It was under this unfavorable condition of the Impeachment cause, that the Senate assembled on May 16th, 1868, for the purpose of taking final action on the indictment brought by the House of Representatives, the trial of which had occupied the most of the time of the Senate for the previous three months, and which had to a large degree engrossed the attention of the general public, to the interruption of legislation pending in the two Houses of Congress, and more or less to the embarrassment of the commercial activities of the country.
For the first time in the history of the government, practically eighty years, the President of the United States was at the bar of the Senate, by virtue of a constitutional warrant, on an accusation of the House of Representatives of high crimes and misdemeanors in office, and his conviction and expulsion from office demanded in the name of all the people. No event in the civil history of the country had ever before occurred to so arouse public antipathies and public indignation against any man-and these conditions found special vent in the City of Washington, as the Capitol of the Nation, as it had become during the trial the focal point of the politically dissatisfied element of the entire country. Its streets and all its places of gathering had swarmed for many weeks with representatives of every State of the Union, demanding in a practically united voice the deposition of the President.
On numbers of occasions during the previous history of the Government there had been heated controversies between the Congress and the Executive, but never before characterized by the intensity, not infrequently malevolence, that had come to mark this and never before had a division between the Executive and the Congress reached a point at which a suggestion of his constitutional ostracism from office had been seriously entertained, much less attempted.
But it had now come. The active, intense interest of the country was aroused, and everywhere the division among the people was sharply defined and keen, though the numerical preponderance, it cannot be denied, was largely against the President and insistent upon his removal.
The dominant party of the country was aroused and active for the deposition of the President. Public meetings were held throughout the North and resolutions adopted and forwarded to Senators demanding that Mr. Johnson be promptly expelled from office by the Senate--and it had become apparent, long before the taking of the vote, that absolute, swift, and ignominious expulsion from office awaited every Republican Senator who should dare to disregard that demand.
Under these conditions it was but natural that during the trial, and especially as the close approached, the streets of Washington and the lobbies of the Capitol were thronged from day to day with interested spectators from every section of the Union, or that Senators were beleaguered day and night, by interested constituents, for some word of encouragement that a change was about to come of that day's proceeding, and with threats of popular vengeance upon the failure of any Republican Senator to second that demand.
In view of this intensity of public interest it was as a matter of course that the coming of the day when the great controversy was expected to be brought to a close by the deposition of Mr.
Johnson and the seating of a new incumbent in the Presidential chair, brought to the Capitol an additional throng which long before the hour for the assembling of the Senate filled all the available space in the vast building, to witness the culmination of the great political trial of the age.
Upon the closing of the hearing--even prior thereto, and again during the few days of recess that followed, the Senate had been carefully polled, and the prospective vote of every member from whom it was possible to procure a committal, ascertained and registered in many a private memoranda. There were fifty-four members--all present. According to these memoranda, the vote would stand eighteen for acquittal, thirty-five for conviction--one less than the number required by the Constitution to convict. What that one vote would be, and could it be had, were anxious queries, of one to another, especially among those who had set on foot the impeachment enterprise and staked their future control of the government upon its success. Given for conviction and upon sufficient proofs, the President MUST step down and out of his place, the highest and most honorable and honoring in dignity and sacredness of trust in the constitution of human government, a disgraced man and a political pariah. If so cast upon insufficient proofs or from partisan considerations, the office of President of the United States would be degraded--cease to be a coordinate branch of the Government, and ever after subordinated to the legislative will. It would have practically revolutionized our splendid political fabric into a partisan Congressional autocracy. Apolitical tragedy was imminent.
On the other hand, that vote properly given for acquittal, would at once free the Presidential office from imputed dishonor and strengthen our triple organization and distribution of powers and responsibilities. It would preserve the even tenor and courses of administration, and effectively impress upon the world a conviction of the strength and grandeur of Republican institutions in the hands of a free and enlightened people.
