History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, by the House of Representatives, and his trial by the Senate for high crimes and misdemeanors in office, 1868Ross, Edmund G. (Edmund Gibson)
History
History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, by the House of Representatives, and his trial by the Senate for high crimes and misdemeanors in office, 1868
Ross, Edmund G. (Edmund Gibson)
Johnson, Andrew, 1808-1875 -- Impeachment
He can contrive no method but that of a convulsion of the earth that
shall project the deposed President to this indefinitely distant space;
but a shock of nature of so vast an energy and for so great a result on
him might unsettle even the footing of the firm members of Congress. We
certainly need not resort to so perilous a method as that. How shall we
accomplish it? Why, in the first place, nobody knows where that space
is but the learned manager himself, and he is the necessary deputy to
execute the judgment of the court. Let it then be provided that, in case
of your sentence of deposition and removal from office, the honorable
and astronomical manager shall take into his own hands the execution
of the sentence. With the President made fast to his broad and strong
shoulders, and having already assayed the flight by imagination, better
prepared than anybody else to execute it in form, taking the advantage
of ladders as far as ladders will go to the top of this great capitol,
and spurning there with his foot the crest of Liberty, let him set out
upon his flight while the two houses of Congress and all the people
of the United States shall shout--"Sic itur ad astra!" But here a
distressing doubt strikes me. How will the manager get back. He will
have got far beyond the reach of gravitation to restore him, and so
ambitious a wing as his should never stoop to a downward flight. Indeed,
as he passes through the constellations, the famous question of Carlyle
(by which he derides the littleness of human affairs upon the scale
of the measure of the heavens,) "What thinks Bootes as he drives his
hunting dogs up the zenith in their leash of sidereal fire?" will
force itself on his notice. What, indeed, will Bootes think of this new
constellation? Besides, reaching this space beyond the power of Congress
ever to send for persons and papers, how shall he return, and how decide
in the contest there become personal and perpetual--the struggle of
strength between him and the President? In this new revolution thus
established forever, who shall decide which is the sun and which is the
moon? Who determine the only scientific test, which reflects hardest
upon the other?
Gen. Logan, one of the managers, appeared for the prosecution, upon the
close of the examination of witnesses. The following is a brief
extract from his very long and labored argument, and relates to the
Tenure-of-Office Act:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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