It is impossible now to realize how perfectly overmastering was the excitement of these days. The exercise of calm judgment was simply out of the question. As I have already stated, passion ruled the hour, and constantly strengthened the tendency to one- sidedness and exaggeration. The attempt to impeach the President was undoubtedly inspired, mainly, by patriotic motives; but the spirit of intolerance among Republicans toward those who differed with them in opinion set all moderation and common sense at defiance. Patriotism and party animosity were so inextricably mingled and confounded that the real merits of the controversy could only be seen after the heat and turmoil of the strife had passed away. Time has made this manifest. Andrew Johnson was not the Devil- incarnate he was then painted, nor did he monopolize, entirely, the "wrong-headedness" of the times. No one will now dispute that the popular estimate of his character did him very great injustice. It is equally certain that great injustice was done to Trumbull, Fessenden, Grimes and other senators who voted to acquit the President, and gave proof of their honesty and independence by facing the wrath and scorn of the party with which they had so long been identified. The idea of making the question of impeachment a matter of party discipline was utterly indefensible and preposterous. "Those senators," as Horace Greeley declared, "were sublimely in the right who maintained their independent judgment--whether it was correct or erroneous, in a matter of this kind, and who indignantly refused all attempts to swerve them from their duty as they had undertaken to perform it by solemn oaths." The Chief Justice was also cruelly and inexcusably wronged by imputing corrupt motives to his official action. His integrity and courage had been amply demonstrated through many long years of thorough and severe trial; and yet many of his Republican friends, both in the Senate and House, who had known him throughout his political career, denounced him as an apostate and a traitor, and even denied him all social recognition. Senator Howe, of Wisconsin, was especially abusive, and made himself perfectly ridiculous by the extravagance and malignity of his assaults. The judicial spirit was everywhere wanting, and the elevation of Senator Wade to the Presidency in the midst of so much passion and tumult, and with the peculiar political surroundings which the event foreshadowed, would have been, to say the least, a very questionable experiment for the country.