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
If Mr. Stanton had been appointed during the present Presidential term.
I should have no doubt he was within the security of the law. But
I cannot find that, either in fact or in legal intendment, he was
appointed during the present Presidential term. It is urged that he
was appointed by Mr. Lincoln, and such is the fact. It is said that Mr.
Lincoln's term is not yet expired. Such I believe to be the fact. But
the language of the proviso is, that a Secretary shall hold not during
the term of MAN by whom he is appointed, but during the TERM of the
PRESIDENT by whom he may be appointed. Mr. Stanton was appointed by
the President in 1862. The term of that President was limited by the
Constitution. It expired on the 4th of March, 1865. That the same
incumbent was re-elected for the next term is conceded, but I do not
comprehend how that fact extended the former term.
Entertaining these views, and because the first Article of the
Impeachment charges the order of removal as a violation of the
Tenure-of-Office Act, I am constrained to hold the President not guilty
upon that Article.
These declarations, coming from two gentlemen of distinction and
influence in the party councils, both of whom had actively participated
in framing the Tenure-of-Office Act, became at once the occasion of
genuine and profound surprise, and it is unnecessary to say that they
tended largely to strengthen the doubts entertained by others as to
the sufficiency of all the other allegations of the indictment. They
naturally and logically reasoned that the removal of Mr. Stanton, set
out in the first Article, constituted, in effect, the essence of the
indictment, and that all that followed, save the 10th Article was
more in the nature of specifications, or a bill of particulars, than
otherwise--that if no impeachable offense were set out in the first
Article, then none was committed, as that Article constituted the
substructure of all the rest--its essence and logic running through and
permeating practically all--and that without that Article, there was
no coherence or force in any of them, and consequently nothing charged
against the President that was impeachable, as he had not violated the
Tenure-of-Office law, and was not charged with the violation of any
other law.
That conference developed, further, that a large majority of the
Articles of Impeachment were objectionable to and would not be supported
by a number of Republican Senators.
Mr. Edmunds would not support the 4th, 8th, 9th, and 10th Articles,
being "wholly unsustained by proof," but would support the 11th, though
apparently doubtful of its efficiency.
Mr. Ferry could not support the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, or 10th
Articles.
Mr. Howard declared that he would not support the 9th Article.
Mr. Morrill of Vermont, would not support the 4th, 6th, 9th, or 10th
Articles, as they were unproven.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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