THE FINAL VOTE TAKEN.
The defeat of the Eleventh Article was the second official set-back to
the Impeachment movement--the first being the practical abandonment of
the First Article by the change in the order of voting.
The vote had been taken on what its friends seemed to consider its
strongest proposition; the Eleventh Article having been so framed as to
group the substance, practically, of all the pending ten Articles. The
impeachers had staked their cause upon that Article, and lost. They
seemed not to have contemplated the possibility of its defeat.
So confident were they of its success, in which event it would be
immaterial what became of the other Articles, that they apparently had
agreed upon no order of procedure after that should have been defeated.
They were in the condition of a flock of game into which the sportsman
had fired a shot and broken its ranks. They were dazed, and for a moment
seemed not to know what next to do, or which way to turn. They did not
dare now go back to the fated First Article, according to the program
agreed upon, as Mr. Sherman and Mr. Howe had demonstrated its weakness,
and they were fearful of going to the Second or Third, as in the then
temper of the anti-impeachers it was manifest there would be little hope
for either of them, and the other eight had been already beaten without
a vote, at the conference previously held, and by Republican commitals.
The Chief Justice ordered the reading of the First Article, according to
the order agreed upon, but before that could begin, apparently to gain
time for recovery, Mr. Williams moved that the Senate take a recess of
fifteen minutes, but the motion was not agreed to.
The Chief Justice again ordered the reading of the First Article, but
again, before the clerk could begin the reading, Mr. Williams intervened
to move an adjournment to Tuesday, the 26th day of the month.
After numerous conflicting motions relating to the date of the proposed
reassembling, and several roll calls thereon, the anti-impeachers
generally insisting on proceeding at once to vote on the other articles
of impeachment, the motion of Mr. Williams to adjourn to June 26th,
prevailed.
Of course the purpose, and the only purpose then apparent, of that
adjournment, was to gain time, apparently in the hope of more favorable
developments in the next ten days.
The supposably strongest count of the indictment having been beaten,
it was apparent that it would be folly to hazard a vote on any other
at that time. There was a possibility that changes might occur in the
personnel of the Senate in the interim. As but one article had been
put to vote, and as that was beaten by the lack of a single vote, there
seemed a further possibility that influences could be brought to bear,
through the industry of the House, as was very soon after developed, to
secure the support of an anti-impeaching Senator on at least one of the
articles of impeachment yet to be voted upon. A vacancy in the ranks of
the anti-impeaching Republicans to be filled by an impeaching appointee
might happen. Many contingencies were possible during the next ten days
for a reversal of the action of the Senate just had. At all events,
everything would be hazarded by permitting further immediate action,
while the situation could be rendered no worse by delay, and time and
other mollifying conditions and influences might bring changes more
promising of success.
The anti-impeachment Republicans had not long to wait for the
development of the purpose of the recess, at least so far its supporters
in the House were concerned. Immediately upon the adjournment of the
Senate, the House re-assembled, and the following proceeding was had:
Mr. Bingham: I have been directed by the Managers on the part of the
House of Representatives, in the matter of the Impeachment of
Andrew Johnson, to report the following preamble and resolutions for
consideration at this time:
Whereas, information has come to the Managers which seems to them to
furnish probable cause to believe that improper or corrupt means have
been used to influence the determination of the Senate upon the Articles
of Impeachment submitted to the Senate by the House of Representatives
against the President of the United States; therefore.
Be it Resolved, That for the further and more efficient prosecution
of the Impeachment of the President, the Managers be directed and
instructed to summon and examine witnesses under oath, to send for
persons and papers, and employ a stenographer, and appoint sub-committee
to take testimony; the expense thereof to be paid from the Contingent
Fund of the House.
This resolution was immediately and without debate adopted by a vote of
88 to 14. It would be stating it mildly to say that the House was in a
tumult. The Republican leaders were wild with rage. They had selected
for the first vote what they deemed the strongest point in their
indictment, and lost; and their vengeance now turned upon those
Republican Senators who had failed to support them. Hence the
adjournment of the Senate for ten days to afford them time to discipline
the recusants and force an additional vote for conviction on the next
ballot.
The conspicuous indelicacy of this move was two-fold: 1st, in that the
House proposed to investigate the action of a co-ordinate branch of
Congress: and 2nd, that the trial not being concluded, it had to a
pointed degree the appearance of an attempt to intimidate Senators
who had voted against conviction into changing their votes at the next
ballot in fear of an inquisition for alleged corruption. In that sense
it was an act of intimidation--a warning. It was an ill-disguised
threat and a most unseemly proceeding--yet there was not one among the
supporters of the Impeachment to condemn it, and few who failed openly
to justify it. Partisan rancor and personal and political hostility to
the President had reached a point that condoned this indelicacy of the
House towards the Senate, and justified the public assault upon the
dissenting Republican Senators, and the insult to the Senate itself.
