estions whether he could make an ad interim appoint

context and all its antecedents could the quesform; and yet, even thus reduced, it involved cy of the laws.

tion can be called "trifling." Often a great cause Thus it was when English liberty was argued ich was a tax of a few shillings only. Behind the kingly apologists of that day, loftily stood gainst Prerogative, being the same which is now hat other cause, on which at a later day hung was presented on a narrower issue still. There d on tea, which our fathers refused to pay. But to the apologists of prerogative, as behind that he same great cause. The first cost Charles I orge III his colonies. If such a question can be then have the martyred dead in all times suffered lood lavished for the suppression of our rebellion

ed that we must confine ourselves to the articles. rat looking outside the articles, and insist upon y. Here the senator from Maine is very strong. rged" and these only that he can see. He will ough spread upon the record of the Senate, and mulated horrors. Of course such a system of ittles this trial, and forgets that essential latitude political proceeding, having for its object Expulunishment. It is easy by looking at an object pera glass to find it dwarfed, contracted, and sollook at nature; nor is it the way to look at offender should be seen in the light of day; pre-less; with nothing dwarfed; with no limits to mense background of accumulated transgressions eye can reach. The sight might ache; but how enator who begins by turning these articles into the first step towards a judgment of acquittal.

the justice of their cause can have any hope that by some subtleties of form, some mode of pleading, by something, in short, different from the merits of the case, they may prevail." (Bond's Trial of Hastings, vol. 1, p. 11.) The orator was right in thus indignantly dismissing all questions of pleading and all subtleties of form. This proceeding is of substance, and not of form. It is on

the merits only that it can be judged. Anything short of this is the sacrifice of justice.

Such is the case of this enormous criminal. Events belonging to history, enrolled in the records of the Senate, and familiar to the country, are deliberately shut out from view, while we are treated to legal niceties without end. The lawyers have made a painful record. Nothing ever occurred so much calculated to bring the profession into disrepute; for never before has been such a theatre where lawyers were the actors. Their peculiarities have been exhibited to the world. Here was a great question of justice appealing to the highest sentiments and involving the best interests of the country-one of the greatest questions of all time; but the lawyers, in their instincts for the dialectics of the profession, forgot that everlasting truth which cannot be forgotten with impunity. They started at once in full cry. A quibble is to a lawyer what Dr. Johnson says it was to Shakspeare: "He follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of the way; it has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career; a quibble, poor and barren as it is, gives him such delight that he is content to purchase it by the sacrifice of reason, propriety, and truth." In this Shakspearian spirit our lawyers have acted. They have pursued their quibbles with the ardor of the great dramatist; and even now are chasing them through the Senate chamber.

Unhappily this is according to history, and our lawyers are not among the splendid exceptions. But there is a reward for those who stand firm. Who does not honor the exalted magistrate of France, the Chancellor L'Hospital, who set such an example of rectitude and perfect justice? Who does not honor those lawyers of English history, through whose toils liberty was upheld? There was Selden, so wise and learned; Pym, so grand in statesmanship; Somers, who did so much to establish the best securities of the constitution. Nor can I forget, at a later day, that greatest advocate, Erskine, who lent to the oppressed his wonderful eloquence; nor Mackintosh and Brougham, who carried into the courts that enlarged intelligence and sympathetic nature which the profession of the law could not constrain. These are among the names that have already had their reward, above the artful crowd which in all times has come to the defence of prerogative. It is no new thing that we witness now. The lawyer in other days has been, as we know him, prone to the support of power and ready with his technical reasons. Whichever side he takes he finds reasons, plenty as pins. When free to choose and not hired, his argument is the reflection of himself. All that he says is his own image. He takes sides on a law point according to his sentiments. Cultured in the law, and with that aptitude which is sharpened by its contests, too easily he finds a legal reason for an illegal judgment. Next to an outright mercenary, give me a lawyer to betray a great cause. The forms of law lend themselves to the betrayal. It is imposible to forget that the worst pretensions of prerogative, no matter how collossal, have been shouldered by the lawyers. It was they who carried ship-money against the patriot exertions of Hampden; and in our country it was they who held up slavery in all its terrible pretensions from beginning to end. What is sometimes called the legal mind of Massachusetts, my own honored State, bent before the technical reasoning which justified the unutterable atrocities of the fugitive slave bill, while the supreme court of the State adopted this crime from the bench. Alas! that it should be so. When will lawyers and judges see that nothing short of justice can stand?

GUILTY ON ALL THE ARTICLES.

After this survey it is easy for me to declare how I shall vote. My duty will be to vote guilty on all the articles. If consistent with the rules of the Senate I should vote, Guilty of all and infinitely more."

