The seal having been thus broken, there can obviously no longer be question as to the propriety of including an article of such high interest and importance in a collection of Mr. Sumner’s Works; and it accordingly here follows in due course. * * * * * As one consequence of the leading part taken by Mr. Sumner in opposition to the scheme for the annexation of San Domingo to the United States, the friends of that scheme formed the determination to depose him from the influential position long held by him as Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. In pursuance of this determination, at the opening of the Session of 1871, on a vote, March 10th, to proceed to the election of the Standing Committees, Mr. Howe, of Wisconsin, as the organ of a Senatorial Caucus on the subject, sent to the Chair a list which had been agreed upon, with the name of Mr. Cameron, of Pennsylvania, substituted for that of Mr. Sumner, at the head of the Committee in question,--alleging, as the reason for this change, “that the personal relations existing between the Senator from Massachusetts and the President of the United States and the head of the State Department were such as precluded all social intercourse between them.” Thereupon ensued the debate referred to in the prefatory note to the following paper, and characterized in the text as Mr. Sumner’s “trial before the Senate on articles of impeachment.”[94] STATEMENT. While I was under trial before the Senate, on articles of impeachment presented by the Senator from Wisconsin, [Mr. HOWE,] I forbore taking any part in the debate, even in reply to allegations, asserted to be of decisive importance, touching my relations with the President and Secretary of State. All this was trivial enough; but numerous appeals to me from opposite parts of the country show that good people have been diverted by these allegations from the question of principle involved. Without intending in any way to revive the heats of that debate, I am induced to make a plain statement of facts, so that the precise character of those relations shall be known. I do this with unspeakable reluctance, but in the discharge of a public duty where the claims of patriotism are above even those of self-defence. The Senate and the country have an interest in knowing the truth of this matter, and so also has the Republican party, which cannot be indifferent to pretensions in its name; nor will anything but the completest frankness be proper for the occasion.