The demand for adjournment and delay seemed to have been understood
by the impeaching majority of the Senate, and was of course promptly
granted and further voting postponed, and the Senate adjourned to May
26th.
The next ten day were days of unrest--of anxiety to all who were
involved or in any way interested in the impeachment proceeding.
While the result of the 16th gave hope and comfort to the opponents of
impeachment, it caused little or no perceptible discouragement to its
more radical friends. They were more active and persistent than ever.
The footsteps of the anti-impeaching Republicans were dogged from the
day's beginning to its end and far into the night, with entreaties,
considerations and threats, in the hope of securing a reversal of the
result of the 16th. The partisan press of the States represented by
the anti-impeaching Republicans came daily filled with vigorous
animadversions upon their action, and not a few threats of violence upon
their return to their constituents. But it was in vain.
The Senate reassembled on the 26th of May to complete the vote on the
articles of impeachment. After the usual preliminary proceedings, Mr.
Williams moved to begin the voting on the Second Article, which was had
with the same result as on the 11th--and then the Third, and still
with the same result. It then became manifest that it was useless to go
farther, as all the balance had been rendered certain of defeat, and by
still more decisive votes--a considerable number of those so far voting
for impeachment having committed themselves in the previous conference
against all the balance. So, to save themselves from being forced to
vote against impeachment on any of the articles, there was a unanimous
vote of the impeachers to abandon the case and adjourn--and with it went
glimmering the visions of office, and spoils, and the riotous assaults
on the public treasury that had for months been organizing for the
day when Mr. Johnson should be put out and Mr. Wade put in, with the
political board clear for a NEW DEAL.
An analysis of the Eleventh, Article shows that it comprised four
distinct counts, or accusations.
First--That Mr. Johnson had said that the Thirty-Ninth Congress was
not a Congress of the United States, but a Congress of only part of
the States, and therefore had no power to propose amendments the
Constitution.
The latter clause of this accusation was the only portion of the first
count that received any consideration during the trial, and the only
testimony brought in its support was the Parsons-Johnson telegraphic
correspondence set out in Interrogatory No. 5.
In that dispatch, referring to then pending Constitutional amendment
(the 14th) Mr. Johnson referred to Congress as "a set of individuals."
Mr. Manager Boutwell declared this expression to be "the gist of the
offense of this particular telegraphic dispatch."
Counsel for defense objected to this testimony, but it was received by a
vote of yeas twenty-seven, nays seventeen.
As the Fourteenth Amendment was not declared adopted or a part of
the Constitution for more than a year after the transmission of that
dispatch, and as the Constitution of the United States prohibits
any abridgment of the freedom of speech, and as this remark was
unaccompanied by any act in violation of law, it is difficult to see
how it could be construed into an impeachable offense. Moreover, saying
nothing of the good taste or propriety of that dispatch, Mr. Johnson was
opposed to the proposed amendment, and had the same right to oppose it,
or to characterize it or the members of Congress favoring it, as had any
private citizen, or as had the members of Congress to characterize his
action in the premises, without being called to account therefor.
The second count of that article was:
Violation of the Tenure-of-Office Act of March 2nd, 1867, in seeking to
prevent the resumption by Mr. Stanton of the office of Secretary of War.
This clause had been very effectually disposed of by Messrs. Sherman
and Howe several days before the vote was taken on the Eleventh Article,
when they pointed out the fact that the language cage of the first
section of the Tenure-of-Office Act clearly excepted, and was intended
by the Senate, to except Mr. Stanton and all other persons then in Mr.
Johnson's Cabinet who had been originally appointed by Mr. Lincoln
and were still holding over under Mr. Johnson without having been
recommissioned by him; and that Mr. Johnson had therefore the legal
right and power to remove them at his pleasure.
And so convincing had been the argument of those gentlemen at that time,
that there was unanimous consent on the pro-impeachment side of the
Senate, on two different occasions, to set aside the First Article, of
which the alleged unlawful attempt to remove Mr. Stanton was practically
the principal accusation. Not illogically, that unanimous consent to
abandon the First article by thus setting it aside, and afterwards
refusing to put it to a vote, may be said to have been equivalent to a
vote of its insufficiency.
