldier, was a man of spotless personal character, and possessed of sound judgment and discretion. His ability for civil administration had been tested and satisfactorily demonstrated during his command of the District of Virginia in the period of reconstruction, and also in a certain degree during the war when Mr. Lincoln entrusted to him the difficult task of preserving loyal ascendency in Missouri. He took charge of the War Department at a difficult and critical time, but his administration of it was in all respects successful and received the commendation of fair-minded men in all parties.

Immediately after his acquittal the President renominated Mr. Stanbery for Attorney-General. The Senate, in a spirit of resentment not altogether praiseworthy or intelligible, rejected him. It was rumored that Mr. Stanbery's previous course as Attorney-general "in construing the Reconstruction Acts" had given offense to certain senators. No reason, however, was a.s.signed and indeed no good reason could be given, for this personal injustice to an able lawyer and an honorable man. He was simply a victim to the political excitement of the hour. Upon Mr.

Stanbery's rejection the President nominated Mr. Evarts to his first official position under the National Government. He was promptly confirmed, and, it need not be added, discharged the duties of Attorney-General with eminent ability and with a popularity which tended to re-establish in some degree those relations of personal courtesy always so desirable between Congress and the Executive Departments.

[(1) The following is General Grant's testimony in full, touching the point referred to. It was given under oath before the Judiciary Committee on the 18th of July, 1867.

MR. BOUTWELL: "Have you at any time heard the President make any remark in reference to the admission of members of Congress from the rebel States into either House?"

GENERAL GRANT: "I cannot say positively what I have heard him say on the subject. I have heard him say as much, perhaps, in his published speeches last summer, as I ever heard him say at all upon that subject.

I have heard him say--and I think I have heard him say it twice in his speeches--that if the North carried the elections by members enough to give them, with the Southern members, a majority, why would they not be the Congress of the United States? I have heard him say that several times."

MR. THOMAS WILLIAMS: "When you say 'the North,' you mean the Democratic party of the North; or, in other words, the party favoring his policy?"

GENERAL GRANT: "I mean if the North carried enough members in favor of the admission of the South. I did not hear him say that he would recognize them as the Congress. I merely heard him ask the question, 'Why would they not be the Congress?'"

MR. JAMES F. WILSON: "When did you hear him say that?"

GENERAL GRANT: "I heard him say that in one or two of his speeches.

I do not recollect when."

MR. BOUTWELL: "Have you heard him make a remark kindred to that elsewhere?"