When impeachment was actually voted, the _Post’s_ comment was sorrowful rather than angry. “It is a quarrel in which there is really no very great substance,” it said. “It is one that might easily have been avoided, and may be easily brought to an end.” This was the view of the _Sun_, which had just passed under the control of Dana, and which declared the impeachment “far too serious an undertaking for the facts and evidence in the case.” It was likewise the opinion of the _Times_, which asked: “Must the President be punished for maintaining the authority of the Constitution against an invalid law?” The position of the _World_ had its humorous aspects. So long as it had considered Johnson a Republican, it had found no abuse of him too violent. Even in June, 1865, it had called him “a drunken boor,” “an insolent, vulgar, low-bred brute,” and a man “not so respectable as Caligula’s horse.” Now, telling its readers that Congress was attempting to remove the President “in the personal interest of Edwin M. Stanton,” it could not be sufficiently impassioned in his defense. Mayor Hoffman voiced the same Democratic sentiment in saying that the impeachers of Johnson and the assassins of Lincoln would be equally infamous in history. But the joy of the _Tribune_ was unbounded, and in its references to the President it ran the gamut of denunciation, from “the Great Accidency” and “this bold, bad, malignant man” to “traitor.” Its peroration of one ringing column editorial is a gem of its kind: “He is an aching tooth in the national jaw, a screeching infant in a crowded lecture room; and there can be no peace nor comfort until he is out.” The _Nation_, originally opposed to impeachment, now approved it with only less gusto. Every one thought Johnson either a fool or a knave, its editor wrote, and his disappearance from the national stage would be a heartfelt relief to all. _Harper’s Weekly_, assailing Johnson for treachery to the party, hoped that he would sink fast and forever into oblivion. A contribution to calmness in the first moment of excitement was made by the _Evening Post_ in an editorial entitled “What the People Think.” There was no sustained perturbation, it believed; that sensitive barometer, the gold market, had quickly become as steady as ever. There was even a feeling of relief. Thinking of the solemnity of the constitutional process of impeachment, men were glad that the vindictive fight between the President and Congress “is now carried out of the political arena and into a higher place.” The general public, including many Democrats, held that the President had acted wrongly, even if not in a degree deserving impeachment. But every one was saying that there must be no violence, and the trial must be quick, while there was an equally universal hope that, whatever its outcome, Congress would emerge with its fury vented and in a more reasonable state of mind.