It is pertinent to suggest here that the President believed the
Tenure-of-Office Act to be unconstitutional, as it was clearly an
attempted abridgment of his power over his Cabinet which had never
before been questioned by Congress. The only method left him for the
determination of that question was in the course he took, except by an
agreed case, but it is manifest from the record that no such agreement
could be had, as an effort thereto was made in the Thomas case in the
District Court, but failed, the prosecution withdrawing the case at the
point where that purpose of the President became manifest.
The third count was:
Attempting to prevent the execution of the Army appropriation Act of
March 2nd, 1867.
The means specified in this alleged attempt was the appointment of Mr.
Edward Cooper to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, with power to
draw warrants on the Treasury without the consent of the Secretary--the
purpose being to show that, with General Thomas acting as Secretary
of War, and Mr. Cooper as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury to honor
General Thomas' drafts, and thus, in control of expenditures for the
support of the Army, a conspiracy was sought to be proven whereby the
President intended and expected to defeat the Reconstruction Acts of
Congress by preventing the use of the Army for its enforcement.
Mr. Johnson, of the Court, asked this question:
The Managers are requested to say whether they propose to show whether
Mr. Cooper was appointed by the President in November, 1867, as a means
to obtain unlawful possession of the public money, other than by the
fact of the appointment itself?
Mr. Manager Butler answered:
We certainly do.
Mr. Butler read the law on this subject, passed March 2nd, 1867, as
follows:
That the Secretary of the Treasury shall have power, by appointment
under his hand and official seal, to delegate to one of the Assistant
Secretaries of the Treasury authority to sign in his stead all warrants
for the payment of money into the public Treasury and all warrants for
the disbursments from the public Treasury of money certified by the
accounting officers of the Treasury to be due upon accounts duly audited
and settle by them; and such warrants signed shall be in all cases of
the same validity as if they had been signed by the Secretary of the
Treasury himself.
Mr. William E. Chandler, who had been Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury, was on the witness stand, called by the prosecution. Mr.
Butler asked whether it was the practice of the Assistant Secretary to
act as Secretary in case of removal of the Secretary.
Answer: I am not certain that it is, without his appointment as Acting
Secretary by the President.
Mr. Fessenden, of the Court, propounded this interrogatory?
1st--Has it been the practice, since the passage of the law, for an
Assistant Secretary to sign warrants unless especially appointed and
authorized by the Secretary of the Treasury?
2nd--Has any Assistant Secretary been authorized to sign any warrants
except such as are specified in the Act?
The witness answered as to the first:
It has not been the practice for any Assistant Secretary since the
passage of the Act to sign warrants except upon an appointment by the
Secretary for that purpose in accordance with the provisions of the Act.
Immediately upon the passage of the Act, the Secretary authorized one of
his Assistant Secretaries to sign warrants of the character described
in the Act, and they have been customarily signed by that Assistant
Secretary in all cases since that time.
As to the second question the answer was:
No Assistant Secretary has been authorized to sign warrants except such
as are specified in this Act, unless when acting as Secretary.
That disposed of the third count in the Eleventh Article, and the
testimony was rejected by a vote of yeas 22, nays 27.
These answers to tire interrogatories seemed to prove the reverse of
what the Prosecution had expected. The accusation of the Third count was
not sustained.
As to the Fourth count of the Eleventh Article, that Mr. Johnson sought
to prevent the execution of the "Act to provide for the more efficient
government of the rebel States," passed March 2nd, 1867, by the removal
of Mr. Stanton from the War Office, the proceedings of the trial
disclose no testimony of a sufficiently direct character for
specification, except, possibly, a number of speeches delivered at
different points by Mr. Johnson, which are set out in the Tenth Article
of the Impeachment. As that Article was by unanimous consent abandoned
and never put to vote, all its allegations logically fell as unproven.
There was, therefore, no force and little coherency in the Eleventh
Article. It fell of its own weight. Every one of its several averments
had been disproven, or at least not proven. It was to a good degree
a summing up--an aggregation, of the entire bill of indictment on the
several distinct forms of offenses charged--a crystallization of the
whole.
The entire impeachment scheme was in reality beaten by the vote on that
Article, and the adjournment of ten days then taken could have been only
in the hope on the part of the majority that ultimate success on some
one of the remaining Articles could be made possible, in some way,
legitimate or otherwise, in part by the importunate throng of visitors
to the Capitol who were vociferously and vindictively urging Mr.
