ernment, but still the principles laid down in 23 New York Reports by Chief Judge Denio are, that, when there is a conflict, the adjudications of the Supreme Court of the United States are final as to the supremacy of the Federal power, and that the only question for a State Court, as new circumstances one after another present new cases, is to see whether there is a conflict, and to yield. There is but one other method; and that is the method of South Carolina, in the decisions that are cited on the briefs. The argument of Mr. Grimké for the United States, than which none abler was ever made on this question, was never answered by Mr. Legaré, nor was it ever answered by the Court. The decision was put upon the ground, that, if there was a conflict, the State of South Carolina could not help it, but it governed what was within its own dominions. That was the proposition: that the reasoning of the Supreme Court, by the mouth of the great Chief Justice, was vicious, unsound, dangerous. Its only viciousness was, that the supremacy of the Union over the States was asserted; its only unsoundness was, that the supremacy of the Union over the States was asserted; its only danger was, that the supremacy of the Union over the States was asserted; and this, the South Carolina method of dealing with the conflict, as we all know at last, is war. V ARGUMENT, IN DEFENCE OF THE PRESIDENT, NOTE On the 21st day of February, 1868, President Johnson addressed a note to the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, stating that, by virtue of the power and authority vested in the President under the Constitution and Laws, Mr. Stanton was removed from the office of Secretary of War, and he was directed to turn over the office to General Lorenzo Thomas, who had been authorized by the President to act as Secretary of War ad interim. This action of the President was considered by the House of Representatives as in direct contravention of what was known as the Tenure of Office Act, passed March 2, 1867, which had undertaken to regulate the tenure of office of appointees in the Executive Departments of the Government. It was further considered as displaying, on the part of the President, the deliberate purpose and intent to set himself above the Constitution and beyond the Law. The removal of Secretary Stanton and the appointment of General Thomas to act as Secretary ad interim brought about the culmination of the struggle between Congress and the President, that had been in progress for almost the whole period of Mr. Johnson's occupancy of the presidency. This contest, between the Executive and the Legislative branches of the Government, arose from the effort to solve the great problem of the reconstruction of the Southern States and their re-establishment in the Union after the close of the Civil War. All of this forms an instructive chapter in our Constitutional history and the passage of the Tenure of Office Act was itself but one of the steps taken by Congress to assure its supremacy. Immediately following this action of the President, and on Feb ruary 24, the House of Representatives, by the overwhelming vote of 126 to 47, impeached the President for high crimes and misdemeanors. The President's action in the removal of Secretary Stanton and the appointment of General Thomas not only brought the struggle to a head, but formed the gravamen of the Articles of Impeachment that were presented at the bar of the Senate on March 4, 1868. These Articles were eleven in number. The first eight articles are based wholly on this action of the President. The ninth known as the Emory Article, charged a conspiracy between the President and General Emory to violate a recent Act of Congress that required all orders and instructions relating to military operations, issued by the President or Secretary of War, to be issued through the General of the army and, in case of his inability, through the next in rank. The tenth article related to a number of speeches delivered by the President in the summer and fall of 1866, in which he had given vent to his anger at the attitude of Congress, in most unwise and hasty expressions of contempt for the legislative branch of the Government as it was then composed. The eleventh article was a statement in a different form of the substance of many of the averments in the preceding articles, and in general charged an effort on the part of the President to obstruct and prevent the due execution of the laws of Congress. After answer and replication the actual trial before the Senate sitting to try the impeachment, with the Chief Justice of the United States presiding, began on March 30, 1868. The Managers chosen by the House of Representatives to conduct the prosecution in its behalf were: John A. Bingham of Ohio, George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts, James F. Wilson of Iowa, Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts, Thomas Williams of Pennsylvania, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, and John A. Logan