Not to dislodge them is to leave the country a prey to a most hateful tyranny.

I would not in this judgment depart from the moderation proper to the occasion; but God forbid, that, when called to deal with so great an offender, I should affect a coldness I cannot feel!

Slavery has been our worst enemy, assailing all, murdering our children, filling our homes with mourning, darkening the land with tragedy; and now it rears its crest anew, with Andrew Johnson as its representative.

Through him it assumes once more to rule and impose its cruel law.

With such treachery in such a cause there can be no parley.

Every sentiment, every conviction, every vow against Slavery must be directed against him.

Pharaoh is at the bar of the Senate for judgment.

It is unpardonable to higgle over words and phrases, when, for more than two years, the tyrannical pretensions in evidence before the Senate have been manifest, as I shall show, in terrible, heart-rending consequences.

The whole mystification disappears, when we look at the National Constitution, which in no way speaks of impeachment as judicial, and in no way speaks of the Senate as a court.

On the contrary, it uses positive language inconsistent with this assumption and all its pretended consequences.

Call it senatorial or political, it is a power by itself, and subject to its own conditions.

If applied to the Senate, it must be interpreted by the National Constitution, and cannot be made in any respect a source of power or a constraint.

The judgment on English impeachments embraces not merely removal from office, as under the National Constitution, but also punishment; and yet it does not appear that the Lords sitting on impeachments are called a court.

It is the limitation of the judgment in cases of impeachment, making it political and nothing else.

It is not punishment, but protection to the Republic.

Even in cases of treason and bribery, the judgment is political, and nothing more.

If I were to sum up in one word the object of impeachment under the National Constitution, meaning what it has especially in view, with its practical limitation, I should say expulsion from office.

By the National Constitution a Senator may be expelled with “the concurrence of two thirds,” precisely as a President may be expelled with “the concurrence of two thirds.” In each case the same exceptional vote of two thirds is required.

How can we require a technicality of proceeding in the one which is rejected in the other?

If the Senate is a court, bound to judicial forms on the expulsion of the President, must it not be the same on the expulsion of a Senator?

But it has the same power over its rules of proceeding on the expulsion of the President; and there can be no reason for simplicity in the one case not equally applicable in the other.

What are impeachable offences has been much considered in this trial, and sometimes with very little appreciation of the question.

Next to the mystification from calling the Senate a court has been that other mystification from not calling the transgressions of Andrew Johnson “impeachable offences.

It is sometimes boldly argued that there can be no impeachment under the National Constitution, unless for an offence defined and made indictable by Act of Congress, and therefore Andrew Johnson must go free, unless it can be shown that he…

It mistakes the Constitution in attributing to it any such absurd limitation.