Johnson's removal largely for reasons personal to themselves--but
more especially through the efforts of the House of Representatives to
discipline one or more of the anti-impeaching Republicans of the Senate.
The allegation of the Second Article, put to vote on the 26th, and
beaten by the same vote as was the Eleventh, was a corollary of the
First-violation of the Tenure-of-Office Act in the appointment of
General Thomas as Secretary of War ad interim, WITHOUT THE ADVICE AND
CONSENT OF THE SENATE. This was the first declaration ever made in the
Senate that an ad interim or merely temporary appointment to fill a
vacancy, required confirmation by that body. The power to make such
an appointment is so clearly possessed by the President without
consultation of the Senate-had been so uniformly exercised by every
preceding President without question, that argument on that point would
be superfluous.
In reality the essence of the Second Article, as of the First, was the
removal of Mr. Stanton. If the President could remove him without the
consent of the Senate, which was clearly established in the debate in
the conference by Messrs. Sherman and Howe, the way was clear for the
appointment of an act interim Secretary, to the end that the office be
filled until such time as the President would be prepared to refill the
place with a Secretary on consultation with the Senate. That was the
very thing he attempted to do on the 22nd of February, the day after Mr.
Stanton's removal, when he sent to the Senate the nomination of Thomas
Ewing, Senior, to be Secretary of War, for the action of that body.
The Third Article was so closely analagous to the Second, that an
analysis of it would be in the nature of repetition. If there were any
distinctions between them, they were so finely drawn that they amounted
simply to a distinction without a difference--a characteristic, indeed,
of a large part of the eleven Articles of Impeachment--a characteristic
so conspicuous that it was not deemed worth while by the majority to go
further in their submission to the Court.
These three Articles--the Second, Third and Eleventh--being the only
Articles of the entire list of eleven put to a vote, and having been
taken up and passed upon out of their numerical but in the order of
their supposed availability--must therefore be regarded as confessedly
the strongest and most likely of the entire list to command the support
of the Senate. They were selected and set out for the test. That
selection was equivalent to saying, "we put the Impeachment cause to
test on these three Articles. If they fail, we have nothing more to
offer."
They were put to test and failed. They failed because of their innate
weakness. Failed because they proved nothing. Failed because not a
single allegation of the entire indictment was or could be proven
or tortured into all impeachable offense. Not a remark made by the
President or an act performed in all the long and bitter controversy
that had subsisted between himself and Congress could be brought nearer
to the impeachment mark, in fact, few if any of them so near, as had
been the every day rule in the House of Representatives during the
previous two years in their treatment of the President. Yet nobody
thought of impeaching members of the House for their every day personal
vituperations against him.
Bill after bill had been offered in Congress, and law after law enacted,
with apparently the sole purpose of hampering the Constitutional
authority apparently functions of the President--even the assumption
of Executive powers and judicial functions by Congress--the not remote
purpose of which seemed to be his entrapment into some measure of
resistance upon which could be based an indictment. The House seemed to
be literally "lying in wait" for him, with traps set on every side for
his ensnarement.
At last, after two years of this sort of scheming and impatient and
anxious waiting, the opportunity seemed to have offered in the alleged
violation of the Tenure-of-Office Act. The fosterers of the impeachment
crusade, weary with their long vigil and growing desperate with every
additional day's delay, clutched at the new turn of affairs like a
drowning man at a floating straw, and with the avidity of a starved
gudgeon at a painted fly.
It was not strange that this sort of diplomacy, developed and exposed as
it was in the Senate, in spite of the unfair and partisan maneuvering of
the prosecution to prevent it, should have reacted, and contributed to
turn against the impeachment movement gentlemen who entered upon the
investigation under oath to give Mr. Johnson a fair, non-partisan trial.
The only surprise was that, after the exposure of the malignant partisan
spirit that sat in judgment upon Mr. Johnson, and the utter and absolute
failure to prove any violation of law on his part, but on the contrary,
a determination to preserve from infringement the functions of his
office and prevent a revolution from fundamental political forms by the
absorption of the Executive authority by the legislative branch of
the government--that even a majority, and more especially, that nearly
two-thirds of the Senate, could have been found at the close in support
of the Impeachment.
This record will serve to explain the omission to vote on the First
Article--Messrs. Sherman and Howe being precluded from supporting it in
consequence of the position taken by them in the controversy between the
two Houses of Congress over the first section of the Tenure-of-Office
Bill while that bill was pending, and to avoid defeat on the first vote
taken, which was inevitable on that Article--and also to explain, so
far as any explanation is possible, the zig-zag method of conducting the
ballot--skipping all the first ten Articles and going down to the bottom
of the list for the first vote, with the promise of then going back to
the first Article and continuing to the end, but instead, skipping that
for the second time, and starting in again on the Second and then the
Third.
