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
To still others it was more than that. It was not only an indication of
weakness, but of a determination to take every possible advantage, fair
and unfair, to save votes for conviction. The impeachers not unnaturally
feared the effect of the defeat of the First Article by the nay votes
of Messrs. Sherman and Howe, and probably other Republicans, which was
certain to follow the submission of that Article to a vote. Its only
allegation was the unlawful removal of Mr. Stanton from the office of
Secretary of War in violation of the Tenure-of-Office Act. That alleged
offense was repeated in varied but more or less specific forms, in every
succeeding Article of the Impeachment except the Tenth, and constituted
the sum and substance--the gravamen--of the entire indictment. It was
the basis upon which the impeachment super-structure had been erected.
Without that Article there was not only no foundation, but no coherence
in the recital of Mr. Johnson's alleged offenses, and when that fell
by its abandonment, the entire impeachment scheme fell with it--as, if
there were nothing in the First Article on which to hang an impeachment,
there could be nothing in those that followed and were but an
amplification--a mere exploitation--of the First.
In substantiation of this view of the First Article, the declaration of
Mr. Boutwell to that effect is here inserted. Mr. Boutwell was chairman
of the committee of the House appointed to prepare the Articles of
Impeachment upon which Mr. Johnson was tried. On his report of these
Articles to the House he said, after speaking particularly of the Tenth
Article:
The other Articles are based upon facts which are of public knowledge,
growing out of the attempt of the President to remove Secretary Stanton
from the office of Secretary for the Department of War.
That is, that the basis of the entire accusation was the alleged
violation of the Tenure-of-Office Act in the removal of Mr. Stanton, as
recited in the First Article.
So, after taking the vote on the Second and Third Articles and their
defeat by the same vote as that on the Eleventh, it became manifest
that further effort to the impeachment of the president on any of the
remaining eight Articles would be useless, and Mr. Williams moved that
the Senate, sitting as a Court of Impeachment, adjourn sine die, which
motion was carried by the following vote:
Yeas--Anthony, Cameron, Cattell, Chandler, Cole, Conkling Corbett,
Cragin, Drake, Edmunds, Ferry, Frelinghuysen, Harlan, Howard, Morgan,
Morrill of Maine, Morrill of Vermont, Morton, Nye, Patterson of New
Hampshire, Pomeroy, Ramsay, Sherman, Sprague, Stewart, Sumner, Thayer,
Tipton, Van Winkle, Wade. Willey, Williams, Wilson, Yates--34.
Nays--Bayard, Buckalew, Davis, Dixon, Doolittle, Fowler, Henderson,
Hendricks, Johnson, McCreery, Norton, Patterson of Tennessee, Ross,
Saulsbury, Trumbull, Vickers--16.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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