of Illinois. The Counsel for the President were Henry Stanbery (the Attorney-General), Benjamin R. Curtis, William M. Evarts, Thomas A. R. Nelson and William S. Groesbeck; Jeremiah S. Black, also retained by the President, had retired from the case before the trial began. The case was opened by General Butler, in behalf of the Man agers, who proceeded in the conduct of the trial throughout-in the examination and cross-examination of witnesses. Upon the close of the case against the President, Judge Curtis made the opening argument for the defense on April 9 and 10, and, when the taking of testimony was finished, the closing arguments by the Managers and by Counsel for the President began. These arguments occupied the attention of the Court of Impeachment continuously for a period of two weeks, from April 22 to May 6. Mr. Logan filed with the Court a printed argument, all the others being oral and in the following order: Mr. Boutwell spoke April 22d and during a part of the following day, when Mr. Nelson, of Counsel for the President, began his closing argument, concluding April 24th. On Saturday, April 25, Mr. Groesbeck spoke for the President. On Monday, April 27, Mr. Stevens spoke for the Managers, succeeded by Mr. Williams who concluded his argument the following day. Mr. Evarts began his argument on the afternoon of April 28, continuing on the three succeeding days, closing on Friday the first of May. The Attorney-General, Mr. Stanbery, then proceeded with the final Argument for the President, concluding the next day. Mr. Bingham, in his argument of three days, May, 4, 5 and 6, on behalf of the Managers, made the final presentation to the Senate. The voting on the articles did not begin until ten days later, May 16, when a vote was taken on the eleventh article, resulting in 35 voting "guilty" and 19 "not guilty." Thus the two-thirds vote required by the Constitution for conviction was not obtained. An adjournment was taken to May 26 and votes taken on the second and third articles with the same result as before. The Senate, sitting as a Court of Impeachment, then adjourned sine die, taking no action upon any of the remaining articles. Mr. Evarts, besides making the closing argument in the President's behalf, which follows, had been most active in the conduct of the defence owing to the illness, during the trial, of the Attorney-General. Six years after this historic trial, Mr. Evarts thus alludes to it, in his Eulogy on Chief Justice Chase, with especial reference to the conduct of the Chief Justice as presiding at the trial: "The first political impeachment in our constitutional history, involving, as it did, the accusation of the President of the United States, required the Chief Justice to preside at the trial before the Senate, creating thus the tribunal to which the Constitution had assigned this high jurisdiction. Beyond the injunction that the Senate, when sitting for the trial of impeachments, should be 'on Oath' the Constitution gave no instruction to fix or ascertain the character of the procedure, the nature of the duty assigned to the specially-organized court, or the distribution of authority between the Chief Justice and the Senate. The situation lacked no feature of gravity-no circumstance of solicitude and the attention of the whole country, and of foreign nations, watched the transaction at every stage of its progress. No circumstance could present a greater disparity of political or popular forces between accuser and accused, and none could be imagined of more thorough commitment of the body of the court-the Senate-both in the interests of its members, in their political feeling, and their prejudgments; all tending to make the condemnation of the President, upon all superficial calculations, inevitable. The effort of the Constitution to guard against mere partisan judgment, by requiring a two-thirds vote to convict, was paralyzed by the complexion of the Senate, showing more than four-fifths of that body of the party which had instituted the impeachment and was demanding conviction. To this party, as well, the Chief Justice belonged, as a founder, a leader, a recipient of its honors, and a lover of its prosperity and its fame. The President, raised to the office from that of Vice-President-to which alone he had been elected by the deplored event of Mr. Lincoln's assassination, was absolutely without a party, in the Senate or in the country; for the party whose suffrages he had received for the vice-presidency was the hostile force in his impeachment. And to bring the matter to the worst, the succession to all the executive power and patronage of the Government, in case of conviction, was to fall into the administration of the President of the Senate the creature, thus, of the very court invested with the duty of trial and the power of conviction. "Against all these immense influences, confirmed and inflamed by a storm of party violence, beating against the Senate-house without abatement through the trial, the President was acquitted. |