The gentleman says that the issue involved is an issue about an office. I beg the gentleman's pardon. The issue involved is whether the supremacy of the Constitution shall be maintained by the people's Representatives. The President of the United States has assumed, sir, to set himself above the Constitution and the laws. He has assumed to defy the law, he has assumed to challenge the people's Representatives to sit in judgment upon his malfeasance in office. Every man who has considered it worth while to observe my conduct touching this question that has so long agitated this House and agitated this country may have discovered that I have kept myself back and have endeavored to keep others back from making any unnecessary issue between the President and Representatives of the people touching the manner in which he discharged the duties of his great office. I had no desire, sir, to have resort unnecessarily to this highest power reposed by the people in their Representatives and their Senators for the vindication of their own violated Constitution and violated laws. Notwithstanding there was much in the conduct of the President to endanger the peace and repose of the country, yet, so long as there was any doubt upon the question of his liability to impeachment within the text and spirit of the Constitution, I was unwilling to utter one syllable to favor such a proposition or to record a vote to advance it. * * * Mr. Beck, (Dem. of Ky.) The single question upon which the decision of this House is now to be made is that the President has attempted to test the constitutionality of a law which he believes to be unconstitutional. All the testimony heretofore presented upon which to base an impeachment of the President was decided by even a majority of the Republican members of this House to be insufficient to justify impeachment. All questions growing out of the combinations and conspiracies lately charged upon the President were ruled by the Reconstruction Committee to be insufficient, and were not brought before this House. And the sole question now before us is, is there anything in this last act of the President removing Mr. Stanton and appointing Adjutant General Thomas Secretary of War ad interim to justify his impeachment by this House?