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
Mr. William E. Chandler, who had been Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury, was on the witness stand, called by the prosecution. Mr.
Butler asked whether it was the practice of the Assistant Secretary to
act as Secretary in case of removal of the Secretary.
Answer: I am not certain that it is, without his appointment as Acting
Secretary by the President.
Mr. Fessenden, of the Court, propounded this interrogatory?
1st--Has it been the practice, since the passage of the law, for an
Assistant Secretary to sign warrants unless especially appointed and
authorized by the Secretary of the Treasury?
2nd--Has any Assistant Secretary been authorized to sign any warrants
except such as are specified in the Act?
The witness answered as to the first:
It has not been the practice for any Assistant Secretary since the
passage of the Act to sign warrants except upon an appointment by the
Secretary for that purpose in accordance with the provisions of the Act.
Immediately upon the passage of the Act, the Secretary authorized one of
his Assistant Secretaries to sign warrants of the character described
in the Act, and they have been customarily signed by that Assistant
Secretary in all cases since that time.
As to the second question the answer was:
No Assistant Secretary has been authorized to sign warrants except such
as are specified in this Act, unless when acting as Secretary.
That disposed of the third count in the Eleventh Article, and the
testimony was rejected by a vote of yeas 22, nays 27.
These answers to tire interrogatories seemed to prove the reverse of
what the Prosecution had expected. The accusation of the Third count was
not sustained.
As to the Fourth count of the Eleventh Article, that Mr. Johnson sought
to prevent the execution of the "Act to provide for the more efficient
government of the rebel States," passed March 2nd, 1867, by the removal
of Mr. Stanton from the War Office, the proceedings of the trial
disclose no testimony of a sufficiently direct character for
specification, except, possibly, a number of speeches delivered at
different points by Mr. Johnson, which are set out in the Tenth Article
of the Impeachment. As that Article was by unanimous consent abandoned
and never put to vote, all its allegations logically fell as unproven.
There was, therefore, no force and little coherency in the Eleventh
Article. It fell of its own weight. Every one of its several averments
had been disproven, or at least not proven. It was to a good degree
a summing up--an aggregation, of the entire bill of indictment on the
several distinct forms of offenses charged--a crystallization of the
whole.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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