Of course, the natural effect of this battle-dore and shuttle-cock
method of treating so grave a matter as an impeachment of the President
of the United States, added to the effect of the manifest unfairness of
the majority in their treatment of testimony offered in the President's
defense--was to disgust some who doubtless entered upon the trial
honestly inclined to vote for Andrew Johnson's impeachment, but
wanted it done fairly and openly, without any suppression of pertinent
testimony or juggling for a verdict--and amusing to others, who viewed
it as proof of weakness in the indictment, and of misgiving as to the
result on the part of its supporters.
To still others it was more than that. It was not only an indication of
weakness, but of a determination to take every possible advantage, fair
and unfair, to save votes for conviction. The impeachers not unnaturally
feared the effect of the defeat of the First Article by the nay votes
of Messrs. Sherman and Howe, and probably other Republicans, which was
certain to follow the submission of that Article to a vote. Its only
allegation was the unlawful removal of Mr. Stanton from the office of
Secretary of War in violation of the Tenure-of-Office Act. That alleged
offense was repeated in varied but more or less specific forms, in every
succeeding Article of the Impeachment except the Tenth, and constituted
the sum and substance--the gravamen--of the entire indictment. It was
the basis upon which the impeachment super-structure had been erected.
Without that Article there was not only no foundation, but no coherence
in the recital of Mr. Johnson's alleged offenses, and when that fell
by its abandonment, the entire impeachment scheme fell with it--as, if
there were nothing in the First Article on which to hang an impeachment,
there could be nothing in those that followed and were but an
amplification--a mere exploitation--of the First.
In substantiation of this view of the First Article, the declaration of
Mr. Boutwell to that effect is here inserted. Mr. Boutwell was chairman
of the committee of the House appointed to prepare the Articles of
Impeachment upon which Mr. Johnson was tried. On his report of these
Articles to the House he said, after speaking particularly of the Tenth
Article:
The other Articles are based upon facts which are of public knowledge,
growing out of the attempt of the President to remove Secretary Stanton
from the office of Secretary for the Department of War.
That is, that the basis of the entire accusation was the alleged
violation of the Tenure-of-Office Act in the removal of Mr. Stanton, as
recited in the First Article.
So, after taking the vote on the Second and Third Articles and their
defeat by the same vote as that on the Eleventh, it became manifest
that further effort to the impeachment of the president on any of the
remaining eight Articles would be useless, and Mr. Williams moved that
the Senate, sitting as a Court of Impeachment, adjourn sine die, which
motion was carried by the following vote:
Yeas--Anthony, Cameron, Cattell, Chandler, Cole, Conkling Corbett,
Cragin, Drake, Edmunds, Ferry, Frelinghuysen, Harlan, Howard, Morgan,
Morrill of Maine, Morrill of Vermont, Morton, Nye, Patterson of New
Hampshire, Pomeroy, Ramsay, Sherman, Sprague, Stewart, Sumner, Thayer,
Tipton, Van Winkle, Wade. Willey, Williams, Wilson, Yates--34.
Nays--Bayard, Buckalew, Davis, Dixon, Doolittle, Fowler, Henderson,
Hendricks, Johnson, McCreery, Norton, Patterson of Tennessee, Ross,
Saulsbury, Trumbull, Vickers--16.
Every Senator present who had voted for conviction voted to abandon the
prosecution and end the trial, and every Senator present who had voted
against conviction, voted to continue and go through the indictment.
Of course, it was useless to go farther with any hope of success, as,
it will be seen by this record, all the remaining Articles were dead,
beaten in caucus before the voting commenced, and by the professed
friends and leaders of the movement.
Possibly it was the anticipation of this effect of the abandonment of
the First Article, that was the "sickness" to which Mr. Edmunds, at the
outset of the voting, ten days before, ascribed the peculiar order of
taking the vote.
It is not intended to aver that there was any privity or concert in this
particular manipulation--yet it is suggestive. The Impeachment had
been dragging since the 22nd of February, to May 26th--more than three
months,--and had been everywhere the engrossing topic of the time. It
was becoming tiresome-not only to the Senate, but to the general public.
