As such it was embodied in the National Constitution, as if the text expressly declared that the Chief Justice, when presiding in the Senate, had all the powers accorded by parliamentary usage to such a functionary when presiding in the…

In saying that he shall “preside” the Constitution confers no powers of membership, and by the well-defined term employed limits him to those precise functions sanctioned at the time by immemorial usage.

You cannot reject these without setting at defiance a fixed rule of interpretation, and resorting instead to vague inference or mere imagination, quickened, perhaps, by your desires.

Mere imagination and vague inference, quickened, perhaps, by your desires, are out of place when Parliamentary Law is beyond all question.

It would stand in the light of a usurper, were it to attempt to exercise such a power.

I affirm, that, as a presiding officer, the Vice-President has no inherent power whatever, unless that of doing what the Senate may prescribe by its rules be such a power.

There are, indeed, inherent powers; but they are in the body, and not in the officer.

There is not the least analogy between the rights and duties of a judge and those of a presiding officer in a deliberative assembly.

Unless all the precedents, in unbroken series, are set aside, a presiding officer not a member of the Senate has no inherent power except to occupy the Chair and to put the question.

All else must be derived from grant in the Constitution or in the rules of the body.

Nobody ever supposed that a presiding Clerk could rule or vote.

If a presiding Chief Justice can rule or vote, the Senate has not “the sole power to try”; for ruling and voting, even on interlocutory questions, may determine the trial.

In the face of such a claim, so entirely without example, and of such possible consequences, I cannot be silent.

According to the injunction of the Constitution, he can preside, but this is all, unless other powers are superadded by concession of the Senate, subject always to the constitutional limitation that the Senate alone can try, and…

For a succession of generations, great men in the law, Chancellors and Chief Justices, have not disdained to discharge it.

Out of the long and famous list I mention one name of surpassing authority: Somers, the illustrious defender of constitutional liberty, unequalled in debate as in judgment, exercised this function without claiming other power.

If the present question could be determined by sentiments of personal regard, I should gladly say that our Chief Justice is needed to the Senate more than the Senate is needed to him.

But the National Constitution, which has regulated the duties of all, leaves us no alternative.

We are the Senate; he is the presiding officer,--although, whether in the Court Room or the Senate Chamber, he is always the most exalted servant of the law.

As such he lends to this historic occasion the dignity of his presence and the authority of his example.

Sitting in that Chair, he can do much to smooth the course of business, and to fill the Chamber with the spirit of justice.

Voting “Guilty” on all the articles, I feel that there is little need of explanation or apology.

Driven from these legislative chambers, driven from the field of war, this monstrous power has found refuge in the Executive Mansion, where, in utter disregard of Constitution and law, it seeks to exercise its ancient domineering sway.

Andrew Johnson is the impersonation of the tyrannical Slave Power.

It is the old troop of Slavery, with a few recruits, ready as of old for violence, cunning in device, and heartless in quibble.