This is nothing but the outline, derived from historic sources _which
the Senate on this occasion is bound to recognize_. Other acts fall
within the picture. The officers he appointed in defiance of law were
paid also in the same defiance. Millions of property were turned
over without consideration to railroad companies, whose special
recommendation was participation in the Rebellion. The Freedmen’s
Bureau, that sacred charity of the Republic, was despoiled of its
possessions for the sake of Rebels, to whom their forfeited estates
were given back after they had been vested by law in the United States.
The proceeds of captured and abandoned property, lodged under law
in the National Treasury, were ravished from their place of deposit
and sacrificed. Rebels were allowed to fill the antechambers of the
Executive Mansion and to enter into the counsels. The pardoning
power was prostituted, and pardons were issued in lots to suit
Rebels, thus grossly abusing that trust whose discreet exercise is so
essential to the administration of justice. The powers of the Senate
over appointments were trifled with and disregarded by reappointing
persons already rejected, and by refusing to communicate the names
of others appointed during the recess. The veto power, conferred by
the National Constitution as a remedy for ill-considered legislation,
was turned by him into a weapon of offence against Congress, and into
an instrument to beat down the just opposition which his usurpation
had aroused. The power of removal, so sparingly exercised by patriot
Presidents, was seized as an engine of tyranny, and openly employed
to maintain his wicked purposes, by the sacrifice of good citizens
who would not be his tools. Incompetent and dishonest creatures,
recommended only by their echoes to his voice, were appointed to
office, especially in the collection of the internal revenue, through
whom a new organization, known as the “Whiskey Ring,” has been able
to prevail over the Government, and to rob the Treasury of millions,
at the cost of tax-paying citizens, whose burdens are thus increased.
Laws enacted by Congress for the benefit of the colored race, including
that great statute for the establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau,
and that other great statute for the establishment of Civil Rights,
were first attacked by Presidential veto, and, when finally passed by
requisite majority over the veto, were treated by him as little better
than dead letter, while he boldly attempted to arrest a Constitutional
Amendment by which the rights of citizens and the national debt
were placed under the guaranty of irrepealable law. During these
successive assumptions, usurpations, and tyrannies, utterly without
precedent in our history, this deeply guilty man ventured upon public
speeches, each an offence to good morals, where, lost to all shame,
he appealed in coarse words to the coarse passions of the coarsest
people, scattering firebrands of sedition, inflaming anew the rebel
spirit, insulting good citizens, and, with regard to office-holders,
announcing, in his own characteristic phrase, that he would “kick them
out,”--the whole succession of speeches being, from their brutalities
and indecencies, in the nature of a “criminal exposure of his person,”
indictable at Common Law, for which no judgment can be too severe.
Even this revolting transgression has additional aggravation, when it
is considered, that, through these utterances, the cause of justice
was imperilled, and the accursed demon of civil feud lashed again into
vengeful fury.
All these things, from beginning to end, are plain facts, recorded
in our annals, and known to all. And it is further recorded in our
annals and known to all, that, through these enormities,--any one
of which is ample for condemnation, while all together present an
aggregation of crime,--untold calamities have been brought upon our
country, disturbing business and finance, diminishing the national
revenues, postponing specie payments, dishonoring the Declaration of
Independence in its grandest truths, arresting the restoration of the
Rebel States, reviving the dying Rebellion, and, instead of that peace
and reconciliation so much longed for, sowing strife and wrong, whose
natural fruit is violence and blood.