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Not doubting that Mr. Stanton was protected by the tenure-of-office act, and that he was believed to be so by the President, it is clear to me that the charges in the first and second articles are sustained. These two articles go together. I have already said in the course of this Opinion that the appointment of General Thomas as Secretary of War ad interim was without authority of law, and under the circumstances a violation of the Constitution. Accordingly the third article is sustained.

Then come what are called the conspiracy articles. Here also I am clear. Plainly there was an agreement between the President and General Thomas to get possession of the War Department, and to prevent Mr. Stanton from continuing in office, and this embraced the control of the mails and property belonging to the department, all of which was contrary to the tenure-of-office act. Intimidation and threats were certainly used by one of the conspirators, and in the case of conspiracy the acts of one are the acts of all. The evidence that force was intended is considerable, and all this must be interpreted by the general character of the offender, his menacing speeches, and the long series of transgressions which preceded this conspiracy. I cannot doubt that the conspiracy was to obtain possession of the War Department, peaceably if possible, forcibly if necessary. As such it was a violation of law, worthy of the judgment of the Senate. This disposes of the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh articles.

The eighth article charges that General Thomas was appointed to get the control of the moneys appropriated for the military service and the Department of War. All this would be an incident to the control of the War Department. In getting the control of the latter he would be able to wield the former. The evidence applicable to the one is also applicable to the other.

The ninth article opens a different question. This charges a wicked purpose to corrupt General Emory and draw him from his military duty. Not much passed between the President and the General; but it was enough to show that the President was playing the part of Iago. There was a hypocritical profes sion of regard for the Constitution, while he was betraying it. Here again his past character explains his purpose, so as not to leave any reasonable doubt with regard to it.

Then come the scandalous speeches, proved as set forth in the articles, so that even the senator from Virginia [Mr. Van Winkle] must admit that the evidence and the pleading concur. Here is no question of form. To my mind this is one of the strongest articles. On this alone, without anything else, I should deem it my duty to vote for expulsion from office. A young lieutenant, at the bottom of the ladder, if guilty of such things, would be "cashiered" at once. A President, at the top of the ladder, with less excuse from the inexperience of early life, and with greater responsibility from the elevation he had reached, should be "cashiered" also; and this is the object of impeachment. No person capa ble of such speeches should be allowed to govern this country. It is absurd to toler ate the idea. Besides being degraded, the country cannot be safe in such hands. The speeches are a revelation of himself, not materially different from well-known incidents; but they serve to exhibit him in his true character. They show him to be unfit for the official trust he enjoys. They were the utterances of a drunken man; and yet it does not appear that he was drunk. Now it is according to the precedents of our history that a person disqualified by drunkenness shall be removed from office. This was the case of Pickering in 1804. But a sober man, whose conduct suggests drunkenness, is as bad at least as if he were

drunk. Is he not worse? If without the explanation of drunkenness he made such harangues, it seems to me that his unfitness for office becomes more evident, inasmuch as his deplorable condition is natural and not abnormal. The drunken man has lucid intervals; but where is the assurance of a lucid interval for this perpetual offender? Derangement is with him the normal condition. It is astonishing to find that these infamous utterances, where ribaldry vies with blasphemy, have received a coat of varnish from the senator from Maine, [Mr. Fessenden,] who pleads that they were not "official;" nor did they "violate the Constitution, or any provision of the common or statute law, either in letter or spirit." In presence of such apologies for revolting indecencies, it is hard to preserve a proper calmness. Were they not uttered? This is enough. The drunkenness of Andrew Johnson, when he took his oath as Vice-President, was not "official;" but who will say that it was not an impeachable offence? And who will say that these expectorations differ in vileness from that drunkenness? If they did not violate the Constitution or any provision of the common or statute law, as is apologetically alleged, I cannot doubt that they violated the spirit of all laws. And then we are further reminded by the apologist of that freedom of speech" which is a constitutional right; and thus, in the name of a great right, we are to give a license to utterances that shock the moral sense, and are a scandal to human nature. Spirit of John Milton! who pleaded so grandly for this great liberty, but would not allow it to be confounded with license, speak now to save this republic from the shame of surrender to an insufferable pretension!

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The eleventh article is the most comprehensive of all. In some respects it is an omnium gatherum. Here in one mass is what is contained in other articles, and something else beside. Here is an allegation of a speech by the President in which he denied that Congress was a Congress; and then, in pursuance of this denial, it is alleged that he attempted to prevent the execution of the tenure-ofoffice act; also of an important clause in the army appropriation act; and also of the reconstruction act; and then the evidence followed, sustaining completely the allegation. The speech was made as set forth. The attempt to prevent the execution of the tenure-of-office act, who can question? The attempt to corrupt General Emory is in evidence. The whole history of the country shows how earnest the President has been to arrest the reconstruction act, and generally the congressional scheme of reconstruction. The removal of Mr. Stanton was in order to be relieved of an impediment to his purpose. I accept this article in gross and in detail. It has been proved in all its parts.

