The fact is that Mr. Stanton and those who abetted him were the violators of law. Every official act which he committed after receiving the notification from the President of his removal, on the 21st of February, was a usurpation of governmental powers by a private citizen, and the gathering of armed men about him with the purpose of sustaining him in holding on to the War Office after his dismissal by the President was treason. It is a question whether his official acts after the 13th of January and down to February 21st were not also usurpations. That depends upon whether the Tenure-of-Office Act was, or was not, constitutional, and whether, if it were, the right of a member of the Cabinet, suspended from office, to resume the functions of the office, after disapproval of the suspension by the Senate, was made, by the Act, to apply to such members of the Cabinet as were excepted from the operation of the first article of the Act by the proviso to that article. The best Republican lawyers in the Senate, Trumbull, Fessenden, Grimes and Doolittle, took the view of the law in the President's case as here explained. They, with one other Republican, Van Winkle of West Virginia, filed, after the vote on impeachment, opinions in the case expressing substantially this view. [Sidenote: The nomination of General Schofield to be Secretary of War.] It is now known that during the trial some of these men expressed to one of the President's counsel the belief that Mr. Johnson could not be convicted upon the law and evidence in the case, and that should the Senate vote to remove him, "it would be done wholly from supposed party necessity," and from fear of what the President might do in case he were acquitted, and that they suggested to this member of the President's counsel the wisdom of the President's sending to the Senate, at that {190} juncture, a nomination for the Secretaryship of War, which would allay all reasonable apprehension that the President would, if acquitted, use the War Department for the accomplishment of any arbitrary purposes, and that they mentioned General Schofield as a man who would be satisfactory. These communications were made about the 20th of April. The President was immediately informed of them, as was General Schofield, and, on April 24th, the President nominated General Schofield to the Senate to be Secretary of War. Whether this move on the part of the President influenced any Senator to vote for acquittal is unknown. It certainly served to allay popular apprehension, if the testimony of the newspapers of the day may be taken on that point. [Sidenote: The vote upon impeachment.]