The House preferred twenty-eight articles of impeachment against Wickliffe, most of them for exacting bribes to issue his warrants for money appropriated for printing and charitable institutions, and for exceeding the appropriations.[188] The trial began February 14, and continued almost daily until the close of the session, when on the evening of March 3, the Senate found him guilty upon the fourth article by unanimous vote.[189] A resolution removing him permanently from office followed immediately. At the last moment he tried to escape sentence by resigning,[190] and by fleeing from the State,[191] but the Senate proceeded calmly to ignore such cowardice and to vote him out of office. Whatever may be the fact as to Wickliffe’s dishonesty, he was clearly guilty of gross irregularity and carelessness in the keeping of his records.[192] And the governor had demonstrated to the State that his hold on the legislature was sufficiently firm to enable him to crush a presumptuous subordinate. The legislation of 1870 marks high tide in Warmoth’s power. The rudder he held firmly in his hands for almost two years longer; but against an ever-increasing wave of opposition, it became constantly more difficult to steer in the direction he would. Because of friction within his own ranks, legislation did not again, after 1870, become the mouthpiece for promulgating his decrees. There were, in reality, two sessions, but the extra session followed so closely on the heels of the first, and so much of the work was but the completion of the unfinished business of the first session, that for purposes of convenience the legislation will be treated as emanating from one body. The Assembly convened for the first session at noon, January 3. After a slight struggle over the speakership in the House, Mr. Carr of Orleans was elected and the House reported itself ready for the governor’s message. Its congratulatory tone sounds a bit forced when he felicitates his people upon “the good feeling that exists among the people of both races”; and the cheerfulness with which they are accepting the new order of things, and the earnestness with which “our people are addressing themselves to further protect the great interests committed to their hands.”[193] But it is taken up, for the most part, with a businesslike discussion of the various measures which, in his estimation, called for action: encouragement of immigration, the finances, levees, public improvements, emendation of the school law of 1869, charities, and gambling-houses.[194]