But there is a reason which is ample. The President has usurped the powers of Congress on a colossal scale, and has employed these usurped powers in fomenting the Rebel spirit and kindling anew the dying fires of the Rebellion. Though the head of the Executive, he has rapaciously seized the powers of the Legislative, and made himself a whole Congress, in defiance of a cardinal principle of republican government, that each branch must act for itself, without assuming the powers of the other; and, in the exercise of these illegitimate powers, he has become a terror to the good and a support to the wicked. This is his great and unpardonable offence, for which history must condemn him, if you do not. He is a usurper, through whom infinite wrong is done to his country. He is a usurper, who, promising to be a Moses, has become a Pharaoh. Do you ask for evidence? No witnesses are needed to prove this guilt. It is found in public acts which are beyond question. It is already written in the history of our country. Absorbing to himself all the powers of the National Government, and exclaiming, with the French monarch, that _he alone_ is “the Nation,” he assumes, without color of law, to set up new governments in the Rebel States, and, in the prosecution of this palpable usurpation, places these governments of his own creation in the hands of traitors, to the exclusion of patriot citizens, white and black, who, through his agency, are trampled again under the heel of the Rebellion. Thus a power plainly illegitimate is wielded to establish governments plainly illegitimate, which are nothing but engines of an intolerable oppression, under which peace and union are impossible; and this monstrous usurpation is continued in constant efforts by every means to enforce the recognition of these illegitimate governments, so tyrannical in origin and so baneful in the influence they are permitted to exert. And now, in the maintenance of this usurpation, the President employs the power of removal from office. Some, who would not become the partisans of his tyranny, he has, according to his own language, “kicked out.” Others are spared, but silenced by this menace and the fate of their associates. Wherever any vacancy occurs, whether in the Loyal or the Rebel States, it is filled by the partisans of his usurpation. Other vacancies are created to provide for these partisans. I need not add, that, just in proportion as we sanction such nominations or fail to arrest them, according to the measure of our power, we become parties to his usurpation.