Here the provision executes itself without reënactment; and as for definition of “treason” and “bribery” we resort to the Common Law, so for definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” we resort to the Parliamentary Law and the instances…
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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How completely they cover the charges against Andrew Johnson, whether in the formal accusation or in the long antecedent transgressions to which I shall call attention as an essential part of the case, nobody can question.
Broad as this definition may seem, it is in harmony with the declared opinions of the best minds that have been turned in this direction.
It is by this tribunal that statesmen who abuse their power are tried before statesmen and by statesmen, upon solid principles of State morality.
It is here that those who by an abuse of power have polluted the spirit of all laws can never hope for the least protection from any of its forms.
Thus, according to this excellent witness, even failure in justice, honesty, and utility, as well as in legality, may be the ground of impeachment; and the Administration should in all great matters of policy be subject to the two Houses…
I close this question of impeachable offences by asking you to consider that all the cases which have occurred in our history are in conformity with the rule which so many commentators have announced.
Official misconduct, including in the cases of Chase and Humphreys offensive utterances, constituted the high crimes and misdemeanors for which they were respectively arraigned.
How small was all that Madison imagined, how small was all that was spread out in the successive impeachments of our history, if gathered into one case, compared with the terrible mass now before us!
From all these concurring authorities, English and American, it is plain that impeachment is a power broad as the National Constitution itself, and applicable to the President, Vice-President, and all civil officers through whom the…
Show me an act of evil example or influence committed by a President, and I show you an impeachable offence, great in proportion to the scale on which it is done, and the consequences menaced.
The Republic must receive no detriment; and impeachment is a power by which this sovereign rule is maintained.
The formal statement and reduplication of words, constituting the stock-in-trade of so many lawyers, are exchanged for a broader manner, more consistent with the transactions of actual life.
The precision of history and of common sense is enough, without the technical precision of an indictment.
From time immemorial there has been a just distinction between proceedings in Parliament and proceedings in the ordinary courts of justice, which I insist shall not be abandoned.
The distant reign of Richard the Second, beyond the misfortunes touching us so much in Shakespeare, supplies a presiding rule which has been a pole-star of Constitutional Law; nor is this in any vague, uncertain language, but in the most…
It is enough, if they are clear to “a common understanding,” without the “minute exactness” of a criminal court.
A mere technicality, much more a quibble, often efficacious on a demurrer, is a wretched anachronism, when we are considering a question of political duty.
The latitude established in England cannot be curtailed in the United States, and it becomes more essential in proportion to the elevation of the proceedings.
Even if the narrow rules and exclusions of the Common Law could be tolerated on the impeachment of an inferior functionary, they must be disclaimed on the trial of a chief magistrate, involving the public safety.
The technicalities of law were invented for protection against power, not for the immunity of a usurper or tyrant.
When set up for the safeguard of the weak, they are respectable, but on impeachments they are intolerable.
The origin of impeachment in the National Constitution and contemporary authority vindicate this very latitude.
From form of procedure I pass to rules of evidence; and here again the Senate must avoid technicalities, and not allow any artificial rule to shut out the truth.
As in pleadings, so in evidence, the Law of Parliament, and not the Common Law, is the guide of the Senate.
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