Notwithstanding the City of Washington was still filled with people
who had been waiting weary weeks and months for the deposition of
Mr. Johnson and the accession of Mr. Wade to the Presidency, for the
fulfillment of pledges of appointment based thereon, and who were still
importunate for impeachment, the business element of the country at
large was tiring of it and its depressing effect upon the commercial
activities. Even Senators and Congressmen were being moved to a sense of
the obstructive and somewhat ridiculous phases the impeachment movement
was beginning to take on--and not a few of those who in its earlier
stages had honestly favored the movement, inside as well as outside the
membership of both Houses of Congress, had begun to realize the actual
nature and purposes, as also the shallowness of the impeachment movement
that from whatever motives it had originated, it had degenerated very
much into a game of personal ambition--of vindictiveness--and office
getting and spoils--and practically nothing higher.
While some of its supporters who had manifestly entered upon the trial
with a determination to convict, were still insistent for further
prosecution had there been a shadow of ultimate success, there were
others who had begun to realize, weeks before the end came, the
awkwardness of the predicament in which they had allowed themselves and
their party to be placed, and desired to abandon the enterprise.
The strain was becoming too great--there was certain to be a recoil
sooner or later. The foundations of the Impeachment were shown to be too
slender. There was a future ahead that must be faced, but Senators
must preserve their consistency. They could not go before their
pro-impeachment constituencies with a record indicating any degree of
weakening in the impeachment crusade. They had insisted for months that
Mr. Johnson must be removed, and it would be politically inexpedient to
retract.
But they wanted somebody to "help them let go."
So the plan of "desultory" procedure herein outlined seems to have
"happened"--whether by design or otherwise, is immaterial--and that plan
was made easy by the concerted abandonment of the head and front of
the indictment--the First Article--which was side-tracked and logically
carried with it all that followed, as would manifestly have been the
result if the voting had begun on that Article.
While, to degree, the turmoils and bitterness of that time have passed
out of public mind, there are still many living who retain a keen
remembrance of the struggle and the enmities it produced. There were
during the trial many thousands of men in the City of Washington
awaiting the Impeachment and removal of the President for the
fulfillment of pledges of official appointment based thereon, and their
numbers increased as the trial progressed.
These anticipated beneficiaries were naturally not idle in efforts to
the stimulation of zeal in the cause of Impeachment, and Senators
were importuned at all seasonable and unseasonable hours in behalf of
immediate and positive action. The lively anxiety, even anxious haste,
of these patriots for their earliest possible entry upon the service
of the Government, was emphasized on every corner and at every place of
gathering, day and night, and the lobbies of the Capitol were thronged
by them during the sessions of the Senate. No opportunity for a word
with a Senator in behalf of the immediate deposition of the President,
nor any appliance that seemed to promise a successful overture, was
overlooked or forgotten.
When these seemed to fail of the desired effect, more direct and, it was
hoped, more effective methods were resorted to. The beleaguered Senator
was reminded that the applicant represented the united sentiment of the
people of the State from which he held his Senatorial seat--that they
demanded Mr. Johnson's conviction and removal--that that demand could
not be safely denied, trifled with, or delayed; and that if money was
wanted, to use the language of a notorious inquisitor of the House, Mr.
Butler, speaking of the possibility of securing a designated vote for
Impeachment "tell the d----d scoundrel that if he wants money, there is
a bushel of it here to be had!" Mr. Butler's message was delivered.
So desperate were the inquisitors, and so close the certainty of the
vote, that even a project of kidnapping a Senator under the pretense of
taking a trip to Baltimore for much needed rest, where, if the terms
to be there proffered were refused, a vacancy was to be created--by
assassination, if necessary--then a recess of the Senate to afford
time for the appointment by the Governor of that Senator's State of
a successor who would vote for the Impeachment, of the President--was
entered upon and its execution attempted. But the trip to Baltimore for
"rest" was not taken.
These are not pleasant facts to contemplate, but they somewhat
conspicuously characterized the conditions of that time, and illustrate
the real nature of the impeachment scheme. They boded the control of the
Government by the worst element of American politics. It is unnecessary
to say here what that control would have involved. During all the
previous history of the Government--its wars and political turmoils--the
Democratic-Republican forms that characterize its administrations have
never faced so insidious or threatening a danger as during that hour.
It was a crucial test, and the result a magnificent vindication of
the wisdom and patriotism of the founders of our composite form of
Government. Its results have but strengthened those forms and broadened
the scope of the beneficent political institutions that have grown up
under and characterize its operation.
It was a test such as probably no other form of Government on earth
could have successfully passed, and it is to be hoped that its like may
never return.