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
And so convincing had been the argument of those gentlemen at that time,
that there was unanimous consent on the pro-impeachment side of the
Senate, on two different occasions, to set aside the First Article, of
which the alleged unlawful attempt to remove Mr. Stanton was practically
the principal accusation. Not illogically, that unanimous consent to
abandon the First article by thus setting it aside, and afterwards
refusing to put it to a vote, may be said to have been equivalent to a
vote of its insufficiency.
It is pertinent to suggest here that the President believed the
Tenure-of-Office Act to be unconstitutional, as it was clearly an
attempted abridgment of his power over his Cabinet which had never
before been questioned by Congress. The only method left him for the
determination of that question was in the course he took, except by an
agreed case, but it is manifest from the record that no such agreement
could be had, as an effort thereto was made in the Thomas case in the
District Court, but failed, the prosecution withdrawing the case at the
point where that purpose of the President became manifest.
The third count was:
Attempting to prevent the execution of the Army appropriation Act of
March 2nd, 1867.
The means specified in this alleged attempt was the appointment of Mr.
Edward Cooper to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, with power to
draw warrants on the Treasury without the consent of the Secretary--the
purpose being to show that, with General Thomas acting as Secretary
of War, and Mr. Cooper as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury to honor
General Thomas' drafts, and thus, in control of expenditures for the
support of the Army, a conspiracy was sought to be proven whereby the
President intended and expected to defeat the Reconstruction Acts of
Congress by preventing the use of the Army for its enforcement.
Mr. Johnson, of the Court, asked this question:
The Managers are requested to say whether they propose to show whether
Mr. Cooper was appointed by the President in November, 1867, as a means
to obtain unlawful possession of the public money, other than by the
fact of the appointment itself?
Mr. Manager Butler answered:
We certainly do.
Mr. Butler read the law on this subject, passed March 2nd, 1867, as
follows:
That the Secretary of the Treasury shall have power, by appointment
under his hand and official seal, to delegate to one of the Assistant
Secretaries of the Treasury authority to sign in his stead all warrants
for the payment of money into the public Treasury and all warrants for
the disbursments from the public Treasury of money certified by the
accounting officers of the Treasury to be due upon accounts duly audited
and settle by them; and such warrants signed shall be in all cases of
the same validity as if they had been signed by the Secretary of the
Treasury himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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