CONCLUSION.

In the judgment which I now deliver I cannot hesitate. To my vision the path is clear as day. Never in history was there a great case more free from all just doubt. If Andrew Johnson is not guilty, then never was a political offender guilty before; and, if his acquittal is taken as a precedent, never can a political offender be found guilty again. The proofs are mountainous. Therefore, you are now determining whether impeachment shall continue a beneficent remedy in the Constitution, or be blotted out forever, and the country handed over to the terrible process of revolution as its sole protection. If the milder process cannot be made effective now, when will it ever be? Under what influences? On what proofs? You wait for something. What? Is it usurpation? You have it before you, open, plain, insolent. Is it the abuse of delegated power? That, too, you have in this offender, hardly less broad than the powers he has exercised. Is it the violation of law?. For more than two years he has set your laws at defiance; and when Congress, by a special enactment, strove to constrain him, he broke forth in rebellion against this constitutional authority. Perhaps you ask still for something more. Is it a long catalogue

of crime, where violence and corruption alternate, while loyal men are sacrificed and the rebellion is lifted to its feet? That also is here.

The apologists are prone to remind the Senate that they are acting under the obligation of an oath. So are the rest of us, even if we do not ostentatiously declare it. By this oath, which is the same for all, we are sworn to do "impartial justice." It is justice, and this justice must be impartial. There must by no false weights and no exclusion of proper weights. Therefore, I cannot allow the jargon of lawyers on mere questions of form to sway this judgment against justice. Nor can I consent to shut out from view that long list of transgressions explaining and coloring the final act of defiance. To do so is not to render impartial justice, but to depart from this golden rule. The oath we have taken is poorly kept if we forget the Public Safety in devices for the criminal. Above all else, now and forever, is that justice which "holds the scales of right with even hand." In this sacred name, and in the name also of country, that great charity embracing so many other charities, I now make this final protest against all questions of form at the expense of the Republic.

Something also has been said of the people, now watching our proceedings with patriotic solicitude, and it has been proclaimed that they are wrong to intrude their judgment. I do not think so. This is a political proceeding, which the people at this moment are as competent to decide as the Senate. They are the multitudinous jury, coming from no small vicinage, but from the whole country; for, on this impeachment, involving the Public Safety, the vicin age is the whole country. It is they who have sent us here, as their representatives, and in their name to consult for the common weal. In nothing can we escape their judgment, least of all on a question like that now before us. It is a mistake to suppose that the Senate only has heard the evidence. The people have heard it also, day by day, as it was delivered, and have carefully consid ered the case on its merits, properly dismissing all apologetic subtleties. It will be for them to review what has been done. They are above the Senate, and will"rejudge its justice." Thus it has been in other cases. The popular superstition, which long surrounded the Supreme Court, could not save this tribunal from condemnation, amounting sometimes to execration, when, by an odious judgment, it undertook to uphold slavery; and down to this day Congress has justly refused to place the bust of the Chief Justice, who pronounced this judg ment, in the hall of that tribunal where he presided so long. His predecessors are all there in marble; no marble of Taney is there. The present trial, like that in the Supreme Court, is a battle with slavery. Acquittal is another Dred Scott decision, and another chapter in the Barbarism of Slavery. How can senators, who are discharging a political function only, expect that the voice of the people will be more tender for them than it was for a Chief Justice pronouncing judgment from the bench of the Supreme Court, in the exercise of judicial power? His fate we know. Nor learning, nor private virtues, nor venerable years, could save him from justice. In the. great pillory of history he stands, and there he must stand forever.

The people cannot witness with indifference the abandonment of the great Secretary, who organized their armies against the rebellion and then organized victory. Following him gratefully through the trials of the war, they found new occasion for gratitude when he stood out alone against that wickedness which was lifted to power on the pistol of an assassin. During these latter days, while tyrannical prerogative invaded all, he has kept the bridge. When at a similar crisis of English history Hampden stood out against the power of the Crown, it is recorded by the contemporary historian, Clarendon, that "he became the argument of all tongues; every man inquiring who and what he was, that durst at his own charge support the liberty and property of the kingdom and rescue his country from being made a prey to the Court." Such things are also said with equal force of our Secretary. Nor is it forgotten that the Senate, by